The Lost Mother: Farewell My Life, #1

By Cynthia Haggard

What would you do if your daughter's promising career was threatened by an overly persistent young man?

 

Angelina led a life that required her to fib. 

When this 33-year-old attractive widow and mother of two daughters meets the mysterious Mr. Russell, she has no idea that she has seen him before…in another country.

When Mr. Russell jilts her in favor of her 17-year-old daughter Grace, who has a fabulous talent for the violin, Angelina becomes determined to find out more.

Who is he? Is he really born in the United States as he claims? Or does that faint lilt betray his real origins, in the Italian Veneto, a place that Angelina knows all too well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cynthia Sally Haggard
• Release date: Oct 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215677452

Cynthia Haggard

As the child of a broken home, I have always been fascinated by the ebb and flow of family relationships. Which forces gather family members together within the bounds of an ancient shelter? Which forces slice through that shelter, so that a parting of ways makes those left behind feel as if they are standing in a tumble of bricks, enveloped by the jagged shards of a destroyed home. This is what I write about in my novels: THWARTED QUEEN—Welcome to 1400s England, where a family feud between the Yorks, Lancasters and Nevilles began the Wars of the Roses and inspired Game of Thrones. FAREWELL MY LIFE—Who is he? Who is this dark, handsome stranger who has become obsessed by 17-year-old Grace? Is he just the perfect accompanist for a Brahms sonata, or does he have other ideas? Welcome to a dark historical, set in early 20th century Washington DC and Berlin Germany, about a hidden murderer and how far he will go to control the women around him. Thwarted Queen won the IPPY Gold Medal for Audiobook Fiction May 2021. Farewell My Life won the Independent Press Award for Women’s Fiction April 2021 So who am I? I am a proud Englishwoman with American roots. Although I speak like the BBC, I have five relatives on that Mayflower! So I suppose it was not surprising that I eventually ended up here, in the United States, in the Mid-Atlantic region, where I spent all of my adult life, winding my way through four careers: violinist, cognitive scientist, medical writer, and novelist. I have spent more years in academic institutions that I care to share, but most recently, in June 2015, I graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Lesley University (located just north of Harvard Yard.) My biggest influence was my half-American grandmother, Stephanie Treffry, who had a natural story-telling ability. As a widow in 1970s Britain, Grandma Steffi didn't drive a car, so would spend time waiting for buses. Her stories were about various encounters she had at those bus-stops. Nothing extraordinary, except that she made them so funny, everyone was in fits of laughter. I try to emulate her when I write my novels. When I am not annoying everyone by dressing as if I live in the seventeenth century, I enjoy knitting, exercising, playing piano or cooking something in my wonderful kitchen.

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DEDICATION

Your dedication here.

TITLE PAGE

The Lost Mother

Book 1

of

Farewell my Life

A Dark Historical about a Hidden Murderer...

Cynthia Sally Haggard

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © Cynthia Sally Haggard 2022

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this

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means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without

written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations

in a book review.

This book may not be sold, copied, or plagiarized. Thank you for respecting

the hard work of this author.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved

ISBN: 979-8215677452

Enquiries: [e-mail]

Published by Cynthia Sally Haggard, Washington DC, USA

www.cynthiasallyhaggard.com

Image Portrait of Young Woman in 1915 by Lady-Photo

Dreamstime Photo ID ~ 950767618.

Praise for Farewell My Life

A unique, deftly scripted, and extraordinary novel by an author with a distinctive narrative storytelling style that will hold the readers’ dedicated attention from beginning to end, Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia is an impressive and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections. One of those rare novels that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished.—Mid-West Book Review

The author knows her characters very, very well; this shows in the consistent and very individual way they act. This is not a plot-driven story; it’s character-driven. In this book, the characters are the jam which holds everything together. The best example of this is Grace, the talented violinist, who, simply, jumps off the page. I loved her.—Wishing Shelf

This is not your typical mystery; it’s for fans of thrilling action and historically­-inspired events…Contra to the status quo of the genre, the men are the romantics – though in a deranged manner – and the women showcased are the core strength of the novel.—BookLife Prize.

The author…adeptly summons the era in all its manners and details with her descriptive prose…Her omniscient, third-person narrator effectively flits through the heads of various characters, offering momentary glimpses of their inner lives.—Kirkus Reviews

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the memories of

Theodore William Ted Bogacz (1943–1992),

my first husband, who taught me much about

modernity, the Great War of 1914–1918, and shell shock,

and

Nannie Jamieson (1904–1990),

my violin teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England

EPIGRAPH

It was the obscure sensation

of everything’s being suddenly turned the other way round,

so that one had to read it all backward if one wanted to understand.

It was a sensation devoid of any pain or astonishment.

It was simply something dark and looming,

and yet smooth and soundless,

coming…

LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, Vladimir Nabokov

PROLOGUE ~ ITALIA

Once upon a time, there lived a girl in a mountain village in northern Italy named Teresa. She was the most beautiful girl in that village, which had a checkerboard for its main square. The village was called Marostega and was located in the Veneto, that region of Italy that claims La Serenissima, Venexia, as its capital.

Teresa married my father and had three daughters, Giuseppina, Luisa, and Angelina.

After her death, Father married again. Mother was the second wife, and she gave Father two sons. I was the youngest. In those days, my name was Domenico.

One day, Father told us we were going over the wide, wide ocean to America. Mother made a huge bonfire, everything she could find that had belonged to the first wife, a pile of old-fashioned cotton dresses with large skirts, nipped-in waists, lace collars and cuffs, straw hats with wide ribbons, shawls of fine wool, even sepia-tinted photographs. I stood with my siblings, our eyes reflected those flames. The heat of the fire melted the ice, sent by a February storm. My half-sisters’ tears congealed into crystals, making their eyelashes stick. Mama’s gone, whispered Angelina as everything dissolved into clouds of ash picked up by swirls of freezing gusts that scattered the first wife’s remnants into the cold February air.

