“But this doesn’t say anything about a couple,” she murmured. “It only says ‘two of Dimity’s neighbors.’ ‘Elderly… not terribly coherent…’” Suddenly she looked up, her eyes sparkling. “I think I know who you’re looking for.”
17
“The Pym sisters?” I exclaimed. “The sock-knitting Pym sisters? Are they still alive?”
“And kicking,” Emma replied. “Decorously, of course.” She went on to say that Ruth and Louise Pym were the identical twin daughters of a country parson. No one knew how old they were, not even the vicar, but most guesses placed them over the century mark. They had never married and had spent all of their lives in Finch. “I think they know more about what goes on in the village than most people would like to believe,” Emma concluded. “I’m sure they’re the ones who gave the photograph to your mother, and if they didn’t, they’ll know who did.”
“How do I get to meet them?”
“Invite them to tea, of course. They’ll be dying to meet you. I’ll ask them for you, if you’d like.”
“Yes, please. And you’ll come, too, won’t you?”
“Why don’t I come early to help you set up?”
“That would be terrific.”
Emma accompanied me to the mudroom, where I donned my jacket and gave Ham a last few pats.
“You’ll have to come over when the sun is shining so I can show you the grounds.” Emma held Ham’s collar while I opened the door. “Be sure to let me know if you find out anything about those missing pages, and I’ll call as soon as I’ve set things up with Ruth and Louise.”
I unfurled my umbrella, then reached out to clasp Emma’s hand. “Thank you. I don’t know if you realize how much this means to me, but—”
“I think I do.” She smiled. “Derek and I loved Dimity, too.”
* * *
Bill was asleep in the study when I got back, his feet up on the ottoman, the date-filled notebook dangling from his fingertips. I woke him up by dropping Reginald in his lap, then sat on the ottoman and repeated everything Emma had told me that morning. I showed him the stubs in the photo album and he shared my disappointment, but agreed that Willis, Sr., might come through for us yet. He was delighted by the thought of meeting the Pym sisters, but the mention of tea made us both realize that we were ready for lunch. Greatly daring, I tried a spinach soufflé. It was flawless.
I couldn’t bring myself to face the correspondence after lunch. The things I had learned about my mother had spooked me and I shied away from learning any more. True to his word, Bill soldiered on in silence while I returned scattered archive boxes to their proper places on the shelves. I was sitting at the desk, paging through the photo album when he spoke up.
“Listen!”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s stopped raining!”
I could scarcely believe my ears. The steady drumming of the rain had been replaced by a stillness as heavy as Devonshire cream, and when I leaned forward to look through the windows I saw that a dense fog had settled in the storm’s wake.
Bill closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, then walked over to have a look for himself. “Ah, the glories of English weather.”
“I’ll bet it’s a big relief to Derek and the vicar. You think it’ll clear by tomorrow?”
Bill shrugged. “Something tells me that we’re going up that hill tomorrow even if it snows. You have many virtues, my dear Miss Shepherd, but patience is not one of them.”
“I’m always halfway up the block before I know where I’m going,” I admitted. “My mother used to say—” I broke off and looked out at the fog again. “I’ve been meaning to thank you, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For believing me when I told you about the journal, even before you’d seen it with your own eyes. If you had come to me with a story like that, I would have—”
“Wait,” said Bill. “Let me guess.” He put his hands on his hips and his nose in the air and launched into what I feared was an accurate imitation of me at my indignant worst. “‘Bill,’” he said with a sniff. “‘What kind of a fool do you take me for? I don’t believe in ghosts!’” He relaxed his stance, then raised an eyebrow. “Did I come close?”
“A direct hit.” I winced. “I’ve been pretty impossible, haven’t I?”
“No more than I,” said Bill, “and you had a much better excuse. Finding yourself alone in a very strange situation, I can understand why you’d be on guard.”
“On guard, maybe, but not hostile,” I said. “I don’t know—maybe I acted that way because I was confused. I didn’t understand why you were being so… friendly.” I dusted an invisible speck from the edge of the desk. “To tell you the truth, I still don’t understand it.”
“Can’t you just accept it?” he asked.
“It’s hard for me to accept something I don’t understand,” I said.
“Like your mother?” he said gently.
I planted my hands on my hips and shot a fiery glare in his direction, then realized what I looked like and sank back in the chair, deflated. “Yes, like my mother.” I pointed to a picture in Dimity’s album. “That’s her. That’s my mom.”
Bill put one hand on the back of my chair and watched over my shoulder as I paged through the rest of the album. It was filled with pictures of my mother, in uniform and in civilian dress, her dark hair pulled back into a bun or braided in coils over her ears. “She wore it that way to keep her ears warm,” I said. “She said that coal rationing in London during the war meant chilly offices. She had beautiful hair, long and silky. She used to let me brush it before I went to bed, and every night I prayed that my curls would straighten out and that I’d wake up in the morning with hair just like hers.” I ran a hand through my unruly mop. “It didn’t work.”
“You have her mouth, though,” said Bill. “You have her smile.”
“Do I?” The very thought brought a smile to my lips. It had been a long time since I had talked to anyone about my mother, and now it seemed as though I couldn’t stop talking about her. “Yes, I guess I do. See this one, where she’s making a face? She used to make that same face at me, wrinkle her nose and cross her eyes, and it killed me every time, just laid me out flat, giggling. We used to have pillow fights, too, and she’d chase me all over the apartment until Mrs. Frankenberg banged on her ceiling with a broom handle. She’d made up this whole set of holidays. I was in kindergarten before I realized that no one else celebrated Chocolate Chip Tuesday.” I turned the page. “Other mothers seemed like cardboard cutouts compared to her.”
“Were you in any of her classes?” Bill asked.
“Never. She knew what kids could be like, so she enrolled me in another school entirely.”
“PTA nights must have been tricky.”
“Tricky? Try being in two places at once sometime. But she always managed to take care of everyone.” I closed the album and sighed. “Everyone but herself.”
“Lori—” Bill began, but the telephone cut him off. He snatched it up before it could ring again.
“Yes?” he said. “How are you, Father? Good, good. Of course I’m behaving myself. You don’t think I want to go through that again, do you? Yes, in some ways she’s very much like my old headmaster, though she lacks his little mustache, of course…. Yes, she’s been hard at work on the correspondence.” Bill glanced at me, then turned away. “I’m sorry, Father, but I don’t think she can come to the phone right now. Would it be possible for you to call—”
“It’s all right, Bill,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
“One moment please, Father.” Bill covered the receiver with his hand and said to me, “This can wait.”