Page 5 of Hell Bent (Portland Devils #5)

I took the glass he handed me and took a sip, then set it down.

My grandmother looked at me from her parchment-wrinkled, ninety-four-year-old face, the bones more cleanly defined than ever, her blue eyes still startlingly vivid, her hair a beautiful silver-white and tucked back into a chignon as usual, her posture still almost perfect.

Imagine a petite, aging prima ballerina, and you have my grandmother.

She said, “Can I ask you to take a walk around the hotel for fifteen minutes, Niles? Alix and I need some quiet time.”

“Oh,” my dad said. “Of course. I’m surprisingly nervous myself.” Suave as ever in his dinner jacket—bespoke, not off the rack, because my parents spent a fair amount of time at charity functions—as he headed out the door.

“Now, mein Schatz,” my grandmother said in her British- accented voice, relic of the long-ago governess from whom she’d learned English, “tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing important. I’m feeling a little odd, but I imagine everybody feels like that. Didn’t you? ”

“No,” she said. “But then, I was considering my alternatives and thanking my lucky stars. And I wasn’t expecting true love.”

“Well, there you are,” I said. “I don’t have enough desperation, I guess.”

She was silent a minute, then said, “There are kinds and kinds of desperation. Living a life you don’t want could be desperate, too.”

“Right,” I said. “Compared to escaping the Nazis and Russians and living in bombed-out buildings.”

“Not compared to that,” she said. “Forget about comparing and tell me.”

“Cold feet,” I said. “Which is good, right? It’s a big step, marriage. You should be nervous. But I’ve been with Ned almost three years now. I know him. He doesn’t try to quash me. He accepts who I am, and he’s kind. That’s what you said you loved about Grandpa.”

“Strong and kind, I said,” my grandmother answered.

“What, Ned’s not strong? He’s done well in his career. Very well. He’s a hard worker, he knows himself, and he accepts himself. Isn’t that strong?”

“In a way,” she said. “What sort of sense of humor does he have? I haven’t seen. And he doesn’t have to be a bad person, you know, to be the wrong husband.”

“Are you kidding?” I knew it was wrong. I loved my grandmother, but the prickly heat was rising, and all I wanted to do was wash my face clean of the itchy makeup and run my fingers through my hair. “Now you say this? Now?”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. When I didn’t go on, she said, “It’s your choice. Always.” Then she reached into her purse, pulled out the velvet bag inside, and handed it to me.

I held it in my hand, but didn’t open it. I knew what was in there, so that wasn’t the problem. It was that I didn’t want to wear them.

My grandmother said, “I asked Elise if I could give them to you. Old lady’s privilege.”

“No,” I said. “They’re hers.”

“They go to the daughter at her wedding,” she said. “To the new hope. What is it they say? Something old, something new? These are old enough. They were created for Napoleon to give to Josephine. The final piece of the parure.”

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

“I never told you that?”

“No. I just knew they were in your family. Napoleon? Why am I just hearing this?”

“It’s not a secret,” she said, “but it’s from a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore. Better to live in the present, I’ve always thought. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe stories need to be passed down, too.”

I sat beside her. Who cared about creasing my boring dress? “What’s a … a parure?”

“A set of jewels,” she said, taking the purple velvet pouch from me and tipping the two objects inside into her palm.

A pair of earrings, but not just any earrings.

A cluster of diamonds, and hanging beneath, two enormous pear-shaped emeralds set in warm yellow gold and surrounded by more diamonds, the emeralds perfectly matched, perfectly saturated, perfectly clear.

Now, that was jewelry. “Made in 1796,” my grandmother said, her finger stroking one faceted stone.

“Josephine wasn’t young. In her thirties, six years older than Napoleon, and a widow with children, her husband killed by guillotine in la Terreur— the Reign of Terror.

Napoleon fell passionately in love with her despite the disapproval of his family, and they married within months. ”

“No pressure, then,” I said. “I don’t recall Ned ever acting passionately in love, but if I hold out for that, I have a feeling I’d be waiting a while.”

“Maybe so, and maybe not,” my grandmother said.

“They didn’t stay married. I could tell you that’s the reason the passion remained, but your grandfather—” She cut herself off and added, “Josephine couldn’t have more children, you see, and he needed an heir.

But when he read of her death, he locked himself in his room and didn’t emerge for days.

Her name was the last thing on his lips before he died himself, twenty-six years after they met and twelve years after their divorce. He loved her that much still.”

“So, again, that’s my model?” I asked. “I don’t think I have it in me to captivate anybody like that, sorry. What, he pines for me the rest of his life? He’s mine, body and soul? Not happening.”

“He had affairs, if it helps,” my grandmother said. “So did she. Life is complicated. Love is complicated. Tell me, if Ned were gone, how much would you miss him?”

“A lot,” I said. “I’d miss him a lot. He’s understanding, he’s supportive, and he’s—restful. I think that’s the word. No drama. He brings me a latte whenever he comes over, he doesn’t object to my take-charge tendencies, and, you know, when my periods are extra-painful?—”

“Still?” my grandmother asked. “Even with the pills? Have you told your mother?”

