Girl Abroad

I MANAGE TO GET AHOLD OF HER EARLY FRIDAY MORNING, BUT SHE says she can’t meet me until later that evening. She invites me to her flat in West Kensington, a gorgeous, airy apartment in a pretty, posh building with a doorman. She’ll be moving soon, Sophie admits, as she ushers me into what she calls the receiving room. It looks exactly like a living room, but who am I to judge?

“So,” Sophie says pleasantly, setting a delicate ceramic cup in front of me. Steam rises and warms my hands as I reach for it. “What brings you here tonight, Abbey? You sounded quite agitated when you rang.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t worry you.” I wrap my fingers around the coffee cup. “It wasn’t agitation so much as nerves and excitement.”

“I see. Now I’m well intrigued.” She picks up her teacup and takes a small sip, smiling over the rim. “Please, enlighten me.”

“I have some updates about the Tulleys.”

Instantly, her face darkens. “Bloody menaces, that lot.”

I falter. “Oh dear. Did something else happen with Ben?”

I knew she was quitting, but I haven’t seen her since the morning she showed up on my doorstep in a panic. Guilt tugs at me for not touching base until now.

“Benjamin refuses to honor the terms of my contract, which state he’s obligated to pay for my father’s housing for six months following termination. He’s maintaining the clause only applies if I’m laid off as opposed to resigning. And the language is just vague enough that both of us could be correct.”

“Fuck. Does that mean you’re getting lawyers involved?”

She shakes her head. “It’ll cost more to retain a lawyer than to simply pay for it myself. I have some savings. We’ll make do. But enough about me. You said you have an update about the Tulleys, and I completely derailed you. This is concerning your research project, I presume?”

“Yes.” I set my messenger bag on the glass coffee table, then realize I should have asked first. “Is this okay?”

She waves a hand. “Yes, of course.”

I unzip the bag and pull out the file folder containing all the documents I compiled last night.

“All right, this will sound very convoluted at times, so try to follow along as best you can, okay? I promise it’s all heading somewhere.”

I can barely contain myself. I’m exhilarated. Practically vibrating. Jack and Nate are right—to me, history is akin to sex. That is very sad but very true.

“So. You already know the beginning of this story. Josephine was a maid for the duchess and, at some point after starting to work at the estate, fell in love with both Robert and William Tulley. The eldest son and the middle one. Josephine knew she had a decision to make, and it was eating her up inside, as evidenced by her letters to her mother.”

I set down the photocopies from Ruby Farnham’s attic trove, laying them out in front of her.

“And do we finally know who she chose?” Sophie looks utterly transfixed.

“We do.” I slide the latest journal entry, courtesy of Mr. Baxley, across the table. “It was William.”

She gasps. “Then…that means…” Some of the luster leaves her expression, replaced by the pall of sorrow. “She died with him on the ship. They both drowned.”

“Yes.”

Sophie leans forward. There’s a brief silence while she reads the entry, her elegant features creased with sadness.

“Those poor souls.” She raises her gaze to mine. “That’s it then? You’ve solved the mystery.”

A smile lifts the corners of my mouth. “Not quite. There’s still the matter of Robert.”

“I believe Benjamin mentioned a private investigator tracked Robert Tulley to Ireland. Is that not correct?”

“It’s correct.” I pull out another sheet from my folder and lay it down. “That’s the PI’s report. But we’re going to take a little detour before we get to Robert.” I grin at her. “Remember, I said this might get confusing.”

She reaches for her tea again, watching me curiously as she takes a sip.

“I got these records from the shipping line that owned the Victoria. It’s the insurance payouts to the survivors. About eight hundred people survived, while seven hundred perished. Their payouts varied. First class passengers received much more— ”

“Wankers,” Sophie grumbles.

“Right? But the lower classes were well compensated, or at least they would’ve felt that way judging by these sums. It was enough for a lot of these folks to transform their entire lives. Build a new life in America. Anyway, we’re getting into the weeds. I pored over the list of survivors, and one name jumped out at me. It made no sense at first. I assumed it was a coincidence.”

“What was the name?”

I hand her the paper. “I highlighted it in yellow.”

“E. Farnham,” she reads out loud, then lifts her head. “And that is?”

“Josephine’s younger sister. Evelyn.”

Eyes widening, Sophie says, “She was on the ship?”

“It appears so.”

Sophie skims the list again. “What do the numbers in parentheses mean? For example, here, it says J. and C. Forbes, with the number two in parentheses. M. Gregory, parentheses one. E. Farnham also has a one.”

