Lavender Morning (3 page)

stories with Miss Edi’s old ones.

In London Edi had shown Joce where she’d met David—no last name given—the man she’d loved and

lost. “There was only one man for me, and he was it,” she said as she looked at the big white marble building

where they’d met.

By that time, Jocelyn had heard the story a dozen times but she never tired of it. “One love.” “A love for all

time.” “A forever love.” These were terms she’d heard many times. “Hold out for it,” Miss Edi said. “Wait for

that kind of love,” she advised, and Jocelyn had always agreed. One true love.

Besides the pleasure of the time they spent together, as she grew older, Jocelyn often aided Miss Edi with

the charities she administered. Joce did research and sometimes even traveled to see them. Three times she

discovered frauds and as a result, she developed friendships with a couple of men in the local police department.

But what Miss Edi never told was that the money she gave away wasn’t hers. She carefully concealed the

fact that the money came from Alexander McDowell of Edilean, Virginia. In all their years of friendship, neither

his name nor the town’s was ever mentioned.

When Jocelyn started going to a small college not too far away, Edi had been lost without her. At first,

Jocelyn had been so busy with her weekend job and all she’d had to do to put herself through school, she

couldn’t even call. They e-mailed and texted often—Miss Edi loved any new technology that came out—but it

wasn’t the same.

After six months of college, Miss Edi started paying Jocelyn’s tuition so she wouldn’t have to spend all her

time at the school. This was done without the knowledge of her father or the “Steps,” as they called the two

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3/16/2010 the school. This was done without the knowledge of her father

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html or the “Steps,” as they called the two

skinny, blonde twins. Edi didn’t think her father would object, but she didn’t want to risk it. And she especially

didn’t want to risk that the stepdaughters would hit her up for money. Although people often spoke of how

beautiful the girls were, Edi didn’t find them so. Several times they’d shown up at Edi’s house when Jocelyn

wasn’t there, and they’d looked around her house as though they were trying to guess the value of everything.

Edi disliked them as much as she loved Jocelyn.

Jocelyn graduated from college with a degree in English literature and got part-time work at the same

school as a teaching assistant. And through a friend of Miss Edi’s, she got freelance employment helping authors

research the biographies they were trying to write. Joce was excellent at both jobs, and she especially loved

spending her days in libraries, buried in old files.

When Edi realized that the little pains in her chest were more than just aging, she started thinking about

Jocelyn’s future. If Edi died and left everything to Jocelyn, as she planned to do, she had no doubt that the Steps

would do what they could to take it from her.

Edi wanted to leave Jocelyn with a great deal more than just her possessions. She wanted to leave her with

a future. No. What she really wanted was to leave her a
family.
Jocelyn had spent most of her life living with old

people, first her grandparents, then Miss Edi. Edi had taken everything she knew about Jocelyn into

consideration, then she’d spent a long time and done a lot of work to figure out how to give Jocelyn what she

needed.

Now, she closed the lid on the book of memorabilia and slowly made her way to the kitchen. What

dreadful thing had the little nurse left her for dinner? Probably something with the word
taco
in the title. When she

heard the overnight delivery truck pull into the drive to pick up the package for Helen, she smiled.

As Edi opened the refrigerator, she thought that the best thing about all this was that she wasn’t going to be

around when Jocelyn found out that Edi had…Well, not really lied, but she’d omitted an awful lot about herself.

Since Jocelyn loved to ask Edi about her long life, it hadn’t been easy to skip years and brush over the whole

truth, but Edi had managed it.

She pulled out the big salad that had been left for her and put it on the table. Jocelyn wasn’t going to be

happy when she was told certain things, but Edi had faith that Jocelyn would search to find the answers to

everything.

Smiling, Edi thought how her life plan for Jocelyn excluded those too-tall, too-skinny stepsisters who

paraded around with next to no clothes on. That those girls had become “famous”—a term Miss Edi detested—

said much too much about the modern world.

Jocelyn didn’t think Edi knew it, but the young woman had given up a great deal to look after an old

woman, and Edi wanted to make it up to her. What Edi wanted to give Jocelyn was the
truth.
But she wasn’t

just going to
tell
her everything, she was going to make Jocelyn search it out, work for it, something she was so

very good at doing.

“And please forgive me,” Edi whispered. That was her most fervent hope, that Jocelyn would forgive her

for so many secrets kept for so very long. “I made a promise, a vow,” she whispered, “and I honored it.”

In her mind, she began composing the letter she was going to leave with her will.

1

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J
OCELYN GLANCED AT herself in the hotel mirror for the last time. This is it, she thought. This is the

moment. Her instinct was to put her nightgown back on and climb back into bed. Wonder what was on HBO

during the day? Did this hotel have HBO? Maybe she should look for a hotel that did.

She took a deep breath, looked back at the mirror, and straightened her shoulders. What would Miss Edi

say if she saw her slumping like this? At the thought of Miss Edi, tears again came to her eyes, but she blinked

them away. It had been four months since the funeral, but she still missed her friend so much she sometimes

didn’t know how to function. Every day she wanted to call Miss Edi and tell her something that had happened,

but each day she discovered afresh that she was gone.

“I can do this,” Joce said as she looked in the mirror. “I really and truly can do this.” She was dressed

conservatively, in a skirt and an ironed, white cotton blouse, just the way Miss Edi had taught her. Her shoulderlength, dark blonde hair was pulled back with a headband, and she had on very little makeup. All she knew

about the town of Edilean, Virginia, was that Miss Edi had grown up there, so Jocelyn didn’t want to arrive in

jeans and a tube top and shock the locals.

