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    The Record Set Right: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    The Record Set Right: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    The Record Set Right: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    Ebook68 pages45 minutes

    The Record Set Right: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War

    By Lauren Willig

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    About this ebook

    In a short story from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig, a woman discovers it’s never too late to make things right

    She's the widow of the Aviator in the Iron Mask-- a British World War I hero whose exploits both on the field and off of it made the papers on two continents.  But was their Armistice Day engagement really the romantic fantasy it seemed?  A lifetime later, Camilla Frobisher is forced to retrace the steps of her past-- all the way back to November 11, 1918, the day her life changed forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 26, 2016
    ISBN9780062476470
    The Record Set Right: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    Author

    Lauren Willig

    Lauren Willig is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City.

    Read more from Lauren Willig

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      Book preview

      The Record Set Right - Lauren Willig

      cover.jpg10305.png

      Contents

      The Record Set Right

      Buy Link to Fall of Poppies

      An Excerpt from The Other Daughter

      About the Author

      Also by Lauren Willig

      Credits

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      The Record Set Right

      Kenya, 1980

      AT FIRST, I THINK THAT it must be a joke.

      The letter is slipped in among all the others, bills and circulars, an invitation to a friend’s child’s third marriage (on cheaper card stock, this time, than marriages one and two), the chance to claim my prize if only I call the number on the top of the page. The usual debris of the post box fans out across the pale wood of the breakfast table. And there, nestled in the middle, this, this unexpected whisper from a world away.

      I would have known the device, if not the handwriting, uncertain now with age, blurred with distance.

      I fumble for the glasses that hang on a chain around my neck. The curse of age; my eyes and my mind play tricks on me these days, conjuring ghosts in odd corners, shadows and memories. My glasses confirm what my heart already knew. The letter is from Carrington Cross. Edward’s writing has changed over the course of time—­haven’t we all?—­but it is still unmistakably his, with those crooked As, and the swoop on the d. It was, at one point, nearly as familiar to me as my own. I saw it on copybooks, on envelopes, on checks, and then, nothing, nothing at all, for the longest time. If we communicated, it was through the mutual weapon of the press, which turns the simplest statements into accusations, speculation into truth.

      Even that, even that last, feeble link, had died out long ago; who cared for a scandal of sixty years ago when there were so many new and more interesting ones in the making? The world had changed. The doings of debutantes were no longer front-­page news; the old families had ceded place to activists and visionaries—­more worthy, if less attractive.

      One knows one is truly old when the importunities of the press, clamoring for details, are succeeded by cautious letters from historians. I received those every so often, guarded inquiries into the events of sixty years ago, fumblingly prefaced, in some cases, by would you be so kind, in others making demands in the interest of Truth and the Historical Record. Some pretended to an interest in the larger context, the Bright Young Things, the Lost Generation, whatever it is they’re calling us these days. I was never particularly bright, nor particularly lost, but Nicholas was both, extravagantly so, and it is for Nicholas’s sake that they sidle around me, pecking and pawing, ever so cautiously working up to what they truly want to know.

      My secretary generally sends a form letter, refusing. When I die, they may have my papers. That is enough—­and should occupy at least one graduate student for some time.

      Yes, the Old World still comes calling from time to time. But never so directly. Never from Carrington.

      I fumble with the letter opener, shaped like a dagger, made of wood. I once had a proper metal one, but my granddaughter Annabelle thinks I am less likely to hurt myself this way.

      Sensible Annabelle. They say these things skip a generation, or perhaps there is something to the argument that nurture matters more than nature. In that case, though, why did we all turn out so differently? We were, all four of us, raised in the same nursery at Carrington Cross: Daphne, Edward, and I. And, of course, Nicholas. And, yet, of the four of us, no two came out the same.

      There we all are, preserved in perpetuity on the lid of the piano that no one ever plays. Children, grandchildren, weddings, engagements, debutantes, and dotages, it’s all there, all lined up on display.

      There’s something comforting about caging memory, encasing it in silver frames and setting it out to fade, as if, with that, all the dissensions and scandals, the mistrust and misuse might fade, too, blurring away until only the happy outlines remain.

      I even have a picture of Edward on the piano, not Edward as he is now, but Edward as he was then, in 1909. We’re all there, the entire nursery, herded into place to be recorded for posterity. There’s Daphne, age eleven, bouncing with enthusiasm, one curl blown across her face, blurring her features; Edward, seventeen, sturdy in the middle, hair cut short for summer, looking sunburnt and bored. And Nicholas.

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