July 26, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I am sick with some kind of flu.
It’s Saturday but instead of getting into Simon’s car and continuing my search, I am spending the day in bed with a fever. Granny insisted on coming out on the train to take care of me when I came home ill from work on Thursday, even though I was far from needing that much attention.
I haven’t been out to see Gramps and Granny much since I started dating Simon. I think she was looking for a reason to come see me and to see how Simon and I are getting on. I’m twenty-five and never really had a boyfriend before. She and Gramps have met Simon only once, when he and I drove out to have Sunday dinner with them a few months ago. That was before Simon proposed to me and tried to offer me a ring, and I told him I wasn’t ready.
No one really knows he did that. Well, maybe his parents do. I don’t have many close friends at work or here in my building. I haven’t wanted to trust many people with my friendship. I guess because of how awful my teenage years were. So I don’t have chummy girlfriends to confide in. Maybe if I had a bestfriend, I would have told her Simon had proposed. But I don’t really have one of those. Simon is my best friend. You can see how terrible it will be for me if he loses interest in me.
He says he won’t, but I wonder how he knows he can wait for me. He’s never done this before.
Granny stayed for two days, made me loads of soup, did my laundry, and went to the pharmacy for cough syrup. She asked more than once what I’ve been up to in my free time. I think she is wondering why I’ve not been home on Saturdays when she has called.
I almost told her what I’ve been doing.
I’m not sure why I didn’t other than she’d worry that I’ll wish I hadn’t looked for the brides box when it’s all said and done, whether I find it or not.
She left this afternoon on the five o’clock train back to Oxford. Simon is coming over in a little while, to read to me and fuss over me, no doubt.
I just want to shake this bug and get back to what I was doing before I got sick.
I am close. I can feel it.
Julia
August 2, 1958
My dear Emmy,
I am not sure how to put into words what I am feeling. I am still a bit dazed. Numb, really. I don’t feel at all like I thought I would.
I found Aunt Charlotte’s house today.
But not the brides box.
I was inside the bedroom you and I shared. I found the crawl space. I opened the door that had been painted shut.
It wasn’t there.
I am back home now, sitting in my flat and watching the telly with Simon. He’s afraid to leave, thinking it will dawn on me after he goes that the brides box is lost to me forever and the last little bit of you with it.
But I am strangely numb.
I found the village to which Charlotte first took us to get library books. It’s Stow-on-the-Wold, and it’s four miles from Moreton-in-Marsh. I didn’t remember the name of this little town, but when I saw the church and the library and even the post office, I knew this was the village Charlotte had called her own, and you and I had been to it—many times.
I started out by going into the library, mainly because I remembered it. I asked the more mature of the two librarians if there was an older woman in the village named Charlotte. In her eighties perhaps?
You mean Charlotte Havelock?the librarian replied.
I felt silly not knowing her last name, so I just asked if this Charlotte Havelock had a sister named Rose.
The librarian said yes, she did.
Oh, Emmy, how my heart thumped in my chest as I asked where I could find them.
She said she was sorry to tell me they were both deceased. She had attended Charlotte’s funeral just three months ago. Rose died several years before that.
