The Whispers of War Read online

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  For my family

  prologue

  How quickly Marie had become used to her new routine. Breakfast for two in the morning—porridge cooked on the hob with water since milk was already becoming scarce. On days when she wasn’t working, she would tidy up and do any necessary food shopping before a small lunch. And, without fail, just around two o’clock, she’d listen for the brass flap of the letter box to squeak open and the second post to drop with a satisfying thunk onto the polished entryway floor.

  Now she sat wrapped in a blanket in the corner of the big rose-patterned sofa that faced the mews she’d come to think of as home. She’d somehow managed to forget everything—the war, her worries, her fears—and relax into the pages of her book, a Rosamond Lehmann novel she’d borrowed from the built-in shelf next to the fireplace. Forbidden at her aunt and uncle’s flat, it seemed less daring here, as though she were the sort of woman who read about divorce and affairs every day.

  Marie was so caught up that it was only when the letter box flap rattled back into place that she realized the post had arrived. Setting her book and blanket aside, she slipped her stockinged feet into a well-loved pair of slippers and rose.

  Shivering, she pulled her light blue cardigan tighter as she stepped into the corridor and crouched to scoop up the scattered letters. She began flipping through them, looking for her name. She may technically have been a guest in this house, but she still received a letter or two a day.

  Marie set aside two brown envelopes on the little sideboard. Three large square envelopes followed those. Then she saw her neatly typed name on a slim white envelope. She ripped it open.

  Her hand began to tremble even as she stared down at the cheap paper, willing the sentences to rearrange themselves. Desperate for them to say something else. But there was no denying the typed words.

  Her legs buckled under her, and she crumpled to the floor.

  SAMANTHA Now

  one

  Samantha clutched her passport, shifting from foot to foot as the line inched forward. All around her, her fellow passengers from the red-eye to London yawned, stretched, and blinked against the fluorescent light of the immigration hall. She hardly noticed the jostle of bodies, her attention fully fixed on the weight of the package and the half-scribbled notes in her brown leather shoulder bag.

  She should have made this trip earlier. “Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today,” one of the posters in her third-grade classroom read. It was stuck above the dry-erase board so her students couldn’t miss the warning against procrastination. But teaching that lesson and actually living it were two very different things.

  A series of dings sent her digging into her purse to retrieve her phone. She’d connected to Heathrow’s Wi-Fi as soon as she was off the plane, but her messages had only just come through. There were six: one from her best friend in Chicago, Marisol, and five from Dad.

  She read Marisol’s first:

  Saw U landed on flight tracker. U okay? How was the flight?

  She fired back a quick message:

  Long trip but I’m feeling okay. Just need to get my bag and figure out the Tube. I’ll let you know when I meet her.

  Then she clicked over to Dad’s messages. Rather than send one long message, he always wrote a text a sentence, leaving a string of stream-of-consciousness messages in his wake:

  Hope you aren’t too tired, sweet pea.

  Your mother and I are waiting up to hear from you so let us know when you land.

  Your mother says she’s proud of you for doing this for her mother.

  I am, too.

  Love you.

  She smiled and shook her head, sending him a quick message:

  Just landed. The flight wasn’t too bad. Will you and Mom go to bed? I don’t want to throw off your doubles game for your tennis tournament tomorrow. Love you both.

  She slipped her phone back into her purse and pulled out her passport as she approached the front of the line. A guard behind a high desk checked it without comment, and she couldn’t help but be grateful she didn’t have to explain why she was in the country. If she had, what would she say? This trip wasn’t business, but it certainly wasn’t bringing her any pleasure either.

  After collecting her small suitcase, she navigated through the customs gate past immigration and out into the bustle of Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Even after the crowded passport line, the shock of all of those people almost knocked her back. Loved ones hung over the sturdy silver barrier separating the arrivals space from the restricted area. Clusters of drivers in crumpled white shirts and slim black ties looked bored as they held up names on iPads or hastily scribbled on pieces of paper. Everyone here seemed to know who they were waiting for. They had a reason to be there.

  You have a reason to be here, too, and there’s no more ignoring it.

  She shook her head to throw off the thought and focused on her first challenge: getting to West London. It shouldn’t be too difficult. She took the El from her Lincoln Square apartment to school every weekday. She could navigate the Tube. And then it was just a matter of finding the right combination of streets that would lead her to the house.

  Maybe it had been a mistake to accept Nora’s invitation to stay with her. The woman was 103 years old—it was incredible she was still living at home—but Nora had been insistent from the moment Samantha called the number her grandmother’s lawyer had provided. Every email exchange between Samantha and Nora contained some variation of the phrase I won’t hear of my dearest friend’s granddaughter coming all the way from America and staying at a hotel. You’ll stay with me. And you must meet David, too.

