Lavender Morning (31 page)

was pregnant. Old story, huh?”

“The oldest,” Jocelyn said.

“The difference is that my grandson was involved. Luke the Good. Luke the Honorable. He married her.

He told me that he liked her and he figured that love would come. More importantly, he said he wasn’t going to

desert the child she carried.”

Dr. Dave looked down at his cake. “I was the only one who had the nerve to suggest that he wait and get a

paternity test.” He looked back at Jocelyn. “Luke almost kicked me out of his life after that. I make jokes about

it, but it hurt.”

He took a breath. “Anyway, after the wedding, they honeymooned in New York. It’s where Ingrid wanted

to go, and Luke would have done anything for the woman carrying his child. They were there only a day when a

photographer handed her his card and asked her to come by to have some pictures made. Ingrid thought it was a

joke, but Luke had heard of the man, so he encouraged her to go. Of course Luke went with her to the photo

session.”

Dr. Dave paused to take a bite of his cake. “The pictures were so good that the photographer asked to

show them to some people, so Luke and Ingrid ended up staying in New York for two weeks. To make a long

story short, Ingrid was pretty much an overnight success. You know how it is. They want the girls as young as

they can get them.”

“I know more about the modeling world than I want to,” Jocelyn said.

“Luke needed to get back to his job, but Ingrid begged him to stay with her. I think that to Luke’s mind it

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had all been a lark. I think he thought that someday she’d show her model photos to their children.”

“Did she refuse to go back with him?” Jocelyn asked.

Dr. Dave jammed his fork into the cake. “No. I wish she had, but she didn’t. She may be a stupid girl, but

when it comes to herself, she is exceedingly clever. She packed her bags and said she was going with him, that

she loved him enough to give up everything for him. She just wanted one last assignment, so of course Luke said

yes. How could he refuse? So she went to her last photo shoot while Luke stayed at the hotel and changed all

the flights back home.

“The next time Luke saw Ingrid, she was in a hospital. She’d miscarried and she was saying that she was so

unhappy that she wanted to kill herself. Of course Luke couldn’t leave her there alone, and she was in so much

pain that he couldn’t drag her onto a plane.”

“What happened?” Joce asked.

“In the end, Luke stayed in New York with her. He lived and worked in the city.”

“Gardening in New York?”

“My grandson can do a lot of things, but whatever he does, he hates doing it in a city, but they lived there

together for about eighteen months. Then, one day, quite by accident, Luke found out that Ingrid hadn’t

miscarried. Her ‘last assignment’ in New York had been to get an abortion.”

“Luke must have been…” Joce was unable to think of words.

“He was devastated about the child, the loss of…the loss of everything in his life. He returned to Edilean

and started taking on gardening jobs. His paternal grandfather had left him an old house, and Luke fixed it up,

then he turned his hand to Edilean Manor.”

He looked at Jocelyn. “As far as I know, my grandson hadn’t seen or heard from Ingrid in nearly two

years.”

“Why didn’t he get a divorce?”

“If she filed papers, I’m sure Luke would have happily signed them, but he’s not the kind of man to present

a woman with divorce papers.”

“But now they’re back together.”

“Can I trust you?” Dr. Dave asked.

“Do you mean will I tell the entire town whatever you say to me?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Sometimes it’s good to be surrounded by people who’ve known you all your

life, but sometimes it’s horrible. From the beginning Luke has refused to talk to anyone about his disastrous

marriage. I think he feels he was just plain dumb to have fallen for someone with so little…” He shrugged.

“Soul? Lack of self-interest? I know what she’s like. I lived with two of them.”

“What you don’t know is what
I
am like.”

“You mean about you and Mary Alice Welsch?”

At that Dr. Dave smiled, and she could see Luke in forty-plus years. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean that I

hired a private investigator to find out about Ingrid’s very convenient ‘miscarriage.’ It took months, but he found

the clinic she went to to have the abortion, then I made sure my grandson ‘accidently’ found the papers.”

“If Luke found out you did that…,” Joce whispered.

“I guess you can see how much I’m trusting you.”

She leaned back in her chair. “You’re telling me this because you’ve found out something else, haven’t

you?”

“Yes.” Getting up, he opened a drawer in a table, pulled out a thick folder, then removed a big envelope.

“Yesterday I received this from the same PI who found out about the abortion. It tells why Ingrid has come

back.”

She took the envelope, but she didn’t open it. “I really hope you’re not asking
me
to tell Luke about

whatever is in here.”

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“No, I’m not. It’ll all come out in the newspapers soon enough. What I want to say is that when Luke was

spending time with you—” He put up his hand when she started to speak. “Yes, I know it was just a few days,

but he was the happiest I’ve seen him in years. He even played golf with me.”

“You do know, don’t you, that he hates golf.”

“Yeah,” Dr. Dave said with a chuckle. “And he’s really, really
bad
at it.”

“Then why—?”

“It’s just a family joke. He used to spend so much time with his other grandfather…Oh, well. It’ll all work

out.” He pulled an old, yellowed stack of papers from inside the folder, and Joce’s eyes lit up. “You know what

this is?”

Like a cobra hypnotized by a flute, she leaned toward the papers, both of her hands out to take them.

Dr. Dave pulled them away and put them back into the folder. “You make my grandson smile again and I’ll

give you part two.”

“Have you read them?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Oh, yeah. I especially liked the part where they slid into a river in an overturned car. Edi has to—Oh well,

maybe you’re not interested.”

“I am, but—”

“But what?”

“Ramsey. I told both him
and
Luke to get away from me.”

