“A call came in. May I forward it to you?”
“Of course.” I’d quit asking the receptionist who was calling months ago. Mednex had a main line, but as we each had company cell phones, the CEO hadn’t put landline phones on our desks. She simply forwarded calls.
“Caroline Payne,” I announced at the click.
“Caroline? It’s Mat Hammond. I don’t know if you remember me from college, but—”
“Mat? Of course.” I felt myself straighten. “I remember you.”
Three simple words accompanied a complex picture. Mat Hammond. The Greek boy with the electric smile and the soft, dark eyes. Funny. Determined. Brilliant. Challenging . . . A close friend. Somehow I’d forgotten that last part, and it struck me with an odd note of longing.
“I wondered . . . I mean, I thought you might not.” He paused.
I waited, unsure how to step into the silence that followed his comment.
When it tipped toward uncomfortable, he rushed to fill it. “I’m working on a project for the Atlantic, and I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Oddly disappointed, I reached for a pen. Fielding questions about our company’s new immunotherapy drug was above my pay grade. “You need Anika Patel, but she’s unavailable today. Let me take your number and I’ll have her call you.”
“It’s not about your company; it’s about you. Well, about Caroline Waite.”
“Who?” Surprise arced my voice. I recognized the name, but it could have no meaning to Mat or anyone outside my family.
“Your great-aunt? Twin sister to your grandmother, Margaret Waite Payne?”
“I know who my grandmother was, but why are you calling about her sister?”
“It might be easier if we met in person . . . I’m in the lobby.”
“What?” I stood and looked over the cubical partitions as if, eight floors up, I’d somehow see Mat’s lanky frame leaning against a doorjamb.
“I didn’t even know we were both in Boston until earlier this week,” he continued. “Please . . . this is no good over the phone and email is no better. It won’t take long.”
I dropped to my seat. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Caroline Waite. That was a name I hadn’t heard in years—twenty years, to be exact. I’d been named after my great-aunt. But once I’d learned that she died in childhood from polio, I’d lost interest in her. Even at a young age, I thought it felt wrong to be named after someone best known for dying young.
Mat Hammond was another name I hadn’t heard in years—six, to be exact. He was the first boy I met on campus my freshman year. We bumped into each other entering the dorm. He, buried beneath a box of books. Me, swamped by a down comforter. We became friends, good friends—at least from his perspective. I’d always hoped . . .
I stepped off the elevator and scanned the lobby. Mat was momentarily forgotten as my chest filled with the same expansive feeling I got every time I stepped within it. I loved our building’s lobby. My father always said it didn’t matter where you lived or in what type of building you worked, but I disagreed. Buildings bore personalities. They held our secrets and carried the weight of our lives, our families, our work, and our dreams. The grandeur and significance of Mednex’s lobby had become symbolic of how I viewed Mednex’s work and my place within it—something small participating in something grand.
Ours was the newest company fighting one of humanity’s worst foes—cancer—with a groundbreaking protocol that supercharged the body’s cells as our latest weapon. There was something so fundamental and old school, yet cutting edge, about the idea that we could equip our bodies to withstand and conquer this most invasive assault.
Our building’s lobby embodied that synergy. Its 1920s art deco designs and lines, the pink marble-patterned floor and the dark wood and gold filigreed interior storefronts of the shops circling it gave it a dignity and gravitas missing from steel, glass, and concrete. It exuded history, stability, and solidity, while offering the latest amenities, including a security system that worked on a biometric scan . . . and the best coffee shop around.
It was next to this door I found Mat. He studied me rather than greeted me. I had anticipated a warm smile but banished the thought before my face reflected it. This was business. Friendship, it seemed, had died long ago.
Physically he looked the same, other than the slight curl to his hair around his ears. He certainly still had the same straight nose and jawline most women would die for—or pay thousands to obtain—and I knew full well his scruffy three-day shadow hid an equally chiseled chin.
That was one thing I hadn’t inherited from my grandmother—twin sister to the Caroline in question—her square jaw. With her dark hair, bright blue eyes, and that gorgeous Grace Kelly jaw, I saw her as the most beautiful woman in the world.
The saddest too.
As I crossed the lobby, Mat—looking every bit the academic I always suspected he’d be—pushed off the wall and met me midway. We stalled, side-shifted, then awkwardly stepped into a semi-hug and back-pat while our hands got stuck between us mid-handshake.
