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  Praise for the Novels of Susan Meissner

  A Fall of Marigolds

  “Hits all of the right emotional notes.”

  —Booklist

  “Like the golden threads of a scarf sprinkled with marigolds, Susan Meissner weaves two unspeakable New York tragedies—the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and 9/11—into a shimmering novel of love and acceptance. Meissner’s heroines, Clara and Taryn, live a century apart, but their stories are connected not just by a bright scrap of fabric but by love lost. A compelling novel, A Fall of Marigolds turns fate into a triumph of spirit.”

  —Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author of Fallen Women

  “Meissner has crafted a thoughtful story about lost loves and times past, illustrating how quickly disaster can take away what we hold most dear, and how ultimately we must move forward with hope in our hearts.”

  —Margaret Dilloway, bestselling author of The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

  “A transportive, heartwarming, and fascinating novel that will resonate with readers in search of emotionally satisfying stories connecting past and present, and demonstrating the healing power of love.”

  —Erika Robuck, bestselling author of Hemingway’s Girl and Fallen Beauty

  “Weaves a compelling tapestry of past and present, of love and loss and learning to love again, of two women connected through time in a rich and unique way.”

  —Lisa Wingate, bestselling author of Wildwood Creek and Tending Roses

  “Susan Meissner knits the past and the present with the seamless skill of a master storyteller. A beautifully written, moving novel that had me gripped from the first page.”

  —Kate Kerrigan, New York Times bestselling author of Land of Dreams

  “Deftly weaves a story of love and loss . . . an inspiring story of hope and the belief that with tomorrow comes a new day full of promise.”

  —Lorie Conway, author/producer of Forgotten Ellis Island

  “Susan Meissner has written a courageous novel, moving with great insight between the haunting parallel stories of two women trying to recover from the losses of a terrible fire in 1911 New York City and the unforgettable fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11. An uncommon celebration of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable tragedy, A Fall of Marigolds is a beautiful reminder that although life is perilous, love is a powerful healer.”

  —Kimberly Brock, 2013 Georgia Author of the Year and author of The River Witch

  “The author creates two sympathetic, relatable characters that readers will applaud.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A moving story told through simple prose that compels readers to keep turning the pages until the uplifting conclusion.”

  —Romantic Times

  The Girl in the Glass

  “Beautifully crafted and captivating, The Girl in the Glass is a story to savor and get lost in.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jio

  “Susan Meissner’s prose graces each woman’s story with an intricate and fragile beauty that reflects Meg’s desperate love for Florence in the heart of the reader before she even boards the plane. In fact, this might be the most romantic book you read this year.”

  —USA Today

  “Charming and smoothly paced, The Girl in the Glass re-creates the feeling of walking the streets of Florence, Italy, and is populated with warm, generous-hearted characters.”

  —BookPage

  A Sound Among the Trees

  “Meissner transports readers to another time and place to weave her lyrical tale of love, loss, forgiveness, and letting go. Her beautifully drawn characters are flawed yet likable, their courage and resilience echoing in the halls of Holly Oak for generations. A surprising conclusion and startling redemption make this book a page-turner, but the setting—the beautiful old Holly Oak and all of its ghosts—is what will seep into the reader’s bones, making A Sound Among the Trees a book you don’t want to put down.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Karen White

  “My eyes welled up more than once! And I thought it especially fitting that, having already shown us the shape of mercy in a previous novel, Susan Meissner is now showing us the many shapes of love. A Sound Among the Trees is a hauntingly lyrical book that will make you believe a house can indeed have a memory . . . and maybe a heart. A beautiful story of love, loss, and sacrifice, and of the bonds that connect us through time.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley

  “Meissner delivers a delightful page-turner that will surely enthrall readers from beginning to end. The antebellum details, lively characters, and overlapping dramas particularly will excite history buffs and romance fans.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Lady in Waiting

  “Both the history and the modern tale are enticing, with Meissner doing a masterful job blending the two.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Meissner has an ability to mesh a present-day story with a parallel one in the past, creating a fascinating look at two lives where each tale is enhanced by the other. Intricately detailed characters make for a truly delightful novel.”