I beam at her. “I had the same exact question. I couldn’t figure it out at first, so I went back to the passenger manifest, the list that William—and, by extension, whoever he was traveling with—wasn’t on. After a lot of cross-referencing, I discovered that the numbers in brackets refer to children. For example, M. Gregory is actually Marie Gregory, who boarded the ship with her husband and young son. The husband died, but she and her son survived. Forbes is Joseph and Charlotte, and the two corresponds to their two daughters. The kids’ names are on the manifest, but for the insurance purposes, they’re just numbers.”

“So Evelyn Farnham had a child with her?”

“Evelyn Farnham was fourteen years old when the Victoria sank. I highly doubt the child was hers.”

The teacup rattles the saucer as Sophie sets them down. I can see her growing excitement as understanding dawns.

“Josephine.”

“Yup. I suspect she and William were passing the child off as her sister’s, at least while on the ship. But once they arrived in America, I bet they planned on raising their son together, with Evelyn as the baby’s nurse. That’s why she came along.”

“Their son?” Sophie raises a brow.

I smile. “We’ll get there soon.”

“But how did Josephine have a baby without the duke or duchess knowing about it? Especially the duchess. Josephine was her maid. She wouldn’t have been able to hide a pregnancy.” Sophie pauses. “Well, no, perhaps I’m wrong. She certainly could have hidden the fact that she was pregnant. But not the birth.”

“I believe she hid the pregnancy until the last possible moment. And I think this is why William raced to get them passage on that ship. She likely gave birth in secret, and they packed up in the middle of the night and left with Evelyn and their son.”

I reach into my trusty folder for several more sheets of paper.

“Now this is where it gets wild,” I tell the rapt Sophie. “I got these family documents from Ruby Farnham’s cousin. They only raised more questions, as usual, so I stayed up all night yesterday hunting down the information I was missing. This is what I found. Ready?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been more ready in my life. This is extraordinary.”

“Just you wait.”

Grinning, I pull out my carefully constructed family tree. Not the one for the Tulleys, which I agonized over for months. But a new one I created last night.

“This is the Farnham family tree.” I don’t hand it over yet, reading from it instead. “Josephine had two siblings, Matthew and Evelyn. Ruby is a descendent of Matthew’s—he’s her grandfather. Ruby’s cousin Catherine Kerr, however, is a descendent of Evelyn’s.”

“Brilliant. So then we know what happened to Evelyn after she survived the Victoria disaster! She returned to Britain?”

I rest the family tree on my knee while I scavenge for a few more papers, which I lay down one by one.

“This is the amount Evelyn received from the Northern Star Line. This is the receipt for the passage she booked two weeks later, a one-way crossing back to England. Which, by the way, is fucking ballsy of this girl. Imagine almost drowning at sea and then turning around and boarding another ship? Hard-core.”

Sophie laughs. “Indeed it is.”

I slap down another paper. “This is a page from the diary of Josephine and Evelyn’s mother. It was in the original paperwork Ruby gave me but didn’t jump out at me because I was more focused on Josephine than her little sister. But see here? Mrs. Farnham laments how Evelyn has chosen not to return to the employ of the Tulleys, nor is she choosing to remain in England. In fact, Evelyn doesn’t even visit her mother upon her return to England. She gets on another boat—this one headed for Ireland.”

“To Robert?” Sophie breathes.

“Yes. And no. This part tripped me up for a while before I figured it out. In Catherine Kerr’s paperwork, I found a birth certificate for who I believe is Josephine and William’s son. The date of birth listed lines up with when William booked their last-minute passage on the Victoria. The child’s name is Alexander, and his parents are listed as Evelyn and Henry.”

A groove appears in her forehead. “And we believe Henry is Robert?”

“Judging by this”—I hand her a copy of a small family portrait Catherine Kerr found in her attic— “I’d say so.”

The portrait shows a young woman, eerily similar in appearance to Josephine, and a man in his midtwenties, eerily similar to the paintings I’ve seen of Robert Tulley.

“I think he was living in Ireland under an assumed name when Evelyn tracked him down. I wonder if she already knew how to find him,” I muse. “He may have told Josephine where he was going after she rejected him and chose his brother. Anyway, and this is all supposition at this point, but I think Evelyn showed up on Robert’s doorstep with his brother’s infant son. She couldn’t risk taking the baby home to her own family, because she knew her mother would take the child right to the Tulleys. And she also knew the Tulleys would never love or care for William’s bastard son with the maid.”

“You believe Robert, now called Henry, took her in.”

“Not only that, but he married her.” I lay down another page. “This is a wedding announcement in a small local newspaper of a small Irish village, heralding the union of Evelyn Farnham and Henry Brown.”

