"You miss Augustus. I bet." I told them. It looked as if they were both nodding, and that made me smile. "Me. too. At least he was interesting. Without being rich!"
I saw a moving van pull up in front of Augustus's condo. and I wandered over to watch the two men taking some of the furniture out and loading it.
"Where are you taking all this?" I asked one, hoping to get an address.
"It's going into storage at one of our
warehouses," he replied, barely pausing to look at ine.
While carrying out one of the desks, the movers didn't notice a piece of paper that floated to the lawn. I picked it up after they returned to the condo and saw it was a sheet of Augustus's rambling mathematical verses, numbers, fractions, formulas that made no sense to me, of course, but nevertheless tied me to him. I decided to keep it. They would only throw it away anyway, I thought. I folded it and brought it back to our house. where I put it at the bottom of a jewelry box Daddy had brought me from India.
The house was still dead quiet, the roses undisturbed. I imagined that whenever Mommy did awake she would be hungry, so I went about preparing one of her favorite pasta meals, linguini in clam sauce. She liked it a little spicy. I was hoping the aroma of the sauce would snake its way through the condo and under her bedroom door. Eventually it did.
I turned when she stepped out, her hair disheveled, her eyes a little bloodshot. She scrubbed her face with her palms and smiled at me.
"What is that I smell?"
"I thought you might be hungry."
"Oh, that's so nice of you, Grace. Thank you, honey. I'll just take a shower and..."
"You had a delivery," I said sharply, and turned back to the pasta.
"Delivery?" She came into the kitchen and saw the flowers,
"Oh, how sweet," she said without even looking to see who had sent them.
I watched her face when she read the card. Her tired eyes regained their lively, happy glint instantly, and her cheeks flushed with glee.
"Hook and sinker," she muttered.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing, honey. Isn't this nice? They're from Winston. I've got to put them in water quickly. How beautiful they are, and just enough to make a statement without being too ostentatious," she remarked as if she was an expert on social etiquette. "They know how to do everything properly,"
"Who?"
"Palm Beach multimillionaires," she replied with a short laugh. "All of a sudden I am ravishingly hungry. I'll hurry." She rushed off to shower and fix her hair.
At the table while we ate our late lunch. Mommy continued her exuberant description of her late evening with Winston Montgomery, gushing over every detail as if she had to be sure I didn't miss a moment or a thing she had see
n in that majestic house.
"There are at least ten bedrooms. I think, and there is a separate building for the help, a beach house. Can you imagine being a servant and living on the beach? Well, the reason for that is Joya del Mar has its own beach-front."
"Joya del Mar?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you the name of the estate?"
"The estate has a name?"
"Sure it does. silly. All those famous big homes have names. Joya del Mar, the jewel of the sea. Wait until you see it." she said.
"I don't want to see it," I replied petulantly.
"Why nat?"
"It doesn't sound like that much fun for me."