The Letter. Elizabeth Blackwell
Cassie wondered if that was true. Because it seemed that Lydia had once had something more. Why had she run from it? Had something terrible happened to send her back to Henry and the safety he offered? Or had this letter been sent after Lydia was already married?
“Did you find it?”
Cassie jumped at the sound of Lydia’s voice. Find it? How did she know?
Lydia stepped off the bottom of the stairs and walked over to Cassie “So, what do you think?”
The cloth. Lydia was talking about her quilt, not the letter. Cassie realized her hands were still pressed against the top of the plastic storage container.
“Um…” Cassie stammered.
Lydia’s eyes narrowed when she saw where Cassie was standing.
“What are you doing?” she asked quickly.
“Uh, well, I thought there might be some more fabric samples inside.” Cassie stared at Lydia, waiting for her grandmother to ask the question.
Lydia briskly pushed the box to the side of the table, her eyes focused downward. “There’s nothing in there to interest you.”
This was it. Her opening. All Cassie had to do was ask, but she knew it was pointless. If she couldn’t get a straight answer about her own parents’ death, how could she expect Lydia to confess a long-ago love affair?
Lydia walked over to the bolts of cloth leaning against the wall and pulled out a pale pink floral. It was classic Lydia behavior—move right on through an awkward moment and refuse to acknowledge it ever happened. The brief opportunity to ask about the letter had passed.
“This is nice, don’t you think?” Lydia murmured.
Maybe for a six-year-old girl’s room, thought Cassie. “Whatever you think works best,” she said. “I really don’t care.”
She saw the hurt flit across Lydia’s face, saw her shoulders slump inside her hand-knit sweater. Cassie was used to being direct, both in the office and in court. She didn’t have time for subtlety. But she sometimes forgot that Lydia was her grandmother, not a plaintiff.
“I mean, the pink is fine,” Cassie said “Just keep it light and soothing—nothing too bright.”
Lydia nodded and fingered the fabric “Understated.”
“Yeah.”
“I can do understated, believe it or not.” Lydia smiled, and Cassie started to laugh. Understated was not exactly Lydia’s specialty. The quilts that adorned the beds and walls of her house were riotous mixtures of clashing colors and swirling patterns. Some paintings Lydia had done years ago hung in the front hallway, landscapes filled with bright red trees and vibrant purple grass. Lydia’s life might have been drab, but her artwork certainly wasn’t.
As Lydia pulled out the pink fabric and spread it out on her worktable, Cassie’s eyes wandered back to the box that had been pushed aside. The letter itself might be hidden, but its contents had been released. The words still floated through her mind, imprinted on her memory.
Without you I’m lost.
Cassie knew the letter would haunt her until she found out the truth. Lydia—out of loyalty to Henry—would never tell her. But someone else might. Her aunt Nell, Lydia’s sister, had grown up with Lydia and Henry. Nell had witnessed their early years together. Maybe she’d know what had happened to the man who had loved Lydia so deeply.
Chapter 2
Lydia
Lydia Prescott couldn’t remember the first time she met Henry Armstrong. He seemed to have always been there, in the background, waiting for her to notice him. All her life she would wonder how a connection so strong could have started so unremarkably, how their first encounter could have passed without a foreshadowing of the bond that was to come.
Then again, Lydia had blocked out many things during those first months in Knox Junction. The move had passed in a blur. Packing up the house in a flurry of boxes. Mother’s tears as she whispered rebukes to Father about disgracing the family. Father telling Lydia she couldn’t go back to school to say goodbye. Filing behind her parents through cavernous Union Station in Chicago on the way to the train south. Something had gone wrong with Father’s job, something shameful, and now they were starting over. Lydia was eleven, old enough to know not to ask questions. Faced with a family teetering on the edge of disaster, she was determined to help her parents maintain a pretense of happiness. Lydia’s younger sister, Nell, then only eight, didn’t yet possess the mental sensors to pick up their parents’ simmering tension.
“What’s our new house like?” Nell asked, after Mother had settled them in their private train compartment. Lydia took this as a good sign; surely the money couldn’t all be gone if they were still able to travel like this.
“I don’t know,” Mother said in the clipped tone that had become her normal speech pattern “I haven’t seen it.”
“It’s very nice,” said Father “It looks like a farmhouse. Lots of room to play outside.”
“Is there a beach?” Nell asked.
“No,” Mother said.
“It’s in the middle of cornfields,” Lydia explained. “Nowhere near Lake Michigan.”
Nell’s eyes began to water. “But I like the beach,” she whined.
Their old house—the place Lydia still thought of as home, although she knew it would have to be sold—had been only two blocks from the beach. Lydia and Nell had spent the summer digging with shovels, searching for buried treasure. They’d walked the tree-lined streets of Winnetka, the tranquil Chicago suburb that felt like a small town, albeit one where all the residents could afford sprawling brick or wood-frame homes with wraparound porches and separate entrances for the staff in back. Winnetka was where couples moved when they wanted to raise their families somewhere safe and idyllic. Not a place where families suddenly left in disgrace. Lydia’s friends had told her they’d write, but she knew they wouldn’t. Nell was having a harder time realizing that their life there was over.
“Does the house have an attic?” A favorite winter activity had been to rummage through Mother’s old trunks of clothes, playing dress-up.
“I don’t know,” said Mother, staring out the window.
“I don’t think so,” Father said. “But there’s a pretty room I think you’ll like. With pink flowered wallpaper.”
“I don’t want pink!” Nell began to wail “I want blue!”
Lydia reached around her sister’s shoulders and squeezed tight. “I’ll take the pink room if you want,” she said. She watched her parents for their reaction. True to form, Mother hardly paid attention and Father gave her an approving smile.
Still, brave as Lydia tried to be, she couldn’t hide her disappointment when the train pulled into Knox Junction, her new hometown. It was a creation of the railroads, a small gathering of buildings that sprang up at the intersection of the lines running north to Chicago and west to Des Moines. It had begun with a hotel, expanded to a few shops and houses, but never developed into anything more than a minor transportation center in the midst of farmland. Knox Junction might call itself a town, but there was only one paved road, and tractors outnumbered cars.
Lydia watched Mother’s face crumple with disappointment as they slowed down at the station. She forced the muscles around her mouth to prop up her lips in an approximation of a smile.
“We’re home, aren’t we, Father?” Lydia said.
Father rubbed his hand over the top of her head. If hiding her fear and anger would keep her family together, if pretending happiness could somehow erase the shame hovering over them like a fog, Lydia was determined to put up a brave front.
“Yes,” said Father. “Home.”