I had just turned four.

One: Jilted

Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Friday, 2 September

Angelina led a life which required her to fib.

How do you amuse yourself? a stranger would ask.

I do a little dressmaking, she would reply. It has not been easy, with all the good men taken by the war.

She took pleasure in illicit trysts, in the veils and shadows of secrecy, until one day, this world began to crumble.

Someone is talking about us, he said, standing by the window of the apartment he had chosen for her, in the West Village of Georgetown. The late afternoon sun slanted over his head, throwing his high cheekbones and the sharp bridge of his nose into relief, illuminating his thick, corn-colored hair.

Angelina was bending over the wet bar, mixing up a Mary Pickford. Who? she said, mainly for something to say. She was used to gossip and disapproving glances. People were so jealous, especially other women, even married women. One would think that women who had everything might be willing to help their less fortunate sisters, but that had never been Angelina’s experience.

I don’t know.

Something about his voice caught her attention. She came around and handed him his drink. You do not know?

No. He sipped without comment. Normally, he would wind one of her curls around his pinky finger, or smile, or make some remark to show that he appreciated what she had made for him. But not today.

The back of Angelina’s neck stiffened. This was not good, something was worrying him.

Finally, he said, A scandal would hurt my wife, and I cannot do that to a good woman.

She stood there, silent. If his wife was a good woman, what did that make her? She had known Scott McNair since he was a college student, well before his marriage, when she had been recently widowed, with two little girls to support. She had become complicit in satisfying his needs in return for money, jewelry, and clothes in the latest fashions. She expected him to terminate things once he married, but his wife did not like the pleasures of the marriage bed.

He put his drink down. You do see that, don’t you?

She did not see at all. Why now? Why would a bit of gossip scare him off? She stared up into his face. Was there any way to plead her case? But his face, usually so open, was closed against her.

I will give you something to cover your expenses for the next several months. He opened his billfold and dropped a wad of cash onto the mantle.

She could not move. She felt like a leaf dropped from a tree, curled up, and dead in the frosty air.

He went to the hatstand and took his hat. Believe me, Angie, if I had any choice— He hesitated for a long moment, his blue-grey eyes fixed on hers, and then the landlady banged a door downstairs.

He fled.

She waited for a second, five seconds, then went to the mantle, counting out the money. Five hundred dollars. At least he was generous, but it was not going to last forever. She stuffed it into her bodice, then twitched the drapes aside to survey the street.

He was gone.

Two: The Stranger

Monday, 5 September

Afternoon

A few days later, Angelina found herself in Shepherd & Riley’s bookstore. She needed to get something for Grace, who would be seventeen in a few days. She turned the pages of the volume in her hand. Perhaps The Awakening was not right for her dreamy daughter. It was expensive, and Angelina had money worries now that Scott had jilted her. She listlessly closed the book, trying not to think about him. As she pushed it back into its place the hairs on the back of her arm prickled. Was someone watching her? Slowly, she turned.

He looked like a lover, with thick black hair for caressing and generous lips for kissing. But it was those dark eyes that caught and held, never letting go. Bellissimo.

He came forward, smiling.

Mrs. Miller? He took off his elegant Panama, balancing it gently in his long, tapering fingers.

Angelina started as she studied his face. No, she had never seen him before.

How do you—?

Russell. At your service. He made a little bow that seemed both odd and old-fashioned. Angelina could not recall any man bowing to her, at least not recently.

She tilted her head to look up at him, showing off her slender neck. Should I know you?

He stared at her for a moment, his smile fading.

She moved closer. We have met before?

He glanced at the door, then scanned the bookstore, expertly taking it in, as if used to evaluating the shape of rooms, the placing of furniture such as bookcases, the position of windows in relation to the door.

Angelina followed his gaze, but all she could see were bored housewives in straw hats, and summer-colored dresses. They had open books in their laps or in their hands, pretending to read while staring at him avidly from the corners of their eyes.

They have rich husbands, she remarked.

He turned back towards her, his hat still held lightly in the tips of those long fingers.

Your life is not as predictable as theirs?

Angelina raised her face to his and smiled. He was not merely good-looking.

May I offer you tea?

Intrigued, she accepted his arm. How glad she was she had chosen to wear a new frock, the olive-green silk, which set off her sherry-colored eyes. The brown high-heeled shoes drew attention to the hem, which was fashionably short at mid-calf. The brown cloche hat, trimmed with quail feathers, gave her extra height, for she was not tall. Angelina could not help smiling into the hard eyes of the left-behind women as she passed them on her way out into the street. La gelosia. How resentful they were.

He chose the nearest hotel, the Metropolitan on Pennsylvania Avenue, picking a table in the middle of the restaurant away from the windows and the noisy traffic outside. He selected a chair for Angelina, helping her into it before taking the opposite one, which gave him a good view of the door.

Angelina sat upright on her overstuffed seat, knees together, brown leather purse on her lap. She sensed there was some purpose here, some reason to meet her. Yet he said nothing. After offering her a cigarette from a monogrammed silver case, which she declined, he lit his from a matching silver lighter and smoked in silence for several moments.

She was just on the point of asking him again how he knew her name, when he tapped his cigarette ash into the ashtray and began, telling her that he had fought on the Italian Front in the recent war. Why was he telling her this? Did he want to boast about his war record? But no, he did not go into details, just narrated the bare facts. He spoke in a well-modulated baritone, which had an