“Funny you should mention Ramsey, but some new cases have come up in Massachusetts, and it looks like

they’re going to take weeks.”

“Heaven help me!” she said, aghast. “
You
sent him there, didn’t you? I really
am
being used as a piece of

property. You want me for
your
grandson, don’t you?”

“I’m too old to think that far ahead. Right now I want to use whatever I can to get my grandson away from

that grasping little gold digger he married. And I want you to add these stories to the book you’re writing on

Edi.”

“How do you know—? Never mind.”

“Post office,” he said. “Return addresses, an Internet search, and it was easy to figure out what you were

doing.”

“For the life of me I can’t understand why Miss Edi wanted to get away from that town,” she said in

sarcasm.

“From what I hear, you’re fitting right in. You like people knowing who you are and you like living in the

Big House.”

“What kind of doctor are you? A shrink?”

“GP,” he said as he searched inside the folder.

“Please tell me you don’t have something else for me to read? A new Dead Sea Scroll maybe?”

“Better. Ah, here it is. It’s my daughter’s pot roast recipe.”

“Pot roast?”

“That’s right. Make some, freeze it, and have it ready so when I make Luke so miserable that he goes back

to digging holes at your house, you’ll be able to feed him.”

“It’s called double digging and…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“Actually, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to even—” She cut off when he was smiling at her.

“You know something? You’re as annoying as he is.”

“I take that as a great compliment. Remember. Freeze the pot roast and have it ready.”

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16

J
OCELYN AWOKE LATE the next morning. Between Dr. Dave’s stories and the chocolate cake, she’d

been in a stupor for the rest of the day, and had fallen asleep early.

Part of her wanted to deny some of the things the man had said, but another part knew that he was right.

She’d missed Luke—and she was oh, so very, very glad to hear that he was miserable.

She showered and dressed, then looked at the big envelope that Dr. Dave had given her yesterday. She’d

read it last night while she was in bed, and not a word of it had surprised her. Ingrid had been having an affair

with a rich, prominent, married New York man and some reporter had found out about it. If the man’s wife

discovered the affair and filed for divorce, it would cost him everything because the money was hers and the

prenup he’d signed was not a pretty thing.

Ingrid had run back to her husband in the hope that the New York man could pacify his rich, angry wife.

“Poor Luke,” Jocelyn said as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but she couldn’t keep the grin off her

face. She could say the words, but she didn’t feel that there was anything “poor” about him at all. Maybe he’d

visit today. Maybe he could—

She paused because she thought she heard something outside. Maybe it was a truck, but when she looked

out the window, it was only Greg, Sara’s boyfriend. No doubt they were going to work on the dress shop today.

True to what Sara had told them about him, he seemed to have a bottomless bank account, and he’d bought the

used-furniture store on the corner McDowell Street and Lairdton, diagonally from the Great Oak, as Joce had

found out that it was called.

As she looked down at Sara and Greg from her bedroom window, Joce had to work not to envy them—

and to wonder if she’d been an idiot. When she’d arrived in town, two men had come into her life, but she’d

thrown them both out—and they’d made no effort to get back into her good graces.

“So much for an ‘ardent courtship,’” she said aloud.

Downstairs, the kitchen was empty, as it was Monday morning and Tess wasn’t catering a party. Joce

didn’t know how she did it. She was working full-time plus catering as many as four parties on the weekends. Of

course Jim was there helping her, but it was still a lot to do.

Joce had some milk and a bran muffin, then went to her desk to start work, although it was becoming more

frustrating with each day. She was tempted to e-mail Bill Austin and ask if she could visit him and make

photocopies of the letters his grandfather had sent about Miss Edi. She’d take one of those tiny photocopy

machines with her so the letters would never leave the premises. She’d promise him that she…As often

happened lately, her mind wandered off into thinking what she could do, wanted to do, but it always came back

to the fact that she’d pretty much hit a brick wall in her biography of Miss Edi.

She remembered the story that Dr. Dave had dangled before her eyes. An upside-down car. A rescue.

What happened?

Jocelyn went back upstairs and got the little double-framed picture that had been Miss Edi’s prize

possession. On the day she passed away, Jocelyn had surreptitiously slipped it off the bedside table and hidden it

inside her shirt. At the time, she’d assumed that everything would go to charity, but she wanted that one thing to

remember her friend by.

Jocelyn well remembered the first time she asked Miss Edi about the hair in the braid. She’d been about ten

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years old and curious about everything in the world.

“It’s hard to imagine it now,” Miss Edi said, “what with men today having hair down to their waists, but

back then the sides of men’s heads were shaved with a buzz cutter. But David hadn’t had a haircut in a few

weeks, so I was able to get a few strands of it and I wove the braid of his hair and mine.”

“What color were his eyes?” Joce asked, looking at the black-and-white photo.

“As blue as yours,” Miss Edi said, smiling. “And he had a chin with a dimple in it like you do.”

“Like my mother’s,” Jocelyn said.

“Chins like yours are a hereditary trait.”

“My grandfather said his chin was just like ours, but that his four other chins covered it.”

Miss Edi smiled. “I wish I’d been here then and could have known your mother and her parents.”

“I’m glad you came to rescue me,” Jocelyn said. “I’m like one of your burn patients except that my scars

are on the inside.”

Miss Edi shook her head in wonder at Jocelyn. “Sometimes you say things of extraordinary wisdom.” As

they often did, they smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

Jocelyn glanced up from the photo and her memories to the window, then did a double take. She put the

frame down, then leaned closer to the window. She could just see what she thought was the end of the bed of a

truck. Luke’s truck, and it was parked where he was working on the herb garden.