“Don’t fuss,” I said, irritable again. “I’m fine.”

“You have a disease,” she said. “I have a disease. Your mother has a disease. It’s not fussing to acknowledge it.”

“I’m a carrier, that’s all,” I said. “I don’t have it, not really. You know that. And, see? Ned is willing to marry me anyway! Even if it turns out we can’t have kids. That’s got to be love, right? How many men would do that? And seriously? Your role model is a man who had affairs? No thanks.”

“Ah,” my grandmother said. The earrings were still in her wrinkled palm, the pale winter sun managing to create a sparkle, because that was how beautifully cut they were. “That’s what it is. That he’s willing to marry you.”

“No. Yes.” I sighed. “I don’t know. Nerves, that’s all. Tell me about the parure.”

“The earrings, the necklace, the brooch, and the tiara.” She reached into her purse again and pulled out a picture in a frame.

White marks from creases marred the image, but she’d never had it rephotographed and cleaned up.

“I want the original,” she’d said when I’d suggested it.

“The one I carried for so long. This one.”

It was a photo of my great-great-grandparents, whom I’d never met.

In old-fashioned black and white, from maybe 1900?

1890? Some time like that. The man in a very dressy military uniform with epaulets and a sash and medals, the woman in a magnificent gown that was clearly silk, with fine lace gloves that extended above her elbows.

And, yes, she was wearing a tiara. And a necklace.

And a brooch. All of them studded with stones large and small, the large ones showing dark and big as Chiclets.

The emeralds, those would be, with diamonds around them.

“I loved the necklace best,” my grandmother said, her finger on the glass. “It looked like flowers, the way each emerald was surrounded by a circle of smaller diamonds. Delicate, not brutal the way crown jewelry can be. I took the necklace, the brooch, and the earrings. I couldn’t fit the tiara.”

My arms were tingling again, but not with dread this time. My grandmother had never talked to me about the past, beyond the barest sketch. “The past is gone,” she’d say, “and the future can’t be known. The present is all we have.”

“Into what?” I asked. “What couldn’t you fit the tiara into?”

My grandmother looked at me. Her eyes were huge, like mine, her forehead as broad, her nose as straight.

Now, those eyes were level, and maybe sad.

“Into the lining of my coat,” she said. “The cuff of the sleeve, not the hem, because somebody would be sure to look at the hem. I snipped the threads with tiny scissors from the mending kit I had in my pocket, and then I sewed the jewels into place. The coat was wool, heavy and very old. It had belonged to a young man I knew, named Franz. The coat hid the lumps, but not the lump of a tiara. The tiara, I left behind.”

“Where?” I asked. “Where did you leave it?”

“In a secret compartment in the cellars of the Residenzschloss. The royal palace. In Dresden.” She touched the earrings and repeated it quietly. “In Dresden. The day I ran.”

“Your parents had died,” I said.

“The firebombing of Dresden,” she said. “It was fire like you’ve never seen.

Like you can’t imagine. Fire that brings wind so strong, it was like a hurricane.

When I crept out to find them at last, they were gone.

I hope the fire took their oxygen first, as it did for many, and it was easier for them. I hope they didn’t—” She stopped.

“I’m sorry.” Never had two words seemed so inadequate.

“We hadn’t suffered as others had suffered,” she said.

“There was so much suffering. And they couldn’t believe this world they were in.

Losing their titles, losing their position, and then all the beastliness …

Maybe it was best that way, who knows? It was hard to run.

Very hard. And if the Russians had taken them, at the end … ”

She stopped, and I prompted, “If the Russians had taken them …”

“Confiscation and Siberia. Or worse. Maybe it was best that it was a surprise, and fast.”

“So you took the jewels and ran,” I said. “What happened to the necklace and brooch, then?”

“I sold them,” she said, “and I wasn’t sorry.

I was glad to have them. Glad my father had shown me where he’d hidden them, that he’d told me that if I had to run, I should take the parure.

‘Take it, hide it, run, and don’t look back,’ he said.

“Run to the west.”I didn’t want to hear it, but he was right.

He and my mother had had their lives, ss I’ve had mine. Your life is what matters now.”

My throat was so tight, I couldn’t speak. I’d felt oddly numb all day, but I was finally feeling something. I was feeling too much. “Thank you,” I said, taking her hand gently in mine. “For telling me.”

She put the earrings and their pouch into my hand, and I stared at them there.

“Wear them now,” she said. “That’s the tradition.

They’re only earrings. Only things, but they signify something important.

Your lineage, the good and the bad of it.

Half of the things that made you what you are. Your mother’s half.”

“A German princess and an American Jew,” I said. “An odd couple. But it worked, right? You don’t have to be the same to be married.”

“It worked,” she said. “There are many ways to be happy. Growing to love a man is one way. It’s not easy to love when the feeling has been burnt out of you with the horror, but the feeling can come back. When there’s space, the love will come.”

“So I should tell myself that?” I wasn’t putting the earrings in, somehow, and my dad was knocking at the door. Then I heard the click of the lock and knew it was time.

“No,” my grandmother said. “You shouldn’t tell yourself anything. You should listen to yourself instead.”