Sophie’s entire body tenses.

It takes a moment for what I’d said to register. When it does, she stares at me in confusion mingled with disbelief.

“Did you say Henry Brown?”

The enormous smile I’ve been fighting this entire time breaks free. “That is precisely what I said.”

She shakes her head. Stunned. “But…how…? I don’t understand.”

“Robert Tulley changed his name to Henry Brown after Josephine broke his heart. Also, he was being pressured to marry a royal princess and wanted none of it. I suspect he had every intention of living the rest of his life alone until Evelyn came to him for help. They proceeded to raise William and Josephine’s son as their own and ended up having four other children. One of those kids was Amanda Brown, and she’s Catherine Kerr’s mother. But the firstborn son, William’s son…that son, Alexander Brown, was— ”

“My grandfather,” Sophie finishes, her breath catching.

“Your grandfather,” I confirm. “Who had one son of his own—your dad. Is it safe to say your father is Irish?”

“He is. Yes. He came to London in his late teens.”

Once again, I beam at my brilliant sleuthing. It’s cocky, yes. But after an entire night spent researching this stuff, I’m allowed to gloat a little.

“Grandpa Alex was William Tulley’s son?” She’s shaking her head repeatedly, visibly floored.

“I believe so. You told me your grandfather is the one who got your dad the job with Andrew Tulley?”

She still appears astounded by everything I told her. “He did, yes. When Dad left Ireland, he worried he wouldn’t find work, but Grandad assured him he had connections.”

“Robert had connections,” I correct. “He kept his distance from the Tulleys after he moved away, but clearly he hadn’t cut ties altogether. After all, he did speak to Lawrence Tulley’s investigator. It’s not a stretch to believe he may have maintained some contact with his brother Lawrence over the years and therefore not a stretch that the Browns and Tulleys remained somewhat connected.”

“This…is a lot to process.”Content © NôvelDrama.Org 2024.

“God, I bet. I’m sorry to drop all this on you without warning. I couldn’t even believe it when I pieced it all together.”

“Perhaps you’re wrong.” She voices it as a question.

“A DNA test will easily answer that,” I point out with a shrug.

“If it’s true…”

I grin broadly. “If it’s true, that means your father is the true heir to the Tulley land and titles. But at the very least, this information could serve as excellent leverage should you choose to use it against the Tulleys. Because if you are who I think you are, you’re entitled to something. Your father”—I soften my voice—“is entitled to something.”

Tears glisten in her eyes. “Jesus, Abbey.”

“My advice? Get that DNA testing done. But unless all this”—I wave a hand over the sea of documents lining her table— “is merely one whopping coincidence after another, then I’m confident in everything I hypothesized.”

“If this is all true, then I owe you a debt I’ll never be able to repay.”

I brush that off. “Oh, hush. There’s no debt. This was fun.”

It’s her turn to grin. “Fun,” she echoes.

“You have no idea how much.” I start to gather up the papers, tucking them back in the folder. “I’ll leave these here with you. They’re copies. And you know what? There is one way you can repay me. Call me the moment you find out whether I’m right or not.”

“Absolutely,” she promises.

A few minutes later, I’m stepping out into the cool night air, absently arranging for an Uber to take me back to Notting Hill. A whirlwind of information and chaotic thoughts clutters my mind. And along with the mental overload comes a sense of satisfaction so deep and pure it triggers a rush of tears.

I solved the mystery. Months of turning over stones, digging in every nook and cranny, driving all over the country, setting up camp in the library. It’s all culminated in this moment.

I’ve never been prouder of myself.

But perhaps the most satisfying part is I truly believe everybody got some version of their happily ever after in this story. Josephine may not have chosen Robert, but he got his happy ending, or some semblance of it. He got a family. A wife who I hope cared about him, although based on the Farnham correspondence, Evelyn did seem sweet and kind. I hope she was kind to him.

And Josephine got William. Because as she’d told Robert in her note, her destiny lay with William. Where he goes, my heart will always follow. Most importantly, their son, the product of their love, survived the tragedy. So in a sense, the two of them lived on.

I stand at the curb waiting for my ride, my mind drifting to what Mr. Baxley said in the library yesterday. Our conversation stays with me on the drive home. During my shower before bed. When I slide beneath the covers. It buzzes in my brain for hours, until it’s all I’m thinking about, those last minutes between Josephine and William on the sinking ship.

Our final moments, our regrets. I imagine what my thoughts would be if they were the last I’d ever have. What I’d want to leave behind. Whose hand I’d want reaching out for mine.

Then I exhale. And I know what I need to do.

But first, I have to pack.