The Bone Garden: A Novel

Thirty-seven

The present

JULIA CARRIED her suitcase downstairs and left it by the front door. Then she went into the library, where Henry was sitting among the boxes, now ready to be transported to the Boston Athenaeum. Together, she and Henry had organized all the documents and resealed the boxes. The letters from Oliver Wendell Holmes, however, they had carefully set aside for safekeeping. Henry had laid them out on the table, and he sat reading them yet again, for at least the hundredth time.

— It pains me to give these up, — he said. — Perhaps I should keep them. —

— You already promised the Athenaeum you'd donate them. —

— I could still change my mind. —

— Henry, they need to be properly cared for. An archivist will know how to preserve them. And won't it be wonderful to share this story with the whole world? —

Henry slouched stubbornly in his chair, eyeing the papers like a miser who won't give up his fortune. — These mean too much to me. This is personal. —

She went to the window and gazed at the sea. — I know what you mean, — she said softly. — It's become personal for me, too. —

— Are you still dreaming about her? —

— Every night. It's been weeks now. —

— What was last night's dream? —

— It was more…impressions. Images. —

— What images? —

— Bolts of cloth. Ribbons and bows. I'm holding a needle in my hand and sewing. — She shook her head and laughed. — Henry, I don't even know how to sew. —

— But Rose did. —

— Yes, she did. Sometimes I think she's alive again, and speaking to me. By reading the letters, I've brought her soul back. And now I'm having her memories. I'm reliving her life. —

— The dreams are that vivid? —

— Right down to the color of the thread. Which tells me I've spent entirely too much time thinking about her. — And what her life could have been. She looked at her watch and turned to him. — I should probably head down to the ferry. —

— I'm sorry you have to leave. When will you come back to see me? —

— You can always come down to see me. —

— Maybe when Tom gets back? I'll visit you both on the same trip. — He paused. — So tell me. What did you think of him? —

— Tom? —

— He's eligible, you know. —

She smiled. — I know, Henry. —

— He's also very picky. I've watched him go through a succession of girlfriends, and not a single one lasted. You could be the exception. But you have to let him know you're interested. He thinks you're not. —

— Is that what he told you? —

— He's disappointed. But he's also a patient man. —

— Well, I do like him. —

— So what's the problem? —

— Maybe I like him too much. It scares me. I know how fast love can fall apart. — Julia turned to the window again and looked at the sea. It was as calm and flat as a mirror. — One minute you're happy and in love, and everything is right with the world. You think nothing can go wrong. But then it does, the way it did for me and Richard. The way it did for Rose Connolly. And you end up suffering for it all the rest of your life. Rose had that one short taste of happiness with Norris, and then she had to live all those years with the memory of what she'd lost. I don't know if it's worth it, Henry. I don't know if I could stand it. —

— I think you're taking the wrong lesson from Rose's life. —

— What's the right lesson? —

— To grab it while you can! Love. —

— And suffer the consequences. —

Henry gave a snort. — You know all those dreams you've been having? There's a message there, Julia, but it's wasted on you. She would have taken the chance. —

— I know that. But I'm not Rose Connolly. — She sighed. — Goodbye, Henry. —

She had never seen Henry look so dapper. As they sat together in the director's office of the Boston Athenaeum, Julia kept stealing glances at him, amazed that this was the same old Henry who liked to putter around his creaky Maine house in baggy pants and old flannel shirts. She'd expected him to be wearing that same wardrobe when she'd picked him up at his Boston hotel that morning. But the man she'd found waiting for her in the lobby was wearing a black three-piece suit and carrying an ebony cane with a brass tip. Not only had Henry shed his old clothes, he'd shed his perpetual scowl as well, and he was actually flirting with Mrs. Zaccardi, the Athenaeum's director.

And Mrs. Zaccardi, all of sixty years old, was obligingly flirting right back.

