Excerpt from Held by Anne Michaels, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

IV
RIVERORWELL,
SUFFOLK, 1984

At the back of the shop, Peter sat at a large table, the Anglepoise leaning over him, as if searching for errors in his work. He heard the front door open, with its bell on a hinge, and a voice call out: "On Amsterdam Island, it's 4:01 p.m.; in Perth, it's 11:01 p.m.; in Alert, it's 10:01 a.m.!" He looked up. Thank God. She was home.

* * *

He held her. She was long, like a pine marten, a single pure muscle.

All in one piece. Thank God.

* * *

Peter closed the shop. They went upstairs. He did not want her to know how much he'd missed her. Whenever Mara was away—saturated, silted with fear for her. Unbearable. "I missed you," Mara said. "Miss me?" His tears seeping out.

She held him, squeezed the life into him. "Dad," she said. "Dad. Don't worry, I'm staying."

He wept like a child.

* * *

She brought out the griddle.

They ate pancakes for supper because it was a tradition between them when she came home and because she liked the glass bottle of maple syrup with its tiny, useless handle.

He watched her eat, filling her hollow leg. Nineteen pancakes. He made them small. But still. Starving.

He was beginning to come back to life.

"In Madrid, it's 3:49 p.m.," he said. "In Mauritius, it's 6:49 p.m."

He would do anything for the sight of that lopsided grin.

* * *

He joined her on the sofa where she was reading—when she came home, always one of her mother's books, with her mother's name, Anna, carefully written on the inside cover, and the date and city where Anna had bought it—Jane Eyre, The Horse's Mouth, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—the bindings gone completely soft, re-read countless times—to prove to herself she was home again. He sat beside her and she put her feet in her thick woollen socks on his lap the way she always did.

"When Alan comes, would you wear the beautiful kilt Grandmum gave you?" she asked. "We have a bet. He doesn't believe you'll wear one. If you do, he has to buy us all dinner at Moro's."

"Ha! We'll show him then. I'll even wash behind my knees."

The room was lamplit, warm. Mara had made a sturdy fire, she had always been good at that—a point of pride. She continued to read and he was almost asleep when Peter heard her say, "I missed her more than ever this time. Everywhere we were made me think of her, I almost thought I'd see her if I turned my head." He was fully awake now.

"Sometimes I think I see her too," Peter said, "out of the corner of my eye. If you can see a feeling."

"Yes, I think you can."

* * *

Peter had learned his trade from his father, who was himself the son of the best tailor in Piedmont. In the end, Peter's father had found he preferred his uncle's trade and became a hat maker. Then grandfather and father worked together, outfitting— "from the top of the head to the soles of the socks"—gentlemen from Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, his father even covered the heads of gentlemen from Switzerland and France. He also designed women's hats, to please his wife, Lia, Peter's mother. His grandfather found them a business partner and they made uniforms and hats for the military. When war came, they were suddenly wealthy. Uniforms had been his grandfather's idea, and when his grandfather and both Peter's parents had died, Peter inherited their part of the business, sold their share and crossed the Channel. In London, he and Anna were standing next to each other in a queue for a Marian Anderson concert and a week later they discovered themselves sitting a row apart listening to Myra Hess. One of the first things he learned about Anna was that she was an admirer of Eglantyne Jebb. Anna, who had served in field hospitals in France, had just accepted a new job in a hospital in the north and was celebrating before leaving London. A few months later, with all her letters in his coat pocket, Peter took the train north and Anna took him home.

Excerpted from Held by Anne Michaels. Copyright © 2024 by Anne Michaels. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.