  Samantha tilted her head back to read the signs overhead. Trains to her right. She settled her carry-on higher on her shoulder and adjusted her grip on her suitcase handle, but then she spotted a tall, dark-haired man holding a sign that read Samantha Morris, Chicago. Her name. Her city. But she didn’t have anyone here to pick her up from the airport.

  Unless…

  “Excuse me, are you David?” she asked, stopping in front of the man.

  “Samantha?”

  She swallowed. “Yes.”

  David will meet you at Heathrow, one of Nora’s emails had read. But she’d batted away the offer. Being collected by her grandmother’s best friend’s grandson was a step too far. She wasn’t helpless. Except now that he was here, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit of relief.

  “I thought that might be you. You look like your photograph.” His hand dove into the pocket of his jacket and out came a photograph, a little bent at one corner. He handed it to her. “My grandmother gave me this to make sure I’d be able to spot you.”

  She stared at the photo. “This was taken when I was eighteen, just before I left for college.”

  “I did point out that it might be a little out of date, but she insisted. She said that your grandmother hardly aged from eighteen to forty, and you wouldn’t either.”

  “I had no idea Grandma had sent this to her,” she said, toying with a crease at the corner.

  The left side of his mouth tipped up, showing the hint of a dimple in his cheek. “You should prepare yourself for Gran to know quite a bit about you.”

  She pressed a hand to the center of her chest and the guilt that
had lodged itself there. She should know more about this woman who had clearly been dear to her mother’s mother, but Samantha had learned of Nora less than a year ago. There was so much of her grandmother’s life that remained a mystery, and it was her own fault.

  “We should hop on the Tube. Gran has been tracking your flight since it was over Ireland and calling me every ten minutes to make sure I haven’t forgotten that I’m to pick you up,” David said, taking her suitcase so gently she hardly noticed he’d done it.

  “She sounds like quite the woman,” she said as they fell into step.

  David’s eyes slid over to hers, and the corner of his mouth kicked up again as though he were enjoying a joke that only he knew the punch line to. “Oh, she is.”

  * * *

  Throughout the entire trip into London on the Piccadilly line, David carried the burden of the conversation as Samantha’s foggy brain tried to contend with being rocketed six hours into the future. He was just telling her about his work as a strategy consultant for a digital marketing firm when he paused.

  “Let me know if you’d like me to stop talking. It’s just that I always struggle to stay awake on the train back after flying in from the States and find distraction helps,” he said.

  “Do you work in the US often?” she asked.

  “From time to time. It depends on the client and the project.”

  “Well, please don’t feel as though you need to stop talking. If I don’t have something to focus on, I think I’ll fall fast asleep,” she said.

  “Gran will help, too. She’s thrilled you’re visiting and will want to hear all about your family.”

  She shifted in her seat, acutely aware of the notebook filled with half-started ideas and crossed-out lines that was wedged in her purse. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to tell her that she doesn’t already know. Nora said she wrote Grandma Marie letters right up until she died.”

  He nodded. “Your grandmother was one of the few people she would still write to with pen and paper. She has arthritis in some of her fingers, and holding a pen can be uncomfortable. She mostly emails now, although she is a demon with texting, too. I taught her how to use dictation software about six months ago, and she’s better at it than I am.”

  Samantha found that she liked the idea of a 103-year-old woman so effortlessly adapting to technology that stumped people fifty years her junior.

  After they transferred at South Kensington and rode the District line three stops to West Kensington, David led her up the stairs and out of the train station to a large street he told her was North End Road. Black cabs, red buses, motorcyclists, and cars streamed by on the wrong side of the road. People lined up outside of a minuscule boutique coffee shop. A couple of schoolgirls in matching blazers and pleated skirts shrieked and ran, pursued by a pair of boys in maroon sweaters and navy trousers.

  “They’re still in classes?” she mused out loud.

  David glanced over. “What was that?”

  “I’m just surprised. I’m an elementary school teacher, so my life has always been dictated by academic year. It’s actually the reason I’m here now. We let out the third week of June, but I gave myself a week off before traveling,” she said, trying not to think about how she’d also let the academic year serve as a convenient excuse to put off her trip until now.

  “Then you have good timing. Schools don’t let out here until closer to the end of July, which is when most people with kids go on holiday. It can become a little hectic traveling,” he said.

  They turned off the main road, and David led her down a couple of side streets before stopping in front of a three-story white Victorian terraced house. He pulled out a key, opened the door, and stepped back to let Samantha pass him.

  “David, is that you?” called a voice through an open door off the hallway on her right. The voice was aged, but unmistakably strong. “Is Samantha with you?”

  “In you go,” he said, nodding to the door with a smile of encouragement.

  Keeping her left hand wrapped around her purse strap to hide its tremble, Samantha edged through the doorway and into a wide room painted in a soft white with two bay windows that looked out over the street. Generous deep blue curtains fell in graceful folds to the floor, and a black iron fireplace topped with an elaborately carved mantel on one end of the room emitted a sense of grandeur and comfort all at once. And sitting near that fireplace in a high-backed wing chair was an old woman who sported a carefully combed snow-white bob and cherry-red lips. Nora Fowler.