“You haven’t—”
“Wow. It’s been a lo—”
We stopped and started and sputtered to another stop. I opened my mouth to try again, but he stepped back and gestured first to my hand then to the coffee shop. “Your hand is freezing . . . Can I buy you a coffee?”
I nodded and rubbed my hands together, feeling both embarrassed and exposed. Within a few steps and no words, we stood in line. Two black drips later, we sat across from each other tucked next to a window.
“Okay . . . Where to begin.” He circled his cup with both hands.
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t try to answer. It wasn’t congenial, so I didn’t start a round of “What have you been up to lately?” I simply sat and waited.
“I’m an adjunct instructor at BC, but I have a side job that, in the craziest of small world ways, leads me to you.”
He scrunched his nose. “That didn’t help . . . The humanities don’t pay much without tenure, so on the side I do research for families. I trace lineage, make albums, digital programs, anything they want to give Grandma for Christmas. It usually starts with 23andMe or something, and the wife discovers she’s German or English, and wouldn’t royalty be fun? Then a friend tells them about me because all these people seem to know each other, and I’ve been doing this for years. So I get hired to do a deep dive on the family and present their history with a big bright bow.”
Mat sucked in a gulp of air, as he hadn’t drawn a breath since “I’m an adjunct . . . ,” and I choked on my coffee. “Someone in my family hired you? How? Who?”
There was no way that could be true.
“No.” Mat watched as I swiped at the table between us with my napkin. “Your family name came up in my current project and . . . it’s an interesting story that, if I do it right, the Atlantic wants for a feature article. Not one about the Arnim family, who hired me, but about yours.”
His smile flattened into a vulnerable sheepish thing that made me wary.
“You’ve lost me. Can we start over?”
Mat took a sip of coffee. “A couple years ago, the Atlanticpicked up some pieces I wrote on history and how we remember it. World War Two stories about all the monuments under construction at the time, both in England and here. My guess is that the look back was as commemorative as it was therapeutic . . . When people feel anxious about the future, and globally we’ve been through the wringer, they look to the past and tangible reminders that things ended well before and, therefore, can again. I—”
He pressed his lips shut as if realizing he’d gone off topic. “My current idea isn’t about the stories we want to remember. It’s a counterpoint perspective, featuring a story most—your family specifically—would rather forget. My belief is that those stories, your story, also provide a sense of hope. They assure us that when bad things happen, life continues, and that we humans are resilient and endure. Hope emerges from tragedy.”
He stalled and stared at me. Barely understanding, I stared back.
“In World War Two, no one can deny there was a real mix and mess of loyalties. It must have felt like the world was ending and life would never be the same. What’s more, the enemy was sometimes within your own home.” He dipped his hand toward me as if I could relate to that point. “In France, you’ve got Free France, Occupied France, brothers and sisters turning on each other. In England, you’ve got the Mitford sisters fawning over Hitler, Edward and Wallis Simpson, and even Edward’s agreement to the whole German plan to get him back on the throne before he got shipped off to the Bahamas . . . There are lots of stories that show family life was real and messy and carried consequences.”
“Okay?” I drew the question long.
“Your great-aunt is one of those stories. A woman, daughter of an earl, no less, who worked as a secretary for the Special Operations Executive, then crossed the great divide and ran away with her Nazi lover? You have to admit, it’s compelling.”
He took another sip, assessing me over the rim of his cup. When I said nothing, he set it down. “I didn’t do that well . . . I practiced how to reach out to you a million times this past week because, while I could hand it in as is, I know you. I didn’t want this to surprise you or hurt you if you read my name on it. I also hoped you might comment.”
“Comment how?” I sat back. “You’ve found the wrong Caroline Waite, Mat. My aunt died from polio in childhood. I’m named after her. I should know.”
Mat mirrored my defensive cross-armed slouch. His eyes drew tight as he watched me. “Is that what you’ve been told?” He reached into his messenger bag, pulled out a standard manila file, and opened it. The top page was a photocopy of a short letter in Courier type, with the salutation handwritten in a large swirling script.
He slid it across the table.
20 October 1941
My dear John and Ethel,
It is with real sorrow that I write this letter, for it brings you, I am afraid, very bad news about your daughter, Caroline Amelia Waite.
