“Come in,” she says with an amused sort of air.
Kate moves into the room, Ian right behind her. “Mr. MacGregor just left.”
“Yes. Come here,” Audrey says, gesturing to them both.
They join her on either side of her bed. Sophie is curled up at the foot of it, fast asleep. She hasn’t left Audrey’s side for two days now, leaving poor Ozzie in a state of dejection.
Audrey grips each of their hands with her own. “As Kate well knows by now, the Oakwood turned out to be my most unexpected place of refuge and peace at a terrible juncture in my life,” she says. “And I leave it in your safekeeping, the pair of you, because you have come to love it nearly as much as I did.”
“But Audrey—” Ian begins.
“You cannot deny a dying woman what she wants,” Audrey says, her tone heavy.
Kate knows she’s thinking of Ilse and Daniel, and she squeezes Audrey’s hand. The set of her jaw reflects the fierce determination that lies beneath the aging pale skin.
“Please take care of it, and each other,” Audrey says, glancing at them each in turn.
Kate’s heart swells with the knowledge that she won’t have to leave this place that’s become her home, where her parents walked the halls and her dad lived for a while as a boy, where Audrey’s spirit will always linger in the smell of coffee and Marmite.
“Audrey, you still can’t give us all that money.” Ian says.
“I can do absolutely whatever I want with my fortune.” Audrey scowls, making it clear any further argument would be futile. “And this is what I want.”
Ian swipes at his eyes with his free hand, then leans over to hug her. She whispers something in his ear that Kate doesn’t catch. When they break apart, Audrey cups his cheek in her hand, brushes away a tear with her thumb. Ian nods.
“I will,” he says.
“Thank you.”
Ian leaves the room, touching Kate’s shoulder on the way by, his head down.
Audrey’s shoulders slump. “I’m very tired.”
Kate helps her lie down, tucks the blanket in like a mother would, then Audrey pats the edge of the bed, and Kate sits.
“Thank you for being such a willing steward of my pain,” Audrey says. “I know it wasn’t easy to hear everything I had to say. But look at what it brought us both in the end. I think that alone has made it worthwhile.” Audrey runs her hand over Sophie, whose little body rises and falls on soft exhalations. “Take care of her, will you?”
“Of course,” Kate says. “Oz will too.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything else you need me to do?”
Audrey is quiet a moment, staring into Kate’s eyes. “Just talk about me,” she says. “And Ilse. About Friedrich, and your mum and dad. Tell people about them. Tell these stories. When we are the only ones left to remember someone, we have a responsibility to let them live on through our memories, our stories. I do love you, Kate. I wish I had known you sooner. But time always makes fools of us all.”
“I love you, too,” Kate chokes out.
Grief holds her lungs in its sharp talons. She catches a few snippets of notes from the piano downstairs, notes she knows well now.
“Can I see her again, please?” Audrey asks.
“Of course,” Kate manages, her throat thick. She reaches behind Audrey’s neck and unclasps Ruth’s necklace, opens it, and passes it into Audrey’s hands. She holds it with the fingers that shattered and eventually healed enough to be functional, but never quite the same as they were before.
Audrey smiles a little, and the tears slip back into her white temples as her head rests against the cool pillowcase.
“Ilse taught me a great many things, whether she realized it or not,” she says, fingering the tiny photo. “How to love so deeply, and on so many levels. How to survive after losing all the people you love.” She smiles through misty eyes as she travels back in time to Ilse’s bedroom, that day in the spring of 1945, filled with brown eyes and sorrow and the scent of lilacs. “And she also taught me how to die.”
Kate has tried so hard to keep herself composed for Audrey’s sake, but the tears are in full flow now, her nose red and swollen.
“Do you hear that?” Audrey asks. She folds the locket into the palm of her hand and crosses her arms over her chest. She closes her eyes. “He’s playing her song.”
Epilogue
BERLIN, GERMANY | SEPTEMBER 2013
Kate glances once more at the map on her mobile, the little pin showing the location of the address she inputted before they left the hotel. It’s a bright, cool Tuesday afternoon in the middle of September, and the sun shines down on them as a soft breeze blows. Kate has never been to Berlin before, and was surprised to travel somewhere foreign with the sense that she was going home.
Audrey had left her the Kaplans’ and Abramses’ addresses so that Kate could do her own research after she was gone. She’d let herself sink into the work after Audrey died, using her spare time in the evenings after they finally opened the Oakwood up to guests in the midsummer. After polishing the memoir, she’d sent it to the German Resistance Memorial Center. They were thrilled to hear about this cell of the Red Orchestra, but warned her that with only one woman’s testimony to go on, they would need to cross-reference Audrey’s account with any other information they could find on the other members of the cell before they could make any sort of official addition to the memorial. Kate kept her expectations low. She wasn’t sure whether Audrey and her comrades’ complex contributions would ever be recognized there, but she was doing right by Audrey to try, and that was enough for her.
“How much farther?” Ian asks her.
“Just around the next corner, I think,” Kate says, with a tingle of anticipation.
There are two row houses sitting right at the curve of the road, tall and proud.
“This is it,” she says quietly.
Ian looks over at her, watching for her reaction, and she’s touched that he wants to know if she’s okay.