  Nora, who Samantha could see was tall even sitting down, was swathed in a gray cardigan with a colorful silk scarf tied at her throat. Near at hand on a side table rested a late-model iPhone and a slim computer.

  “You must be Marie’s granddaughter,” said Nora, nudging her glasses up her nose to study Samantha with sharp pale blue eyes.

  “Hello,” said Samantha, the leather of her purse strap cutting into her hand as she gripped it even tighter.

  “My word, you look like her. You have the same hair.” Samantha had to resist the urge to fuss with her shoulder-length blond hair.

  “I’m glad David found you,” Nora continued. “I should’ve known when he didn’t text me.”

  David, who’d just rounded the door, swooped in to give his grandmother a kiss on the cheek. “I should’ve texted you.”

  “Yes, you should have. Come, sit with me, Samantha,” said Nora, gesturing to the sofa across from her.

  Samantha sank down into the spot. “Thank you for sending David. He has been a great help.”

  “I didn’t want you lost and wandering around London, although he very rightly pointed out that it’s difficult to become lost these days with mobile phones. Still, I couldn’t take the risk. Not when you said you have something for me.”

  Samantha sucked in a breath. She had expected to have a little more time to… she didn’t know. Make small talk and drink tea? Wasn’t that how her grandmother had said Brits started every visit? But somehow Samantha doubted that small talk had ever interested the woman in front of her.

  “When Grandma died, I found out that she’d made me the executor of her will,” said Samantha, pulling out the packet she’d carried with her from Chicago.

  “Not your mother or your aunt or uncle?” asked Nora.

  She hesitated. “I was surprised, too. If there was a motivation behind the decision, Grandma never shared it with anyone. She laid out her wishes, and she had three very specific instructions. She wanted a memorial service, not a funeral, and she was very clear that it should be celebratory, not sad.”

  A soft smile touched Nora’s lips. “What’s left of my generation has seen too much sadness to want to invite any more somberness into the world.”

  “She liked summer best, so the ceremony will be next month.” A sudden wave of longing for her grandmother’s soft accented words, brilliantly colored dresses, and orange blossom perfume came over her. She wanted to hear Grandma Marie call her mein Liebling again. Samantha cleared her throat around a lump of emotion. “The next request was that she wanted me to deliver this to you. In her will, Grandma said it had to be delivered by hand. She wanted to make sure that you received it.”

  “What is it?” asked Nora, eyeing the parcel in Samantha’s lap.

  “I don’t know, actually. All the instructions said was that it’s meant for you. I’m sorry that it’s taken me until now to bring it to you.”

  “She died last October,” said Nora.

  “I’m a teacher. I couldn’t—” She stopped herself. “I could have asked for a leave of absence from my school. I could’ve made arrangements to come sooner, but I didn’t.”

  “Why did you wait? I’m one hundred and three years old. Time isn’t something I have a great deal of,” said Nora, managing to sound teasing rather than sharp.

  “It hasn’t been easy losing her. We were very close when I was a girl, but then I went to college,” she said.

  “And life got in the way?” Nora fi
nished for her.

  Samantha nodded, the shame coursing through her.

  “What was the third request?” asked David.

  She started, realizing she’d forgotten he was there. “Oh, I’m supposed to give her eulogy at the ceremony.”

  “Not an easy thing,” said Nora.

  “No. I have a whole notebook of ideas in my purse, but nothing sticks. How do you eulogize a woman when all you really know about her is that she was a sweet grandmother who drank coffee all day and hummed Nina Simone songs while she mopped the kitchen floors? Her life was more than that.”

  Nora smiled. “Much more. Remember, I knew her before any of us knew who Nina Simone was.”

  Tell me! It was on the tip of Samantha’s tongue. Most of her memories of her grandmother were from her childhood. She remembered snowy winter afternoons hunched over a puzzle together at the dining room table. She recalled how Grandma Marie would sneak more marshmallows into her hot chocolate than her parents would allow. She could almost feel the heavy clack of the old antique typewriter as she pretended to interview Grandma Marie and write up little stories to proudly hand out to her family members, her own little newsletter.

  Then the memories became more vivid but somehow less personal. Samantha breezing by her grandmother in the living room on her way to go out with friends. Begging off the early start to cooking Christmas lunch because she was in college and she was going to use every extra moment to catch up on the sleep she hadn’t gotten during the semester. Samantha had started to grow up, and her relationship with her grandmother had slipped to the background of her life.

  Now, sitting in a living room more than three thousand miles away from home, Samantha lifted up the package her grandmother had entrusted her with. “So here it is.”

  “Bring it here,” said Nora.

  Carefully, she placed it in the old woman’s lap and watched Nora’s fingers glide over the thick manila envelope. They lingered on the address written in faded ink. “David, be a darling and help me with this.”