Lavender Morning (25 page)

and I made a pact that we’d never, never say that word to him, and we’ve kept our pledge. Please tell me you

haven’t ruined it.”

“Six months old,” she said, smiling as she went into the kitchen. Every surface was covered with the most

beautiful cupcakes imaginable. There were flowers and insects and animals. About a dozen of them had drawings

of high heels and dresses on them.

“Let me guess,” Luke said. “Sara did these.”

“Right on. She wanted me to make some cakes shaped like high heels, but it would take too much time.”

“What about these? Did you do them?” He held up a cupcake with a puppy’s face in brown and white.

“Tess did.”

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“Tess?” Luke asked. “Tess who works for Ramsey? Tess who disdains anything cute or sentimental?”

“The very one. I think your dad wants to open a business with her.”

Luke sat down on a chair and stared at Jocelyn. “My father and Tess? But the two of them are bosses.

They like to tell everyone what to do and how to do it. My father never gets along with anyone he isn’t in charge

of. And Tess isn’t much better. She runs Rams’s office like she’s the captain of the ship.”

Joce shrugged. “I have no idea how they work together, but they do. You should see them together.

They’re like a machine. If Tess runs out of blue icing, she doesn’t say a word, but the next time she reaches for

the blue, your dad has filled a tube for her.”

“My dad? He made icing?”

“And filled the big pastry tubes. After the first day, he and Tess spent about two hours on the Internet and

ordered a huge amount of tubes and bags and…well, everything.”

“I wish I’d been here to see it.”

“So where were you?” Joce asked as she poured batter into paper liners.

“Better let me do that,” Luke said. “I don’t want my dad to show me up.” As he washed his hands he

looked at the cakes on the counters. They really were beautiful and quite professional-looking.

“I’m waiting,” Joce said.

“Sorry. I keep looking at everything.”

“No, I mean I’m waiting for you to tell me where you’ve been.”

“Well, Mom…,” he said, trying to make it sound as though Joce was his mother. But she didn’t smile.

“Show me how to do this.”

Joce showed him how to use the bowl and a spatula to fill the liners, then how to put the pan into the oven

and set the timer. “We have to get all these into the boxes your father ordered and you can talk while we work.”

“Why do you think Miss Edi never told you about Edilean?”

“I don’t know,” Joce said, and she could hear the hurt in her own voice. “She told me so much about the

rest of her life. I could write a book about her years with Dr. Brenner, but she left out everything about the town

where she grew up.”

“She said nothing about her childhood?”

“She told me she grew up in a little town in the South but that was all. She said her life didn’t begin until she

met David. And until I came here, I thought David was killed in World War II, but Sara said he jilted her. Miss

Edi returned from the war with her legs a mass of scars and the man she loved had married some floozy he’d

impregnated.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Luke said as he filled a bakery box with a dozen cupcakes.

“What does that mean? You sound as though I’ve said something horrible. I’m just repeating what I was

told.”

“Good ol’ Edilean gossip. Where do I put this?” He held up a box filled with cupcakes.

“I thought we’d stack them in the hallway. I need a place to put the big mortar so I can start grinding.”

“You know that there are machines that can do that,” Luke said.

“Sure, but who wants one? Not me.”

She could see that Luke liked that answer as he took the box into the hallway and returned with the big

mortar and pestle, then got the baskets of lavender.

“I think you have something to tell me, but you’re hesitating,” Joce said, “so out with it.”

“If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?”

“Writing biographies,” she said instantly.

Luke looked at her in surprise.

“When I was a junior in college, Miss Edi said that a friend of hers wanted to write a biography on her

great-aunt who’d been a suffragette, but she didn’t have any idea how to do the research. She didn’t know a

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great-au

3/16/2010 nt who’d been a suffragette, but she didn’t have any idea how

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html to do the research. She didn’t know a

primary source from an encyclopedia.”

“Primary source,” Luke said as he packed more cakes in boxes. “Letters, unpublished documents, that sort

of thing?”

“Exactly. I spent spring break with the woman, and we had a wonderful week going through old trunks and

rummaging through the attics of some of her relatives.”

“Did she write her book?”

“Yes and no,” Joce said as the timer went off and she took the cupcakes out of the oven. “She wrote it, but

she couldn’t find a publisher, so it just made the rounds of her relatives, but that was beside the point. It was

great to search and dig and find out about the life of a person. In her case she found out that her great-aunt had

done nothing more than invite the suffragettes to tea at her house, but when her husband heard what she’d done,

that was the end of that. But still, I loved doing it.

“Afterward, Miss Edi encouraged me to write letters to some editors, and I got a few jobs helping research

some other books. It didn’t pay much but I enjoyed it greatly.”

“So who would you like to write about?”

“I…” Jocelyn hesitated, as though she was trying to get her courage up to tell him. “I thought about writing

about Miss Edi’s work with Dr. Brenner. He died a few years ago, but his wife has all the letters he wrote to her,

and she said she’d be glad to lend them to me. But she thinks I want to write about her husband, not his

assistant. That could cause problems.”

“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

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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.”

“All right,” Luke said after a moment. “Can you cook and listen?”

“Are you asking me if I can make cookies and listen to Miss Edi’s story? You have it with you?”

“I have chapter one.”

“Is it in book form?”

“I think so.” Luke gave a sigh. “I wasn’t kidding when I said that about grandfather jealousy. Granpa Dave

was the town doctor, so he knew everybody and he was always surrounded by people. If we went to a

Christmas party, half the town would be lined up to show him a boil or a wart, hoping to get free medical

advice.”

“And you were a loner, so you stayed out of the middle of the crowd,” Jocelyn said.

“Exactly. So now that Granpa Joe is dead and Granpa Dave is retired, he wants—”

“You to spend more time with him.”

“Right,” Luke said, “so that’s why I haven’t been around for a few days. Nana Mary Alice had some things

to say to me as well, so…”

“So they blackmailed you into staying at their house, and how much weight did you gain?”

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“None. I spent the days walking the damned golf course and carrying Granpa Dave’s bag. The thing must

weigh a hundred and fifty pounds.”

“So what did you get for it?”

Luke got up, went to his jacket that he’d tossed onto a chair, and pulled out a thick pile of paper, folded in

the middle, from his pocket. The papers were old and yellow and worn around the edges.

Jocelyn sat down across from him, a big bowl of lavender-colored batter in her arms. “Is that the story?”

“The first chapter. It seems that when Miss Edi was in the hospital recovering from her burned legs, she

wrote it all down and sent it to her friend Alexander McDowell.”

“The man whose money Miss Edi managed. The man who owed her something but no one will tell us what.

Have many people read the document?”

“I don’t think so. Uncle Alex gave the papers to my grandfather a long time ago. Gramps read them and

they’ve been in a safe-deposit box in Richmond ever since then.”

She looked at the papers Luke was holding as she gave the lavender batter a stir. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“My dear grandfather is going to give it to me chapter by chapter. I think I have to play more golf with

him.”

“Or take him fishing with you,” she said. “Or on a ride on one of your bikes.”

“How did—? Oh, you and Dad borrowed my truck. Anytime you want a ride, let me know.”

“Sure,” she said, but he didn’t seem to notice her hesitation.