“You sound very sure about that.” Her grandmother took another sip of her tea. “It didn’t occur to you that he might have married you for another reason?”
“There was no other reason. It was exactly like Mom’s situation.” And because of that she’d never been given the opportunity to find out if Seth might have fallen in love with her given time.
Her grandmother handed over her empty cup. “Take that to the kitchen for me, honey. Then go to my bedroom. Under the bed you’ll find a box. Bring it to me.”
“What’s in the box?”
“You’ll find out.”
“You should be resting.”
“I am resting. Go. There’s something in that box I want to show you.”
Fliss was intrigued enough not to ask any more questions, and pleased to have an excuse to leave the room. She couldn’t believe she’d told her grandmother about the pregnancy. The only two people who knew about it were Seth and Harriet.
She found the box under the bed, along with a family of dust bunnies. It made her smile. Her grandmother had always prioritized living her life over cleaning. She’d swum in the ocean every day until she was seventy. And some of those swims had been naked
. Who would have thought it?
Brushing off the box, she took it downstairs. “It was wrapped in a ton of cobwebs. I ruined dinner plans for at least five spiders. How long has this been here?”
“A long time.” Eugenia took the box and set it down in front of her. “Your mother said she never wanted to see it again. It made her think of things she didn’t want to think about.”
Fliss went from mildly intrigued to downright curious. What had her mother not wanted to think about? It must have been important for her to keep the memories in a box as a memento. “But you kept it?”
“I understood why she wanted me to dispose of it. She was afraid your father might find it, but some things are too important to be discarded. Fortunately even your father wouldn’t have had the gall to come into my bedroom on the rare occasions he showed up here. It’s been there for more than three decades. I’ve never opened it, but I assume the contents are intact.”
“Does Mom know you kept it?”
“I told her after she finally left your father. She didn’t want it. As far as she was concerned, the past was the past. She was only interested in building a future.”
Fliss wasn’t sure she wanted to see something her mother hadn’t wanted her to see, but her grandmother was already opening the box, revealing a stack of letters and photos. “What are those?” She reached across and took the letter from the top of the pile.
“They’re letters to your mother, from the man she was in love with.”
Fliss studied the beautiful loopy script. “I never would have guessed my dad was the letter-writing type.”
“The letters aren’t from your father.”
“Who are they from?” Confused, Fliss reached for one of the photos and stared at it, uncomprehending.
It was a little faded, and a little crinkled at the corners, but the image was still perfectly clear.
In her hand was a photo of her mother, laughing up at a man. It was obvious from the way they were looking at each other that they were in love. Nothing wrong with that, Fliss thought numbly. The only thing wrong with that photo was that the man her mother was smiling at wasn’t her father.
* * *
SETH WAS SEEING his last patient of the morning when Nancy, the vet tech, walked into the room.
“There’s someone to see you.”
“I’m nearly done here.” He turned his attention back to his patient, a French bulldog with breathing problems. “The shape of his head and the flat face—the technical term is brachycephaly—isn’t natural. It’s a look that has been developed by selective breeding, and it often causes health problems for the dogs.”
“I didn’t know that.” Mary Danton looked upset. “They’re such fashionable dogs and I thought Maximus was adorable. So that’s why his breathing is so noisy and why he gets so tired on walks?”
“Yes. He has an elongated soft palate and smaller openings in his nose. He’s finding it hard to breathe.”
“I thought the noises he makes are normal for the breed.”