Grace sighed heavily.
“Now what?” Theodore asked. He leaned against the door and looked at her with something that bordered on amusement.
“Now it’s your turn. You didn’t think I brought you along merely to look at, did you?”
“I’m beginning to think you had something more calculating in mind.”
“In fact, I do,” she said. “I need you to distract Miss Caroline Locke for me.”
“And how, pray tell, are you expecting me to do that?”
“By using your considerable charm.”
He frowned. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? Perhaps sustained a recent head injury?”
She glanced toward the fire escape.
Oliver had told her he once used it to get into Harriet’s room: the first window on the second floor.
“Would you like to climb this ladder instead?” she asked sweetly. “I know how much you enjoy heights.”
He scowled at her.
“Thank you for the typewriter, by the way,” she said. “Now go make Caroline Locke fall in love with you.”
She didn’t miss the flush that rose to his cheekbones as she hitched up her skirt, showing a bare sliver of ankle, and began to climb.
Grace jangled the window open and climbed inside. Closing it behind her, she heard Theo’s knock, and then the distant timber of his voice as Caroline answered the door again. Grace stood in the middle of the room, turning in a circle to look around it.
Harriet’s room had already been thoroughly searched. It was clear by the way things had been pulled out, rummaged through.
There was a twin bed with a faded quilt in the corner. A clock on the nightstand, and a small lamp. A bureau, with clothes sorted through and hastily put back, and a rose that was starting to wilt in a vase. Tucked beneath it was the talent manager’s card. Grace’s eyes fell on a magazine with starlets on the cover. A perfume bottle, and a tube of lipstick.
She felt a wave of grief. She was doing this for Oliver, but she was doing it for Harriet, too. She had been a girl with a full life, overflowing with dreams.
Grace looked through Harriet’s wardrobe, at the dresses she had just seen Harriet wear not a week before. She forced herself to focus and quickly scoured beneath the bed, running her hand between the mattress, opening the drawers of the nightstand and bureau. Harriet’s nightstand held a small book with her handwriting in it.
Grace fished it out and sank down on the bed.
Tucked inside were old performance programs, notes from Harriet’s grandparents. A write-up in the newspaper about her performance inA Doll’s House.
Love notes from Oliver.
Grace felt conflicted about reading the woman’s private diary, but at the same time—she was dead. She wasn’t coming back. And even from the grave, Grace believed Harriet would want to help Oliver.
Grace flipped through the pages to the back, finding the most recent entries. The last ones Harriet would ever write.
I never want Oliver to think I want him for his money, she had scrawled.I don’t even want him to know I need money—makes things too complicated. No, I need to get it from someone else.
Money—for what?
Grace skimmed through earlier pages, looking for any mentions that might shed light on what Harriet needed money for.
Oliver wants to keep our relationship a secret for a little bit longer, she had written.I’m dying to marry him, but if that’s what he wants, I’ll play along.
Sometimes I think I’ll retire from the stage and start a family. But the way it feels to perform, to feel the crowd’s applause—it feels like falling in love. It feels like the way I feel when I’m with Oliver. I hope I don’t ever have to choose between them. Although I know his family will never accept me unless I do.
Finally, Grace found an entry dated five weeks back.
