"There was, but I lost him and then forever after I was always looking for him," she explained.
"Always looking for him? I don't understand, Aunt Belinda. Where did you look?"
She laughed.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Her eyes grew small, suspicious. "Did Olivia send you here to find out?"
"Oh no, Aunt Belinda. She has no idea I'm here." She stared, skeptical, and then nodded softly.
"Every time I fall in love with someone, Olivia falls in love with him, too. She always says she was first, that he liked her first and I stole him away by being promiscuous. Well, no one likes her because she's a cold fish. She won't even hold hands in public! You can run back and tell her I said that, if you want."
"I won't tell her anything you say to me, Aunt Belinda," I assured her.
"If you love someone," she continued, "you're not afraid to touch him or have him touch you. Olivia says that's ridiculous. She says it's not necessary to touch all the time and she hates kissing. Oh, she'll deny that; she'll say she kisses in private, but she doesn't. I know. Young men have told me. She turns away all the time." She laughed and then leaned forward again. "You know what I heard Samuel told someone? He told them she won't make love with the lights on and never with the covers off. Like she has something someone is dying to see."
She paused and looked at me closely again.
"What did you say your name was, dear?"
"I'm Laura, Aunt Belinda. Sara and Jacob's daughter Laura. How can you be in love so many times, Aunt Belinda? Isn't love something special?"
"It always was, every time," she replied. She pulled in the corners of her mouth and nodded. "You just make sure they respect you and treat you like a lady. Don't let him know you love him right away. Let him twist and torment himself and then," she said with a wide smile, "when you finally say yes, he will think you have given him the world.
"I was in love once," she added wistfully. "A long time ago, a sweet boy, handsome. He thought the sun rose and set on my moods. 'When you're sad,' he said, 'you bring the rain clouds. But when you smile, the sun is bright and strong.'
"Wasn't that sweet? It's poetry. He wrote poetry. Olivia found the poems and tore them up. She said if I complained, she would show them to Daddy and he would see what I was up to.
"I wasn't up to anything. I just . . . wanted someone to love me and I wanted to love him."
She paused, took a deep breath, and then looked at me again.
"You remind me of someone," she said and blinked rapidly for a moment. Her expression changed. It was as if she had just set eyes on me. "Do you know my sister Olivia Logan? Her maiden name was Gordon, same as mine," she said with a light, thin laugh.
"I'm your niece, Aunt Belinda. I'm Jacob's daughter, Grandma Olivia's Jacob."
"Yes," she said. She smiled. "How pretty you are. Are you a schoolgirl?"
"Yes, I'm in high school."
"And you have a boyfriend, or do you have many boyfriends?"
"Just one," I said.
She looked out the window.
"I'm waiting for him. I sit here by the window every day and I wait. He promised he would return, you know. And he would bring me flowers and candy. They don't want me to have any candy," she whispered, gazing at the door. "But he hides it in the flowers."
She brought her hand to her mouth and giggled like a little girl.
Then, she suddenly started to hum.
"Aunt Belinda?"
She continued to hum and stare out the window.
"I'm going, Aunt Belinda," I said, rising. She paused and looked at me.
"You tell Olivia I'm not sorry. She's the one who should be sorry. If it weren't for her, he'd still be my boyfriend. We would be out there," she said, gazing at the garden, "walking hand in hand and he would be telling me sweet things."