During the evenings and into the night, Joce worked on the book about Miss Edi. Tess had told Joce she didn’t know Luke was married. In fact, Tess said she and Ramsey had had a big fight about it. He told her that what went on in his family was his business.
Tess swore that if she’d known she would have told Joce. “I hate the way this town hides its dirty little secrets. Someone should have told me—you—us that he was married.”
Tess’s tone was so angry that Joce felt herself pulling back from her. But Tess got her the key to the attic and Joce had spent days going through every box and trunk. As far as she could tell, everything of value had been removed, and all that was left were thousands of account books. Perhaps someday she could do something with them, but she’d been hoping for a diary where someone admitted killing someone else, and after her bio she could write about it and make millions.
“So make up your own story,” Tess said. “Kill someone, then figure out who did it and why.”
It sounded so simple, but in the past whenever Joce had tried to do it, she couldn’t. She liked to read about real events and real people, so that’s what she wanted to write about.
“Miss Edi!” Tess said, putting her hands over her ears. “I’ve heard so much about that woman that if I saw her ghostly form standing in the doorway, I’d just tell her to go away.”
“If you see her, please ask her to tell me what to do,” Joce said gloomily.
It was yet another night that Tess was in Joce’s kitchen making cupcakes. After the party at Viv’s house—The Disaster, as Joce thought of it—Tess had agreed to do the next two catering jobs. Luke’s father, Jim,
said she was the best negotiator he’d ever seen. She didn’t let anyone even suggest what was to be served at their own party. Tess told them what she’d show up with, and her manner was so authoritarian that they just agreed to whatever she said.
Since then, Tess, with Jim’s help, had catered over a dozen kids’ parties and ladies’ teas. And all the cooking had been done in Joce’s kitchen. While she worked on her book, she saw boxes of wonderously decorated cupcakes and cookies going out her front door.
As for Sara, a hundred percent of her time was taken up with her new boyfriend and the plans for the dress shop. All Sara talked about was what Greg said, did, thought. “Greg says we should—” seemed to start her every sentence.
During the day—morning, afternoon, or night—Joce and Tess would hear the sounds of their energetic lovemaking through the walls. At first it had been embarrassing, then laughable. After a couple of weeks it had become so commonplace that all they did was look at each other and say where it was happening. But that ended abruptly one night.
“Kitchen,” Joce said.
“No, that’s the pantry,” Tess said.
Joce listened. “You’re right. Oops. There they go into the living room.”
“Sara really should let those carpet burns on her knees heal before she goes at it again in there. She—” Tess broke off because she’d looked up to see Jim standing in the doorway, a box of supplies in his hands. He didn’t say anything, just put the box down and left the house.
Wide-eyed, the two women grabbed drinking glasses and held them to the wall. They knew Jim was going to Sara’s apartment and they wanted to hear what he’d say. But, unfortunately, Jim kept his voice so low they couldn’t make out a word. When he returned to the kitchen, Joce and Tess were busy at the table, their faces looking innocent. Whatever Jim said, they never again heard the sounds of lovemaking coming through the walls.
Later, Tess said, “I don’t know whether I’m happy at the silence or miserable.”
“Me either,” Joce agreed.
For the first two weeks after The Disaster, while Tess baked, Joce wrote letters and e-mails, and made calls. Dr. Brenner’s widow was so happy that Joce was going to write a biography of her husband—Joce gave up trying to tell her the truth—that she sent so many boxes of papers that they filled half a UPS truck. But as Joce went through them, she had to work to stay awake. Dr. Brenner may have been a great physician, but he was a horrible journalist. She would find entries of several deaths on one day, but there was no explanation of how or why. She began sending out more inquiries. She wrote the American embassies of countries where Dr. Brenner had worked. Twice she was told that the official word was that no American doctor had ever worked in their country.
While she waited, Joce wrote down all she could remember of Miss Edi’s stories of her time with Dr. Brenner. Joce carried a notebook with her and wrote at every possible moment.
Through all the searching and recording, she thought of Luke. No! she told herself, she thought of the story Luke had read her while she was cooking. Joce had loved hearing about Miss Edi and her David, the jeep driver who she despised but came to love very much. But how did it happen? What put them together in a way that allowed them to fall in love? Joce hoped it wasn’t just proximity and the passions of war. She hoped that they got to know each other, to really and truly love each other.
She very much wanted to contact Luke’s grandfather and ask for the rest of the story, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t believe he’d give her, a stranger, the stories, especially not after the way she’d thrown out his grandson.
Thinking of the story made Jocelyn Google General Austin. She saw that he’d been decorated many times, and there was mention of a son who’d received the last award for his father posthumously. Joce didn’t think there was much hope that his family would remember a secretary from World War II, but she wrote them a polite inquiry to ask if they’d possibly heard of Miss Edilean Harcourt.
Four days later, Joce received an enthusiastic e-mail from William “Bill” Austin, the grandson of General Austin, saying that he was writing a biography on his grandfather, and, yes, he knew of Miss Harcourt, but not much. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” he wrote.
The problem was that what she’d heard of General Austin was from a story written by Miss Edi and the portrait of the general was so unflattering that she wasn’t sure the man’s grandson would want to hear it. She told him that since what she had was from Miss Edi’s life after the war, it would be of little help to Bill with his biography. However, she asked if she could please see whatever he had on Miss Edi.
Bill wrote back that there were some letters that mentioned Miss Harcourt, but they hadn’t been transcribed yet so they were still in boxes—and he wasn’t going to let the originals out of his hands. “My transcriber was my ex-girlfriend and I’m either going to have to get a new transcriber—which I can’t afford—or a new girlfriend who can type, or ask my ex to marry me. If I had a three-headed coin I’d flip it.”
Joce bought some super glue and fastened three quarters—each from a different state—together to form a pyramid and mailed it to him without so much as a note. Two days later she got an e-mail from Bill saying that he and his ex-girlfriend could have bought a house for what her family was shelling out for a wedding. “It’s going to take weeks of my time. And then there’s the honeymoon. My work on the biography has been postponed indefinitely. I don’t know whether to thank you or hate you.”
“Me neither,” Joce mumbled. She went back to what she could find out about Dr. Brenner. Twice, she hit pay dirt with people who remembered him and Miss Edi. When she found a nurse who’d worked for him, Joce drove to Ohio and spent three days recording what the woman could remember. But she’d only worked for Dr. Brenner for six months and she remembered Miss Edi as being “scary.” “Coldest woman on earth. No heart at all,” she said. Joce had to work hard not to tell the old woman off.
Now, as Joce looked up from her desk in the office she’d set up in the second parlor, she didn’t know whether to give up or to keep butting her head against a wall.