She picked up her car keys, grabbed the handle of her big black suitcase, and rolled it to the door. Tonight

she’d be sleeping in her own house. It was a house she’d never seen, never even heard about until a lawyer told

Joce she’d inherited it, but it was still hers.

Just days ago, she’d sat in the lawyer’s office in Boca Raton, Florida, dressed all in black and wearing the

pearls Miss Edi had given her. It was months after Miss Edi’s funeral, but her will stated that it was to be read on

the first day of May after she died. If she’d died on June the first, that would have meant waiting eleven months.

But she’d died in her sleep just into the new year, so Jocelyn had had time to grieve before facing the ordeal of

hearing what was in the will.

Beside her sat her father, his wife beside him, and next to her were the Steps, Belinda and Ashley. But now

they were better known as Bell and Ash. Due to their mother’s indefatigable efforts, they’d become models—

and the media had loved the idea of there being two of them. In the last ten years they’d been on the covers of all

the top magazines. They’d traveled all over the world and modeled the clothes of every designer. When they

walked through a mall, teenage girls followed them, their mouths open in awe. And males of every age looked at

them with lust.

But for all their fame, to Jocelyn’s mind, the Steps hadn’t changed since they were all kids together. As

children, the twins loved to make up things they said Joce had done to them, then tell their mother. Louisa used

to glare at her stepdaughter and say, “Wait ’til your father gets home.” But when Gary Minton returned, he’d just

shake his head and do whatever he could to stay out of the turmoil. His objective in life was to have a good time,

not to referee his three children. He’d retreat to his garage workshop, his wife and his tall stepdaughters trailing

behind him. Jocelyn would leave and go to Miss Edi.

“So what did the old witch leave you?” Bell asked as she stretched her long neck to see Jocelyn at the far

end of the row of chairs.

For Joce, it had never been difficult to tell the twins apart. Bell was the smarter of the two, the leader, while

Ash was quieter and did whatever her sister wanted her to. Since that usually meant saying something nasty to

gain a laugh, Ash was often the one to stay away from.

“Her love,” Jocelyn said, refusing to look at her stepsister. Bell was on her third husband now, and her

mother was hinting that that marriage was about to fail. “Poor thing,” her mother said. “Those men just don’t

understand my darling baby.”

“They don’t understand her belief that she can have affairs even if she’s married,” Joce muttered under her

breath.

“What was that?” Louisa asked sharply, sounding as though she were about to say “Wait ’til your father

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gets home.” The woman couldn’t seem to understand that her “babies” would turn thirty this year and that their

fifteen minutes of fame was already on the downward spiral. Just last week Joce had read that two eighteenyear-old girls were “the new Bell and Ash.”

Jocelyn didn’t begrudge the Steps their fame—or the fortune that they seemed to have spent. To her, they

were just the same: always bad tempered, jealous of everyone, and disdainful of anyone who wasn’t in the gossip

rags every week. When they were kids, they’d been extremely envious of Jocelyn because she spent so much

time at “that rich old bat’s house.” They refused to believe that Miss Edi didn’t give Joce bags full of money

every week. “If she doesn’t give you things, then why do you go over there?”

“Because I
like
her!” Joce said again and again. “No. I love her.”

“Ahhhh,” they would say in that tone that was meant to say they knew everything.

Joce would just shut the door to her bedroom in their faces, or, better yet, she’d go to Miss Edi’s house.

But now Miss Edi was gone forever, and Jocelyn was requested to be at the reading of the will. The

lawyer, a man who looked to be older than Miss Edi, came in a side door and seemed startled at the sight of the

five of them. “I was told it would just be Miss Jocelyn,” he said, glancing at her, then looking at her father as

though demanding an explanation.

“I, uh…,” Gary Minton started. The years had been kind to him, and he was still a handsome man. With his

dark hair with just a touch of gray at the temples, and his dark brows, he looked much younger than he was.

“We take care of our own,” said his wife from beside him. It was as though the years Gary’s face didn’t

carry were etched on his wife’s. Sun, cigarettes, and wind had weathered her skin so she looked like a dried-up

mummy.

“You don’t mind if we’re here, do you?” Bell said in a purring voice to the lawyer. Both twins were wearing

micro-miniskirts, their famous long legs stretched out until they nearly touched his desk. The little tops they wore

were open almost to the waist.

Mr. Johnson glanced at them over his half glasses and gave a bit of a frown. He seemed to want to tell them

to put their clothes on. He looked back at Jocelyn, noted her plain black suit with the crisp white blouse under it,

the pearls around her neck, and gave a little smile. “If Miss Jocelyn approves, you may remain.”

“Oh, la tee da,” Ash said. “
Miss
Jocelyn. Miss college-educated Jocelyn. Will you read a book to us?”

“I’m sure someone will have to,” Jocelyn said without taking her eyes off the lawyer. “They can stay.

They’ll find out everything anyway.”

“All right then.” He looked down at the papers. “Basically, Edilean Harcourt left you, Jocelyn Minton,

everything.”

“And how much is that?” Bell asked quickly.

Mr. Johnson turned to her. “It’s not my business to tell anything more. Whatever Miss Jocelyn tells you is

her concern, but I will say nothing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” He picked up a brown paper,

string-tied folder and handed it across the desk to Jocelyn. “All the information is in there, and you may look

through the documents in your own time.”

When he remained standing, Joce also stood. “Thank you,” she said as she took the portfolio. “I’ll read it

later.”

“I would suggest that you read it when you’re alone. In privacy. Edilean wrote some things that I think she

meant only for you to see.”

“Everything to her?” Ash asked, at last understanding what had been said. “But what about us? We used to

visit the old woman all the time.”

Mr. Johnson’s old face moved into a bit of a smile. “How could I have forgotten?” He took a key out of his