Page 16 of A Family Of His Own
Toby salted that information away for later use if needed. Her father sounded like a man Toby would have wanted to meet. “And then?”
Diana sank deeper into her recollection of those moments; they remained sharp and clear in her mind. “I promised, and that obviously eased his mind.” She remembered the way the tension had fled from his features, leaving him looking younger, at peace. “I had to remind him that he still hadn’t told me where the packet was, and he smiled and acknowledged that he was always forgetting the important things and added that he’d hidden the packet”—she closed her eyes the better to hear the words in her head—“in the one place where he knew I would find it when I needed to.”
She opened her eyes and pulled a face. “I didn’t know where that might be, so I pressed him to tell me—just tell me.” Her memory rolled on, and she frowned. “I thought—felt sure—he was about to do that, to simply tell me where, but then he looked past me, I think at the door, which was ajar, and then… Then he sang a lullaby he used to sing to me when I was a child.”
She raised her gaze to Toby’s face and sang:
“Come, let’s go to bed, says sleepy-head.
Let’s stay awhile, says slow.
Put on the pot, says greedy nan.
We’ll sup before we go.”
She repeated the verse, slowing as her father had, then fell silent. She held Toby’s gaze and, after a moment, softly said, “Those were his last words. He said no more.”
For several seconds, Toby studied her, his gaze holding her anchored with him in the dark on the porch of the temple in the gardens. Holding her steady against the tug of her memories.
Holding her away from the sadness.
She wasn’t so proud she didn’t cling to the lifeline.
Eventually, Toby found the right words to lead Diana forward. “If your father could remember those phrases and the melody that went with them, it’s unlikely his mind was wandering. Instead, I think he knew enough to suspect Herschel and thought he might be listening from behind the open door.”
After a moment of staring at him, she slowly nodded. “I wondered about Herschel at the time. He came in immediately after Papa passed away, even though I hadn’t called him.”
“So let’s postulate that your father’s mind wasn’t wandering, but with Herschel listening, he had to find some way to tell you where the packet was in words only you would understand.”
“But Idon’tunderstand.”
Her frustration rang clearly, but Toby thought he saw the light. “Close your eyes.” He waited until she did so. “Now let that lullaby, in your father’s voice, play in your head.” He waited a heartbeat, then asked, “Can you hear it?”
She nodded.
“Let the lullaby transport you into the past. Back to when you would frequently hear it, when you were a child.”
He waited two seconds, then asked, “Where are you?”
“In my bed. The one I had when I was a child.”
“Was that bed here, in the Kleeblattgasse house or even in Vienna?”
“No. That remained in England when we left.”
“All right. So it’s not the bed itself.” He paused, visualizing such a scene. “Try to study yourself as you were then—you as a child, in your bed, hearing your father sing that lullaby. Is there anything in that scene that is here with you, in your possession?”
A second passed, then her eyes flew open. “Rupert the Bear.” Galvanized, she gripped his sleeve. “Rupert the Bear! He’s a large, knitted, stuffed bear my mother made for me.”
She was transformed with certainty, blazing with it.
“Is Rupert large enough to hold a packet”—Toby used his hands to indicate the shape and size—“about that big?”
“Yes. Quite large enough.”
He frowned, running more recent memories through his head. “I didn’t see any stuffed bear in the house.” But her certainty was infectious. He looked back the way they’d come. “You stay here. I’ll go back and look?—”
“No!” She gripped his sleeve with both hands, and he could hear the happiness in her voice as she said, “You don’t have to go and look, because as you guessed, Rupert isn’t there. Not anymore. Weeks ago, before Papa fell ill, I started sorting through what to take and what to leave and decided that, with Adrian dying, Evelyn had more need of Rupert than I. Rupert was a comfort to me when my mother died, so I gave him to her.”
