“What if I told you that I have the beginning of a story that Miss Edi wrote about her war experiences and that I got it from the David you think jilted her?”
“You what?” Jocelyn looked up from the mortar at him. “Did the jerk write her a Dear John letter while she was in the hospital with her legs burned to a crisp?”
Luke had to swallow and wait a moment before he spoke. “Okay, we have to get something straight here. You have to stop quoting the lies that this town believes. The David who you think jilted Edilean Harcourt is my grandfather, and the ‘floozy’ he impregnated is my grandmother, and the resulting child is my mother.”
“Oh,” Jocelyn said as she sat down heavily on a chair. “Your grandfather courted her ‘ardently’ then he—”
“Before you say any more, I think you should know that there was another David and he was killed in World War II.”
“Another David?” Jocelyn whispered. “Miss Edi was in love with two men named David?”
“I’ve spent the last couple of days with my grandfather and—”
“He’s alive? Miss Edi’s David is alive?”
“Very much so. And he’s still married to Mary Alice, and they’re still mad about each other, and he gave me the first part of the story Miss Edi sent to a friend. I haven’t read it, but Gramps says it tells what happened to her.”
Jocelyn could only stare at him.
“If you don’t get busy mashing that lavender up, we’re going to be here all night and never get these cookies done.”
“I want to see the story now,” Joce whispered.
“No,” Luke said firmly. “If I can delay reading it, so can you. We’re going to finish all this, make some money off these things, then you’re going to read it to me while I put in the herb garden.”
Slowly, Jocelyn stood up and began on the lavender again. “I want to know every word that you know. You can’t leave out even one detail.”
“It’s not much and I had to play golf with Granpa Dave to learn even what I was told. I hate golf.”
“But you love fishing.”
“Don’t you start on me too!” Luke almost shouted, then said, “Sorry. I’ve had it for days. Grandparent jealousy.”
“So what did you learn?”
Luke didn’t say anything for a few moments. “Why is all this so important to you?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Sometimes I think my whole life has been a lie. But even if it was the truth I don’t understand it. Until I met Miss Edi, I had my grandparents, and Granpa used to spend hours telling me about my mother—but he didn’t believe in whitewashing the stories. Granma used to chide him for talking to me as though I were an adult.
“Anyway, my mother spent her life in private schools. She could play the piano well enough to perform at concerts. She was beautiful, intelligent, and popular. She had dozens of suitors, but she turned down every marriage proposal, until my grandmother said she thought her daughter was never going to marry. But you know what she did?”
“I have no idea.”
“She fell madly in love with the handyman who worked for the country club where my grandparents were members. He quit school in the tenth grade, and never opened a book. He lived in a one-bedroom shanty and spent every penny he had on motorcycles. My grandparents did everything they could think of to get her away from the man, but my mother said she’d run away from home if they didn’t give her their blessing—and a place to live.”
Jocelyn paused as she scooped out the crushed lavender and began measuring ingredients for her cookies.
“By that time my mother was already thirty-three years old and her parents knew she had her own ideas. They gave in and pretended they were thrilled that their beautiful daughter was marrying the handyman. They even acted like they didn’t mind when the newlyweds moved in with them. My granddad got my father a job at his insurance company, and my dad went to work every day, but he wasn’t any good at it. But he certainly did love my mother.”
“And that’s what counted,” Luke said.
“Yes, but still…My grandparents never said anything bad about my father, but I knew how they felt about him. Anyway, four years after my parents were married, I was born and five years later my mother died of an aneurism. When I was nine, my grandparents died in a car wreck and…”
“And that left you alone with your dad.”
“Yeah,” she said as she looked back at the cookies. “And he went back to what he had been. No more neckties for him. No more attempts at a nine-to-five job. My grandparents left the house to me, and what little money there was, was administered by the family lawyer. It was gone by the time I was twelve.”
Jocelyn smiled. “But by then I’d met Miss Edi, and some of the loneliness of my life was relieved.”