She could not even begin to guess what Elwood would have to say to her, knowing she’d read it upon his death.
June slit the envelope open with a fingernail and pulled out a single sheet of paper, written on both sides in Elwood’s careful script. He’d dated it four months before he swallowed the sleeping pills:
My dearest June,
If you are reading this then I have passed from this life to whatever awaits me beyond it.
I need to tell you why I did not leave you the Malibu house.
If I were a braver man I might have explained my decision in person because you certainly deserve that but I am not that brave man. I did not want you living in the Malibu house after I was gone. It is not a house for the living; it is a mausoleum of memories for us both. Were you to stay in it I think you would come to despise its hold on you. I do not want that for you.
I never should have let you stay on at this house and care for me after Frank passed. It was the most selfish thing I have ever done. And when I came to understand that you loved me like you loved Frank, continuing to let you stay was the most heartless thing I’ve ever done. You should have been free to begin a new life away from this house and away from me when Frank died. I am so desperately sorry, June.
I have left you the Palm Springs house instead. You can livethere if you wish but my hope is you sell it and buy something else in a place that makes you happy. It sits on prime real estate and should fetch a nice price. I also want you to know that I have left a letter to be given to MGM assuring them that you were the strength and sweetness of anything I wrote for them the past nine years, not me. I have written that they would be fools not to employ you as a screenwriter under your own name. I do not think they are fools, but they might be slow-moving. Don’t give up on them. They will come around.
I know full well that I owe you more than I can ever repay and have treated you dismally. If you could find it in your heart to forgive me for my many flaws and for the ways I have misused your love and friendship I would be grateful. I want your forgiveness so that you can be done with me and find happiness again.
Despite what Max and you and everyone else has tried to tell me over the years, I did kill Ruthie. I was driving too fast, I was showing off, I had been drinking, and I was reckless with her precious life. I took from her sons their mother and only remaining parent. I did that. This is my confession.
June, you have the biggest heart of anyone I know and within it are such riches to be shared with the world. I know you will do great things.
I loved Ruthie, but I loved you, too. And for far longer. Perhaps you are the only person who can understand how it is possible to love two people like I loved the two of you. First her, then you—in my own way. From the moment she left me you became the brightest star in my little cosmos. I am so grateful to have known you.
Yours, Elwood
June held the letter to her chest as tears fell, dotting the paper like raindrops. “Oh, El,” she whispered.
She pulled the letter away from her body and traced her finger on the wordsI loved you, too.
Elwood had been wrong about so many things. He hadn’t killed anyone. To kill was to plunge the knife, pull the trigger—want the other person dead—but Elwood had not desired that for anyone. And the taking of his own life did not balance any scales.
But…
Elwood had loved her.
He’d loved her.
And in that remarkable, singular fragment of time, that wasenough.
Epilogue
Hollywood, April 14, 1966
Eva holds the two bouquets of roses like a bride might as she searches the throngs outside the Palace Theatre for her friends. Melanie had told her to look for them beyond the stanchions and past the photographers now pressing their shutter buttons at a frenzied pace. But Eva hadn’t considered there would be so great a crowd for the premier ofA Moment in Time.
June was being modest when she wrote in her last letter that it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a mid-morning flight out of the Twin Cities and to get to the theater early.
Eva had assumed half an hourwasearly.
Perhaps she should’ve forgone the side jaunt to Malibu to gather the roses, but even Sascha hadn’t tried to talk her out of the two-hour round trip. Wise, rational Sascha, who knew everything about the rose garden.
And everything else about everything else.
“I think we can make it back to Los Angeles in time,” he’d said. “This is important to you.”
She’d been relieved Sascha had understood this.
If Elwood’s secret grave haunted June at times like Ernst Geller’s haunted her, she wanted to reassure her friend that Elwood rested in a beautiful place that he’d loved, as lovely as any memorial garden. And to remind herself that Elwood was not Ernst.