  —Romantic Times

  The Shape of Mercy

  “Meissner’s prose is exquisite, and she is a stunning storyteller. This is a novel to be shared with friends.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Meissner has a gift for intriguing, meaningful stories, and this novel is no exception. Lauren’s present-day life is mirrored in elderly Abigail’s and again in the diary of Mercy Hayworth, who lived in the seventeenth century. . . . The insights into perception and prejudice are stunning.”

  —Romantic Times

  OTHER NOVELS BY SUSAN MEISSNER

  A Fall of Marigolds

  The Girl in the Glass

  A Sound Among the Trees

  Lady in Waiting

  White Picket Fences

  The Shape of Mercy

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Susan Meissner, 2015

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Meissner, Susan, 1961–

  Secrets of a charmed life / Susan Meissner.

  pages; cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-62555-2

  1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—England—London—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.E435S435 2015

  813'.6—dc23 2014027190

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiou
sly, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Other novels by SUSAN MEISSNER

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  For my Umbrella Girls—

  Stephanie, Bree, and Chelsey

  “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

  —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  Part One

  One

  KENDRA

  The Cotswolds, England

  THE English cottage, bramble hedged and golden stoned, looks as timeless as a fairy tale except for the bobbing Mylar balloons tied to the front gate. Ivy scampers childlike across the house’s walls—all the way to the gabled windows on the second story—and then is tamed to civil edges around the paned windows. Easter-hued hollyhocks stand in stately rows beneath the sills. As I pull up onto the driveway, the crunching of tires on gravel sounds like applause, which is fitting since the woman I am to interview is celebrating her ninety-third birthday. I set the brake on the borrowed car and reach for my messenger bag on the seat next to me. I step out of the vehicle and into the postcard charm of April in the Cotswolds. I’m not expecting to be invited to stay for the day’s festivities but I hope I will be just the same. I’ve come to adore the way the British celebrate a happy occasion in the afternoon.

  Isabel MacFarland is a stranger to me, though I’ve been told that I’ve surely walked past her watercolors for sale in Oxford gift shops. I’ve yet to even hear her voice. She agreed by way of one of my professors to let me interview her about her experience as a survivor of the London Blitz, and only because the first person I had arranged to speak with had died in her sleep at an assisted-living facility in Banbury. Today happened to be the time that worked best for both of us while still allowing me to meet my deadline, take my finals, grudgingly say good-bye to Oxford and my studies abroad, and return to California.

  I get out of the car and silently congratulate myself for arriving safely in the village of Stow-on-the-Wold and without having ruined anyone else’s day in the process. In the four months I’ve been a visiting student at Oxford’s Keble College, I’ve borrowed this car three times before today: once to see whether I should dare try it a second time, then again to prepare myself for the third time, and the most recent to drive my parents and sister out to Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon when they came to visit me at midterm. Statistically, I’m not owed any kudos for having gotten here in one piece. Apparently a Yank’s first few experiences driving on the wrong side of the road are actually her safest. It’s after a dozen trips behind the wheel that she becomes dangerous. Lets down her guard. Forgets where she is. That’s when she’ll make a fatal turn into oncoming traffic; when her senses have been dulled by familiarity.

  Today’s outing, the fourth time I’ve driven a car in England, is well below the multiple experience mark, and I will likely not drive again before the term ends. I wouldn’t necessarily have needed to drive today, as there’s a train station in nearby Moreton-in-Marsh, but there’s also a five-mile walk on narrow country roads between the two villages, with an occasional bus making the rounds. Penelope, my dorm mate and a British national from Manchester, who has had the guts to repeatedly loan me her car, insisted I take it.

  I stop for a moment outside the car and breathe the scents of grass and sky and dew—refreshing after weeks of city exhaust. All around me are velvety fields quilted by clumps of trees and scattered dwellings oozing storybook quaintness. Some of the nearby roofs are thatched, some not, but all bear exterior walls of golden-hued stone that look as though they would taste like butterscotch if you licked them. A figure appears at an arched front door that is festooned with climbing roses. The woman is wiping her hands on a towel and smiling at me. Her graying hair is stylishly cut with one side longer than the other. I am guessing she is Isabel MacFarland’s live-in caretaker and housekeeper, Beryl Avery, and the woman who gave me directions.