— It's not every day we receive a donation of such significance, Mr. Page, — she said. — There's a long line of eager scholars who can't wait to get their hands on these letters. It's been quite some time since any new Holmes material has surfaced, so we're delighted you chose to donate it to us. —

— Oh, I had to think about it long and hard, — said Henry. — I considered other institutions. But the Athenaeum has, by far, the prettiest director. —

Mrs. Zaccardi laughed. — And you, sir, need new glasses. I'll promise to wear my sexiest dress if you and Julia will join us tonight at the trustees' dinner. I know they'd love to meet you both. —

— I wish we could, — said Henry. — But my grandnephew is flying home from Hong Kong tonight. Julia and I plan to spend the evening with him. —

— Then next month, perhaps. — Mrs. Zaccardi stood up. — Once again, thank you. There are few native sons so deeply revered in Boston as Oliver Wendell Holmes. And the story he tells, in these letters… — She gave an embarrassed laugh. — It's so heartbreaking, it makes me choke up a little. There are so many stories we'll never get to hear, so many other voices lost to history. Thank you for giving us the tale of Rose Connolly. —

As Henry and Julia walked out of the office, his cane made a smart clack-clack. At this early hour on a Thursday morning, the Athenaeum was nearly empty, and they were the only passengers in the elevator, the only visitors who strolled through the lobby, Henry's cane echoing against the floor. They passed a gallery room, and Henry stopped. He pointed to the sign outside the current exhibit: BOSTON AND THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS: PORTRAITS OF AN ERA.

— That would be Rose's era, — he said.

— Do you want to take a look? —

— We have all day. Why not? —

They stepped into the gallery. They were alone in the room, and they could take as long as they wanted to examine each painting and lithograph. They studied an 1832 view of Boston Harbor from Pemberton Hill, and Julia wondered: Is this a view that Rose glimpsed when she was alive? Did she see that same pretty fence in the foreground, the same vista of rooftops? They moved on, to a lithograph of Colonnade Row, with its tableau of smartly dressed ladies and gentlemen standing beneath stately trees, and she wondered if Rose had passed beneath those very trees. They lingered before portraits of Theodore Parker and the Reverend William Channing, faces that Rose might have passed on the street or glimpsed in a window. Here is your world, Rose, a world that has long since passed into history. Like you.

They circled the gallery, and Henry came to an abrupt standstill. She bumped into him, and could feel his body had gone rigid.

— What? — she said. Then her gaze lifted to the oil painting he was staring at, and she, too, went instantly still. In a room full of strangers' portraits, this face did not belong; this face they both knew. The dark-haired young man gazing back at them from the painting stood beside a desk, with his hand laid upon a human skull. Though he had the heavy sideburns and topcoat and intricately tied cravat of his era, his face was startlingly familiar.

— My God, — said Henry. — That's Tom! —

— But it was painted in 1792. —

— Look at the eyes, the mouth. It's definitely our Tom. —

Julia frowned at the label mounted beside the portrait. — The artist is Christian Gullager. It doesn't say who the subject is. —

They heard footsteps in the lobby, and spotted one of the librarians walking past the gallery.

— Excuse me! — Henry called. — Do you know anything about this painting? —

The librarian came into the room and smiled at the portrait. — It's really quite nice, isn't it? — she said. — Gullager was one of the finest portrait painters of that era. —

— Who's the man in the painting? —

— We believe he was a prominent Boston physician named Aldous Grenville. This would have been painted when he was around nineteen or twenty, I think. He died quite tragically in a fire, around 1832. In his country home in Weston. —

Julia looked at Henry. — Norris's father. —

The librarian frowned. — I've never heard he had a son. I only know about his nephew. —

— You know about Charles? — asked Henry, surprised. — Was he notable? —

— Oh, yes. Charles Lackaway's work was very much in vogue in his time. But honestly, between you and me, his poems were quite awful. I think his popularity was mostly due to his romantic cachet as the one-handed poet. —

— So he did become a poet after all, — said Julia.

— With quite a reputation. They say he lost his hand in a duel over a lady. The tale made him quite popular with the fair sex. He ended up dying in his fifties. Of syphilis. — She gazed at the painting. — If this was his uncle, you can see that good looks certainly ran in the family. —

As the librarian walked away, Julia remained transfixed by the portrait of Aldous Grenville, the man who had been Sophia Marshall's lover. I now know what happened to Norris's mother, thought Julia. On a summer's evening, when her son lay feverish, Sophia had left his bedside and had ridden to Aldous Grenville's country house in Weston. There she planned to tell him that he had a son who was now desperately ill.

