I retraced the route to Woolford, parked behind Lilith’s Toyota at the end of her drive, and was hauling the tote out of the back seat when Lilith appeared out of the woods, almost like an apparition. She was dressed in pipe-stem blue jeans and a tailored white shirt, unbuttoned, her shirt tails floating gently over a pale-pink scoop-necked tee. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You must be Hannah.’
Although Lilith was thirty years older than the pictures I carried, I would have known her anywhere. We all should age so gracefully. Her dark hair was laced with threads of silver, but the graying had progressed so evenly that one could easily mistake it for highlighting. Skilful highlighting, too. A dye job you’d pay extra for. She had the same slight frame, and as she approached, she moved with elegant grace. I imagined her as a young girl, practicing that walk while balancing a dictionary on her head.
I held out my hand. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Lilith.’
Lilith’s azure eyes strayed to the tote in my hand, then back to my face without betraying a single ill-mannered sign of curiosity. ‘Before we get down to business,’ she said, ‘I’d like to show you my studio.’
After visiting Lilith’s house, I was holding my breath, mentally bracing for the studio experience. I followed her down a straight, narrow path to a wooden A-frame structure a hundred yards or so from the creek. Imagine my surprise when she opened a door and led me into a spacious room that pulsed with light and color. White-white walls and pale oak floors seemed to go on forever. A chaise lounge was tucked into a corner by a wall of windows that framed the water view, a colorful crocheted afghan neatly draped over its arm. Next to the chaise, a camera was mounted on a tripod, its lens pointing outside, ready for the next shot.
On an easel in the center of the room stood Lilith’s work in progress, a painting of a toy sailboat floating on water amid a sea of fall leaves. Clipped to the easel was a photograph of the same scene. ‘You’re still into photorealism, I see.’
With her eyes on the painting, she smiled. ‘It’s light that’s always interested me, Hannah – how it’s reflected, refracted, diffused and distorted by the water.’
Although the work was incomplete, I felt I could reach into the painting, swirl my hand through the leaves and come out wet. ‘What’s it called?’
She grinned. ‘Sailboat Twenty-three.’
Finished canvases – still lifes and landscapes – were propped up against the wall to my right, and to my left was a tiny kitchenette with a hotplate, where a teakettle was just starting to scream.
‘I’m making tea,’ she told me. ‘Lady Grey. Would you like some?’
‘Yes, thank you. That would be lovely.’
When the tea was ready, she carried the tray outside to a table on a round concrete patio. From the patio, a leaf-strewn lawn sloped gently down to the creek where, at the end of a short dock, a motorboat was tied. Closer to shore, a kayak bobbed.
‘Milk and sugar?’
I shook my head. ‘Do you get out on the water often?’ I asked as Lilith stirred milk and sugar into her tea.
‘Every day I can. I find paddling a kayak very relaxing. Nature’s chorus sings all around you in a kayak. A motorboat drowns it out. I keep the motorboat in case of emergency, of course.’
‘I know what you mean about motors,’ I agreed. ‘My husband and I sail, but only on other people’s boats.’ We sipped in silence for a while, listening to the susurrus of the wind in the trees.
‘You mentioned you had something that belongs to me,’ Lilith said at last.
I pulled the Garfinkel’s bag out of my canvas tote and set it on the table between us.
Lilith’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. She laid a hand lightly on the bag. ‘Where on earth did you get this?’
‘I’m afraid it comes with some bad news.’ I told Lilith about the Metro crash, about the gravely injured man I’d comforted. ‘He told me his name was Skip.’
Lilith exhaled slowly, then looked away, swiping sudden tears away with the back of her hand. ‘That’s what they called him in school, because he was always cutting class.’
‘Your son?’
Still staring out over the water, Lilith nodded. ‘His given name is Nicholas. Nicholas Ryan Aupry.’
Aupry. Where had I heard that name before? Was Nicholas actually Aupry’s son?
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I wish I could tell you what happened to your son, but when I asked the hospital for information I didn’t know his name, so naturally they refused to tell me anything.’
While I waited for Lilith to comment, my mind raced, paging through the names of the seven train crash victims. None had been named Nicholas Aupry. I was positive of that.
Lilith set her cup down carefully, centering it on the saucer. She smiled knowingly. As if reading my mind, she said, ‘He’s not dead, I’m sure of that.’
My heart did a somersault. ‘So, you’ve been in touch?’
‘No. But, if Nick had died of his injuries, somebody would have contacted me. I’m his only next of kin.’
‘I don’t mean to pry,’ I said, fully intending to, ‘but why did Skip – excuse me, Nick – have your letters with him?’
‘I didn’t even know they were missing. I haven’t seen them since Nicholas…’ Her voice trailed off.
Small wonder, I thought to myself. If the box of letters had been in Lilith’s cottage… well, you could park a construction dumpster in the driveway and spend a week hauling stuff out of Lilith’s cottage and no one would notice a bit of improvement.
Yet her studio was impeccable. Clearly, this place was her refuge.
‘So Nick stole your letters?’ I asked.
She nodded, her face twisted with anguish. ‘Apparently.’
‘Why?’
‘I imagine he’s trying to track down his father.’
Something wasn’t making sense. There had been no mention of a child in the letters. No mention of anyone named Aupry. Yet, if clues to Skip’s paternity lay in those letters, then his father had to be Zan.
‘Zan?’ I asked.
She raised one elegant eyebrow.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘When I couldn’t track Skip down, I had to look through the letters for clues in order to find you.’ After a moment, I said, ‘I hope I’m not being too nosy, but is Nick’s father named Alexander Aupry?’
Lilith smiled enigmatically. ‘No.’
‘Why didn’t Skip take his father’s name, then?’
I was hoping she’d let her lover’s name slip and I could catch John Chandler in a lie, but she simply looked pained and said, ‘Things were different back then, Hannah. An unmarried woman. An unexpected pregnancy.’
Suddenly, Lilith smiled. ‘Unexpected, but definitely not unwanted. Nick was my gift from Zan, and Zan…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, Zan was no longer part of my life. So…’ She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘We, that is my family and I, decided it would be best if Nick were raised by my mother’s brother in Switzerland. Nick always knew I was his mother, but… well, for many reasons, it was easier if he took his uncle’s name.’
That’s where I’d heard the name before – in the report of the Air France crash that took the lives of Lilith’s parents: Lucille Aupry. Aupry was Lilith’s mother’s maiden name.
I wondered what Lilith meant by ‘family.’ By my reckoning, her parents had been dead for almost twenty years by the time Nick was born. Who did the troubled young woman turn to for advice? Her aunt? Her grandmother?
Lilith sat quietly, gnawing on a thumbnail as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Finally, she looked up. ‘When Nick got old enough to ask about his father, I lied. I told him I didn’t know who his father was. Before Nick was born, I lived in New York City, as you know, working as an artist. I was part of the “New York scene.”’ She drew quote marks in the air with her fingers. ‘Painting all day, clubbing every night. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Some nights I never went to bed at all. I’m not proud of that, mind you. I’m just telling it like it was.