“Ooh yes!” the group murmured.
“I’ll host it in the coffee shop,” Kirsten said. “It’ll be the unveiling of Hope’s mural and the shop’s extra room.”
“Perfect!” said Lauren. “How can we help?”
“Spread the word, but emphasize it’s to be kept secret from Miss Addie. And get everyone to gather up photos she took for them. I want to have an exhibition of her work along the walls.”
The women all chattered excitedly about ideas for the party.
It was after eleven before I headed home. The sting of Jillian’s words was largely washed away in the excitement of planning Gran’s party, but an underlying sadness remained.
It didn’t really matter if Jillian was right or wrong about Matt, I realized as I climbed Gran’s porch, because I, too, was leaving Wedding Tree in a month. There was no point in thinking about the long term when our relationship was destined to end in a few short weeks.
And therein lay my problem: How could I keep that knowledge from ruining the little time I had left with him? And even more importantly, how did I keep from falling in love with him?
Love? I stopped short and stared at his house—at his window, where he was sleeping. No. I wasn’t—I refused to be—falling inlove with Matt. I liked him, I found him wildly attractive, but I couldn’t be—I wouldn’t allow myself to be—falling in love with a man I’d never see after a few more weeks.
•••
Gran was upset when I first told her Matt was going to help us try to find the buried suitcase on Saturday.
“You told him?” She’d clutched her chest and stopped rocking in her bedroom chair. “Oh, dear. What on earth did you say? What must he think?”
I hadn’t realized how terrifying it would be to learn that the secret she’d hidden for more than sixty years was suddenly out in the open, known by a virtual stranger.
I patted her hand. “I just said that you thought Granddad had buried something and that you don’t know what it is, but you’d always felt the need to find out.”
Gran drew in a ragged breath, then slowly exhaled. After a moment, she nodded. “Well, it’ll all be a matter of public record when everything is said and done. Guess I might as well get used to the idea.”
“When do you want me to tell Eddie your suspicions?” I asked her gently. I’d told him everything else she’d told me, but I’d held off mentioning the buried suitcase.
“Later. After we see if we find anything.”
I leaned toward her from my perch on her bed. “You know, Gran, it’s entirely possible there never was a baby. Maybe Granddad was just trying to jolt you into understanding how hard it was on him, knowing that you loved someone else.”
“Oh, child—I thought that, too, when he first insisted on the whole crazy scheme. But then I found a book on baby care hidden among his work papers. It had dog-eared pages about what to do when a mother rejects a baby and how to make an adopted baby feel like your own. Mind you, this was a man who didn’t read a single book when either your mother or Eddie were born.” She setthe rocker back in motion. “That, more than anything, convinced me things were just as he said. He was worried I wouldn’t accept this baby.”
I swallowed hard.
Her hand turned under mine so that we were palm to palm. She squeezed my fingers. “Thank you for helping me with this. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
•••
Matt showed up bright and early Saturday morning, carrying a large metal detector and a complicated set of instructions. He fiddled with the settings, then set the instructions on the garden table. “I think we’re ready to give it a go. Do we have any idea where to start looking?”
“Maybe Gran has some photos of what the yard looked like in 1948.”
We traipsed inside and asked her. Sure enough, she did—and amazingly, she knew just where to find them. “That last attic box in the dining room—the one with the red tape. It’s full of albums. The dates are on the outside.”
Matt hauled it out and we gathered around, opening albums on the dining room table. It was a virtual treasure trove—so fascinating that I all but forgot why we were looking through it. There were photos of my mom and Uncle Eddie as children on a metal swing set. There were close-ups of flowers, wide shots of the backyard, and several photos of a tall, lean man in a fedora by the shed, his face shaded by the brim of his hat.
Gran’s finger lingered on the photo. “That’s Charlie.”
I’d seen dozens of similar photos, but for the first time, it occurred to me that in all the pictures where Eddie was a toddler or older, Gran almost always had photographed my grandfather so that his expression was unreadable. She always captured the essence of her subjects; she’d chosen to photograph her own husband as unknowable.
“Did you notice anything unusual about the backyard?” Matt’s voice pulled my rambling thoughts back to the present. “Anything moved around, any ground disturbed?”
Gran shook her head. “I made a point of not looking.”