But Aldous was not at home. It was his sister, Eliza, who heard Sophia's confession, who entertained her plea for help. Was Eliza thinking of her own son, Charles, when she chose her next action? Was it merely scandal she feared, or was it the appearance of another heir in the Grenville line, a bastard who'd take what her own son should inherit?

That was the day Sophia Marshall vanished.

Nearly two centuries would pass before Julia, digging in the weed-choked yard that was once part of Aldous Grenville's summer estate, would unearth the skull of Sophia Marshall. For nearly two centuries Sophia had lain hidden in her unmarked grave, lost to memory.

Until now. The dead might be gone forever, but the truth could be resurrected.

She stared at Grenville's portrait and thought: You never acknowledged Norris as your son. But at least you saw to the welfare of your daughter, Meggie. And through her, your blood has passed on, to all the generations since.

And now, in Tom, Aldous Grenville still lived.

Henry was too exhausted to come with her to the airport.

Julia drove alone through the night, thinking of the conversation she had had with Henry a few weeks ago:

— You've taken the wrong lesson from Rose Connolly's life. —

— What's the right lesson? —

— To grab it while you can. Love! —

I don't know if I dare, she thought.

But Rose would. And Rose did.

An accident in Newton had cars backed up two miles on the turnpike. As she inched forward through traffic, she thought about Tom's phone calls over the past weeks. They'd talked about Henry's health, about the Holmes letters, about the donation to the Athenaeum. Safe topics, nothing that required her to bare any secrets.

— You have to let him know you're interested, — Henry had told her. — He thinks you're not. —

I am. But I'm afraid.

Trapped on the turnpike, she watched the minutes tick past. She thought of what Rose had risked for love. Had it been worth it? Did she ever regret it?

At Brookline, the turnpike suddenly opened up, but by then she knew she would be late. By the time she ran into Logan Airport's Terminal E, Tom's flight had landed, and she faced a crammed obstacle course of passengers and luggage.

She began to run, dodging children and carry-ons. When she reached the area where passengers were exiting customs, her heart was pounding hard. I've missed him, she thought as she plunged into the crowd, searching. She saw only strangers' faces, an endless throng of people she did not know, people who brushed past her without a second glance. People whose lives would never intersect with hers. Suddenly it seemed as if she'd always been searching for Tom, and had always just missed him. Had always let him slip away, unrecognized.

This time, I know your face.

— Julia? —

She whirled around to find him standing right behind her, looking rumpled and weary after his long flight. Without even stopping to think, she threw her arms around him, and he gave a laugh of surprise.

— What a welcome! I wasn't expecting this, — he said.

— I'm so glad I found you! —

— So am I, — he said softly.

— You were right. Oh, Tom, you were right! —

— About what? —

— You told me once that you recognized me. That we'd met before. —

— Have we? —

She looked into a face that she'd seen just that afternoon gazing back at her from a portrait. A face that she'd always known, always loved. Norrie's face.

She smiled. — We have. —

1888

And so, Margaret, you have now heard it all, and I am at peace that the tale will not die with me.

Though your aunt Rose never married or had children of her own, believe me, dear Margaret, you gave her enough joy for several lifetimes. Aldous Grenville lived only a brief time beyond these events, but he took such pleasure from the few years he had with you. I hope you will not hold it against him that he never publicly acknowledged you as his daughter. Remember instead how generously he provided for you and Rose, bequeathing to you his country estate in Weston, on which you have now built your home. How proud he would have been of your keen and inquisitive mind! How proud to know that his daughter was among the first to graduate from the new female medical college! What a startling world this has become, where women are allowed, at last, to achieve so much.

Now the future belongs to our grandchildren. You wrote that your grandson Samuel has already shown a remarkable aptitude for science. You must be delighted, as you, better than anyone, know that there is no nobler profession than that of a healer. I dearly hope young Samuel will pursue that calling, and continue the tradition of his most talented fore-bearers. Those who save lives achieve a form of immortality of their own, in the generations they preserve, in the descendants who would not otherwise be born. To heal is to leave your stamp on the future.

And so, dear Margaret, I end this final letter with a blessing to your grandson. It is the highest blessing I could wish upon him, or upon anyone.

May he be a physician.

Yours faithfully,

O.W.H.