“Did it ever occur to you that it might be painful for me to think about what was, in comparison to what is now, Eve?”
When Grandmother dropped the “honey pie,” things were getting serious. Eve gave herself a mental smack. “I’m sorry. But I was talking to a docent there-it’s open to the public now, part of the Ashmere Trust-and I had this moment of weirdness, knowing I was hearing more about my family from a stranger than I’d ever heard from you or Uncle Roy or even Nana Calvert.”
“Who was it?”
“A lady named Adele Pierce. She said she used to babysit Dad and Uncle Roy when they were kids. Do you remember her?”
“Adele. Adele.” Her grandmother sounded puzzled. “Good heavens, you don’t mean Adele Crosby?”
“She said her name was Pierce. Her married name, I suppose.”
“She did marry a Pierce, now that I think of it. No wonder you learned a lot…that girl was the worst gossip I ever met. She could talk the hind leg off a donkey.”
“And yet, when I wanted her to talk, she wouldn’t. There was a photograph there. She gave it to me. It showed Uncle Roy with his arm around Mom, and Dad standing off to the side. Did Mom date Uncle Roy before she got together with Dad?”
“When was it taken?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t dated. But Mom had hair down to her waist, parted in the middle. And platform shoes. So I’d guess early seventies. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen.”
“I have no memory of such a picture, or why it would be at Mirabel instead of in one of our photo albums.”
“Uncle Roy donated copies of some pictures to the trust. Adele gave me the original, though. Maybe it got mixed in by mistake.”
“Maybe. Your mother was good friends with both my boys, Eve. They hung around together like the Three Musketeers, until Gibson and then Roy went off to college.”
Her tone was dismissive, as though the picture were insignificant. Maybe it was. But there was something in the expression of that boy who had become her dad-some hurt, some pain that the camera had caught-that made her reluctant to let it go. And there had been that swift change of subject on Adele’s part, too.
“Honey pie, the girls are at the door for our book club meeting. I need to go.”
“Bye, Grandmother. I’ll call you next week.”
“You do that. I want to hear more about your young man.”
Eve hung up with a smile, and went to get her notebook out of her handbag. Still no sign of Mitch, and it was ten past six. There must have been an accident on the freeway. Well, if he wasn’t here by six-thirty, she’d call the restaurant and move their reservation out another half hour.
Adele Crosby Pierce answered her phone on the fourth ring, about when Eve expected it to jump to voice mail.
“Oh, hello, dear. How nice of you to call.”
She didn’t seem bothered that Eve had tracked down her phone number. But then, her mind lived in a different era, when people called to get a recipe, not to steal a person’s identity or stalk them.
“I wanted to thank you again for showing us around Mirabel, and for giving me this picture of my family,” she began.
“You’re most welcome. I love to introduce people to the past, you know. And today it was particularly lovely, since it was your past.”
Nothing like plunging right in. Eve took a fortifying breath. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, Adele. This picture that you gave me. Is there some kind of story behind it?”
Silence.
Eve went on, “It seemed to startle you when I asked questions about it, so I wondered if perhaps you would rather talk about it in private. That’s the reason for my call.”
“That’s very considerate of you, dear. You’re the second person who’s asked about it.”
“Oh? Who was the other?” Uncle Roy? Mitch?
“I didn’t catch his name. He said he worked for your television station, though. A terribly nice young man.”
She must be referring to Dylan’s call, earlier, and gotten it muddled up. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d tell me about the picture, that’s all.”
Another pause. “You know I abhor gossip of any kind, dear.”
Eve thought about what Grandmother would think of this, and smothered a smile. “So do I. Though giving me your memories of my family isn’t gossip, is it?”
“No, I suppose not. Yet, I don’t want to hurt anyone. It wasn’t dear Charlotte’s fault that Loreen couldn’t talk to her. Or Isabel’s either, for that matter. But I was so close to those boys, and even in those days, they would have sent her away anyway.”
“Sent who away?”
“Loreen, of course. But I’m not going to say any more. It isn’t my place. You take that picture over to your Uncle Roy and ask him to explain.”
“Uncle Roy?”
“I’ll bet you fifty dollars that picture got put in the donation pile on purpose. So it was out of the house. You go ask him.”
“But-”
“I’m no gossip. A man should clean up his own messes, in my opinion, and this one’s been a mess for nearly thirty years.”
With that, she hung up.
Eve stared at the receiver in her hand, utterly mystified. “It’s a picture,” she said to it, and hung it up. When she did so, it beeped, signifying that a call had come in while she’d been talking. She pressed the playback button.
“Eve, it’s Mitch.” He sounded agitated. She’d been right, then. He’d probably driven past a wreck on the freeway. “I’m sorry, but I have to cancel our plans tonight. Something’s come up with the deal, and it’s important I figure out the best way to fight this fire. I’m looking at flights to New York right now. I’ll fly up there on my own dime if I have to. I don’t know if…whether you…” A sigh of frustration. “I feel like shit. I’ll do my best to straighten this out. Goodbye.”
The answering machine winked off, leaving Eve sitting in her best tangerine dress with no evening, no answers and most important…no Mitch.
Eve Best, you’re not going to take this sitting down.
Within sixty seconds, she’d grabbed her bag and car keys and was backing the car out of the driveway. If he booked a flight online, she had maybe twenty minutes while he scrolled through his options. Add ten to that if he checked out of the hotel. If the traffic gods smiled on her, she could get to the Ritz before he walked out.
The time for sitting around and waiting was long gone, if it had ever existed. She’d already decided that she was tired of living a life on the surface, endlessly talking about things that mattered instead of actually taking a risk and experiencing them.
Well, she was going to take a risk now. If Mitch got on that plane, something deep inside told her he wouldn’t come back. Okay, so he hadn’t responded quite the way she’d expected him to when she’d brought up a future together. She could handle that. Hadn’t she done a whole show on the caveman mystique? She and the girls had even turned it into a catchphrase: the “cave moment.” That crucial juncture in a relationship when a guy pulled away and went into his cave to think or flee or whatever they did when they faced the naked truth of a woman’s feelings. Sometimes he never came out. And sometimes he had to be coaxed out with the warmth of a good fire.
Eve had plenty of fire, and she wasn’t about to let Mitch fly out of her life without getting one more taste of it.
Twenty-three minutes later, she pulled up to the front doors and leaped out.
“Hey, aren’t you Eve Best?” The valet looked about twenty, so Eve pulled out all the stops in the smile she turned on him.
“How sweet of you to recognize me,” she said. “Would you mind looking after my car for just a moment?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, blinking at the sheer wattage of the smile, and she tossed him the car keys and a tip.
“Thank you, sugar.” God, she was turning into her grandmother. But hey, whatever worked.