Without permission, she boarded a transport boat to Normandy on 15 October and was identified outside Paris two days later. She joined German Gruppenführer Paul Arnim, with whom we have confirmed she had a previous romantic connection.
I am beyond sorry, John and Ethel. I can only imagine how hard this news will sit with you. She did good work at the Inter Services Research Bureau and we did not anticipate this action. I want to reassure you she was not involved in anything delicate that should incite your concern for our efforts.
That said, I do not write these words without heartbreak for your loss.
I send this letter with consideration and sympathy.
Hugh
I slid it toward him. “Impossible. This is dated 1941.”
“Do you know who Hugh Dalton was?” Mat tapped on the name. “He was the Minister of Economic Warfare, tasked to form the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. They called it the Inter Services Research Bureau, the ISRB, but that was a front.”
His chair screeched as it scraped forward across the stone floor, closer to the table, closer to me. We hovered inches apart. I resisted the urge to shift back in retreat.
“It was a whole new idea, Caroline, set on espionage, sabotage, reconnaissance, and establishing guerrilla resistance groups. Rough and tough stuff, modeled on IRA training and tactics from the Irish War of Independence. It’s incredible really . . . No gentleman, and back when it started in 1940, certainly no lady, was part of it. Women weren’t actively recruited until 1942 as spies, so your aunt probably worked—”
He drew another slow breath. “The beginning,” he said more to himself than to me. He used to do that in college. He’d get carried away with a theory or an idea then need to remind himself to go back to the beginning and bring the rest of us along. Sometimes I sent us down conversational rabbit trails just for the fun of setting him off.
The memory brought a fleeting smile. Fleeting because Mat didn’t recognize it, reciprocate it, or make any gesture at all that we’d once been more than a cold call about a story.
With a frown, he continued. “The Arnim family hired me for a project. He’s the Gruppenführer mentioned in the note. His granddaughter owns all these famous dresses he bought for his wife from a salon in Paris, so after checking his German files, that’s where I headed to start building texture for their project. Two names popped up—your aunt’s and a Christophe Pelletier.
“Pelletier was the salon’s security guard and general bully, arrested and sent to Auschwitz in November 1941. He died in 1943. Your aunt, however, proved more interesting. She worked at the salon, knew Arnim there, then headed home when the Germans invaded France—almost a year after the declaration of war. Following her trail to England, I found her involved with the SOE and the Gruppenführer mentioned in the file. My guess is that she was his lover turned informant.”
Mat straightened the paper between us. “It’s beyond anything I could have imagined. Think about it—I get hired by a family in New York to trace their German lineage, and here we are with an incredible story, having coffee in Boston.”
“But it’s still wrong . . . It can’t be my aunt.”
Mat’s brown eyes lit a notch brighter. His excitement fueled the gold flecks along their edges before he caught something in mine. The light dimmed with a crinkle of concern. It was so swift, gentle, and kind, my breath caught. He was suddenly the boy I once knew.
“Do you really not know?” His gaze flickered. “It’s true, Caroline. This is your aunt.” He spread his hand across the paper. “And it’s not dangerous, if that’s what concerns you. This story can’t hurt your family. It was eighty years ago. But it does have a great angle and contemporary significance. How we deal with pain and adversity remains relevant no matter how long ago it happened.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off with a raised hand. “I’ll be gentle with her, but I’m not wrong . . . I did some digging. Dr. Dalton and your great-grandfather knew each other well. I expect Dalton wrote this personally because they were friends.”
Mat opened the folder again. “I have this.” He handed me another page. “And this.” Another. “Your aunt met with Dalton and the SOE head, Sir Frank Nelson, a couple times. She worked there for over a year before this final note was sent to her family.”
He sat back and stared at me for a few moments before running his hands through his hair and leaning forward, as if ready to go into battle again. “Don’t you see? When she joined the Nazis, a lie had to be created. Even if she just typed memos, the truth would’ve hurt the narrative. If it had been made public that a peer’s daughter had worked for the SOE and defected that early in the war, it could have ended it right there. British morale was low and the country was vulnerable. That’s part of my point. Your family didn’t get to grieve her loss properly, because this hung over her . . . There’s a lot to say here.”
“There’s nothing to say, Mat.” I pushed at his paper pile. “That’s not my aunt.”