  “You found us!” she calls out to me.

  I shut the door on Penelope’s aging Austin-Morris. “Your directions were perfect. Okay if I park here?”

  “Yes, that’s fine. Come on in.”

  The balloons are pogo-sticking this way and that as I open the gate. One of the balloons attempts to attach itself to the strap of my bag as I pass. I gently nudge it away.

  Mrs. Avery holds the front door open for me—it is painted an enameled cherry red. “I’m so glad you made it. Beryl Avery. Please call me Beryl.” She thrusts her free hand toward me as I step inside.

  “Kendra Van Zant. Thanks so much for letting me come, especially when you have so much going on later today. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  Beryl shuts the door behind us. I am guessing she is in her late sixties. She smells like cake and cream and other sweet things. A smudge of flour dusts one side of her jawbone.

  “It’s no trouble,” she says brightly. “I’m happy you’re here. Auntie doesn’t talk much about her experience during the war and we all wish she would, you know. When anyone else asks about it, she shoos the question away as if no one could possibly be interested in anything that happened so long ago. But of course we are interested. Terribly so, considering what happened to her. It’s such a nice surprise she said yes to you.”

  I don’t know what to say to this because it’s a surprise to me, too, that the old woman said yes. Professor Briswell told me Mrs. MacFarland, a noted local artist and friend of his late mother, is known to have been bombed out of her home during the Blitz, but also that she never speaks about it.

  “I would ask her why she said yes if I weren’t afraid I’d jinx it for you and she’d change her mind,” Beryl continues.

  I’m about to ask why Mrs. MacFarland has been so reluctant to talk about the war so that I will know which questions to avoid, but Beryl fills the tiny space of silence before I can.

  “I must tell you, though, that she seems a little lost in thought today. You might need to give her some extra time to answer your questions. It’s probably all the hullabaloo with the party and all.”

  “Is she still okay that I am coming today?”

  Beryl cocks her head. “I th
ink so. Hard to say if ‘okay’ is the right word. Auntie isn’t one to be overly demonstrative. I’d say she’s content regarding your being here. I think she’s more worried about the party this afternoon. She didn’t want a fuss and I’m afraid that’s exactly what she’s getting. No one wanted to listen to me when I said she didn’t want a big to-do.”

  We move out of the narrow entryway into a sitting room that looks as cozy and inviting as one of Tolkien’s hobbit holes. A fat, fern-green couch and its matching love seat are situated in the middle of the room, while glass-topped tables laden with books and jonquils in vases separate them. Persian rugs cover the wood floor. A tea cart sits in one corner, a curio cabinet in another, and an L-shaped bookshelf in a third. Enchanting watercolors of young girls holding polka-dot umbrellas line the walls.

  “Are the paintings Mrs. MacFarland’s?” I ask.

  “They are,” Beryl replies. “They’re all over the house. She’s quite an accomplished artist, but you probably already know that. The Umbrella Girls are her trademark. Her arthritis is too bad now for painting. She had to stop a while back.” Beryl sighs. “That was a hard day. She’s had too many hard days, if you ask me. Far too many.” The woman shakes her head slightly as if to dislodge the weight of the anguish she has observed. “Why don’t you have a seat here on the sofa and I’ll go fetch her?”

  Beryl leaves the room and I settle onto the love seat, moving a few of the tightly stuffed throw pillows from behind my back. I can hear voices from other areas of the house now, and laughter in the back garden. A child squeals. Another one yells that it’s his turn to have a go. A more calming adult voice, grandmotherly in tone, instructs someone named Timmy to share the glider with another someone named Garth or he’ll be sent inside.

  I pull my voice recorder from my bag and set it on the table in front of me, hoping Isabel won’t mind if I record our conversation. I look over the questions on my notepad and decide I will let her answers guide me. I don’t want to sabotage the interview by asking too much too soon. As I pull out a mechanical pencil, I hear the sound of shuffling feet.