“Were Iris and Charles engaged then?” I ask and cringe at my mistake. As far as Anne knows, I shouldn’t know that.
“You mean Hazel and Charles. No, from what Auntie Iris told me, they got engaged during the war and married a few months later. But the three of them had been friends for five or six years before that. It wasn’t love at first sight. My grandparents’ love for each other grew over time.”
I wince on the inside at the version of the truth Anne had been told. She never knew about the heartache her great-aunt had suffered through after discovering her fiancé and sister in bed together.
Would Iris want the truth to come out now? She’d had decades to tell Lizzie and Anne about what happened, but she chose to keep it a secret.
No, that’s not true.She wrote it in the journals. Had Iris planned to give her niece the journals, only for her niece to die in the car accident before that could happen?
I pick up my glass of strawberry lemonade from the table. “What else did your great-aunt tell you about your grandparents?”
“They loved each other very much. And they fell in love with my mother the moment they saw her. They thought she was the best thing to happen during the war. The only good thing to happen.”
“What else?”
“Other than that, Auntie Iris didn’t talk much about my grandfather, other than saying he was a good man. I don’t think she really got over losing him as a friend. She talked more about my grandmother. She would tell me all kinds of stories about when they were kids. My grandmother loved folklore and was positive fairies and other mythological creatures existed.”
That fits with what I read in Angelique’s journals. Johann’s sister had believed in them too at one point.
“You mentioned Iris was fluent in French and German, and your great-grandfather had been an English diplomat in both Paris and Vienna. Did Iris ever visit France and Austria during the war or afterward?”
“Not that I know of. Definitely not during the war. I doubt she could have entered either country since she was a British citizen at the time. The Nazis would never have allowed it. She would’ve been killed. And after the war?” Anne shakes her head, her gaze directed skyward.
Not much longer before I’m finished transcribing the journals. Not much longer before I can share the truth about her great-aunt with her.
I know Anne will be even more proud of her great-aunt, at what Iris accomplished during the war, than Anne already is about the woman she did know.God, I can’t wait for her to find out the truth.
“I don’t think she ever mentioned going back to France or Austria,” Anne ventures. “She might have and didn’t think to tell me. And I didn’t think to ask. She and my mother moved to the U.S. in 1949 or 1950.”
Anne picks up a framed photo from the table and passes it to me as the gate to her backyard clicks open. The three women in the colored photo are all smiling. I recognize Anne. She looks to be in her early twenties. The older woman was in her seventies, and the woman in the middle could be in her forties. It’s obvious the women were related.
“This is my mother.” Anne points to the woman in the middle. She’s blond like Anne, Iris, and Hazel.
“Hi, Catherine,” Anne calls out cheerily, shifting my attention from the photo in my hand.
A tall blond woman Anne’s age walks up the wooden porch steps. She has on yoga pants and a tank top that’s snug on her curvy frame. “Hi, Anne.” The pitch of her voice is high and has the singsong quality of a chickadee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you have a guest.” She smiles, flashing her bleached-white teeth at us.
Anne rests her hand on my forearm. “Yes, this is Jessica.” She turns to me. “Catherine is my neighbor.”
“And her dear,dearfriend.” Catherine laughs, the girlish sound matching her chickadee voice. She gives me a once-over, and her gaze lands on my face. Her eyes widen a minuscule amount.
She quickly recovers her composure before Anne can catch her reaction and takes a seat next to her. “What are y’all talking about?”
“My great-aunt Iris,” Anne says, apparently at ease with her friend joining our conversation. “Jess bought her house a few months ago.”
“So, you’re the one.” Catherine’s tone switches from friendly to something a little chillier, but maybe I’m just imagining that. Her eyes seem to be locked on the scar by my mouth. I squirm on the seat as if I’m sitting under a microscope, waiting for her to dissect my past. The wicker creaks under me, loud enough to give away my discomfort at her scrutiny.
Anne looks fondly at the framed photo in my hand. “Iris was smart. Clever. Generous. Brave. And she was very much hands-on. She loved to do things herself, even when her right hand caused her trouble at times. Even more so when it became arthritic.”
“Her hand?”Oh no. The hand Christian hit with the paperweight?I take a sip of the lemonade, growing more and more curious about the woman she remembers—and more and more disquieted by her neighbor.
“It was caught in some machinery during the war, and her hand was badly injured.”
Machinery? More like the result of an English traitor who sold what little there was of his soul to the devil. Christian’s greed and ambition cost a lot of people their lives. And it sounds as though he might have caused Iris to have only limited use of her hand.
The next hour is spent with Anne telling me all kinds of stories about her great-aunt. The great-aunt she knew growing up. Not the one who lived in occupied France for part of the war, and who helped to bring down the Germans and liberate the country.
The person Anne knew is obviously the same one who lives in the pages of the journals. Iris’s spirit and courageous and caring soul never changed, even after everything she had survived through during the war.