We sat at a stalemate for five seconds or five minutes. My head spun too fast to process time properly. All spinning stopped with his next sentence.
“Your father says I’m right.”
“What?” I tipped back so fast the legs of my chair snagged on the uneven stone floor.
Mat lunged for me, grabbing my arm. He let go the instant I was upright.
“You talked to my father?”
“Briefly. I thought that was the more direct connection, and you and I haven’t spoken in years. He threatened legal action.”
I felt my eyes widen. Threatening legal action did not sound like my dad at all. “That proves you’re right?”
“His tone did. A person doesn’t get that scared or stern over a lie, but over an unfortunate truth . . .” Mat started to replace each of his memos within his folder. “Look, Caroline, I don’t know why your dad got so upset or what you’ve been told, but your aunt knew Paul Arnim and she ran away with him.”
I gripped my coffee cup tight. The warmth felt good against my now freezing fingers. “How does the Arnim family feel about this? They’re paying you. They can’t want you to publicize that he was a Nazi.”
“No . . . He isn’t part of the article. They knew he was a German officer and I need to tell them about this, of course, but I’m not writing about him for publication.” Mat slid his chair back. “You know what? I’m sorry, Caroline. This was a mistake. I—I shouldn’t have called.”
He returned his folder to his bag and pushed up and out of his seat. This time I reached for his arm to stay the motion. His eyes locked, first on my hand clutching his arm, then on my face. He dropped back into his chair.
“Are you sure you’ve got this right?” I asked.
In college, we’d been friends—good friends—at least for our first two years. I had trusted him, relied on him . . . had a crush on him. And while there was a distance, a coolness between us now, I knew Mat was still trustworthy. He wouldn’t lie.
“I’m sure.”
I let go of his arm and spread my fingers across the wood table. I needed something firm, something real to hold. “You can’t put anything in your article about us meeting here, and that I knew nothing about this.” I bit my lip. “Please.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t learn this . . . here . . . from you. I get that it fits. I mean, you want to know how three generations dealt with pain, and turning a blind eye is certainly one way, but you can’t understand what we’ve been through.”
My mind raced with memories, questions, implications, and consequences. Each felt as empty and dark as the thought before it, bringing an instant swirling headache and a sense of weightlessness—perhaps a little like Alice felt careening down that hole.
“No one has told me any of this. Ever.”
Mat’s lips parted in silent disbelief.
“Can you wait? A couple days?” A plan formed as I spoke, my brain barely able to keep up with its delivery. “I’ll talk to my dad, find out what is true and what is not, and in exchange for the time, I’ll comment.”
He raised a brow. “You’d do that? For a couple days’ time?”
“Today’s Friday. We can meet Monday?” I felt my voice rise into the territory of pleading and dropped it with a short cough. “When’s it due?”
“Next Friday. One week. But, Caroline, I don’t want to give you the weekend just so you can think up ways to change my mind or stop me. Marketable work like this is the difference between a tenure track hire or creating puff documentaries for rich families while babysitting undergrads. I can’t risk losing this.”
“I just want time. I promise. We’ll sit down Monday and talk it through. And I want to read the article.”
Mat ran his hand over his hair again. His dark bangs stuck up with the motion. “I’m not doing a hatchet job and you know it. You know me. The whole point of this is to do something good, to examine how history is real and messy, but that it isn’t objective or defining.”
“I need to read it, Mat, because that’s where you are wrong. If what you say is true, then it has been defining. And I can’t let it hurt my father more, not now.” This time my voice did betray me.
“What’s wrong?” Mat stilled. “Is he okay?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” I shrugged, feeling embarrassed and exposed all over again. I pointed to Mat’s bag. “Can I have that letter? The Dalton one?”
“It’s a copy. Keep it.” He pulled it from his folder.
I tore off a corner of the page and reached for his pen. “Here’s my email and cell. Send me the article and your number. I promise to call you Monday morning, if not before.”
“I’m not agreeing to change anything, Caroline, and in the end, I don’t need your permission or a quote.”
“Fair enough.” I pushed my chair back. “You won’t submit until you hear from me?”
“Agreed. If you call before Friday.” Mat glanced up as he tapped my information into his phone. “You haven’t changed a bit, you know.”
My heart skipped, then stopped.
His head shake told me that wasn’t a good thing.
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