It’s been so long that I’m beginning to worry as much as Mama. I may try to find a way to ring you if I don’t hear soon. I spoke to Kitty, but she says you were perfectly fine when she visited, only she is not herself and I wonder if she is worried about you too.
Please write at once, even a few lines,
Your love.
I frown as I shuffle through the papers. “That’s it?” Is there nothing else?
But there’s not. Even when I look back at the other envelopes?—
“Helping yourself to my personal belongings, I see.”
I will never ever ever in a million years admit that I squeak because of how startled I am by Roman’s voice.
I whirl around to find him striding toward me, a lazy grin on his face, his hair damp. He’s much more casual now, dressed in a dark t-shirt and jeans, and my gaze lingers longer than I’m proud of.
“I know,” he says. “I’m too handsome for my own good. But I can’t help it. I look great in whatever I wear.” Then he jerks his chin at the letters I’m holding. “So?”
My first instinct is to hide the evidence of my wrongdoing, but I resist the urge. Instead I clear my throat and hold the letters out to him. “I read the rest of them,” I say. “Sorry if I overstepped.”
“I wish you’d overstep even more,” he says as that smile grows, and I roll my eyes.
“Take them,” I say, waving the letters in his face. He accepts them once he’s close enough, and I hesitate only briefly before asking the question on my mind. “What happened?” I say, nodding at the bundle now in his hands.
When he just looks confused, I elaborate. “To Goddard. He never wrote back.”
“Oh.” Roman’s expression clears, and he shrugs. “I haven’t read them all yet. I don’t know. But he and my grandmother lived decently long lives, so things must have worked out.”
I hum and take a few steps back, mostly so that his crisp, fresh-from-the-shower scent won’t be so noticeable. I’d like to think I’m a strong woman, but something about the way he smells and his damp hair and the stretch of his t-shirt over his chest…I guess I have a few weaknesses in those areas.
He’s five years younger than you,I remind myself.
“Elabeth waited so long for him,” I say, glad to move on from my attraction to a much younger man.
“Hmm?” Roman is looking at the envelopes, shuffling through them.
“Your grandmother,” I say. “It sounds like she waited a long time for him.”
His brow furrows as he looks up at me, his usually smirking lips curling down into a frown. “My grandmother’s name was Kitty.”
ROMAN
The soundof Aurora clearing her throat is the first noise either one of us has made for the last five minutes.
The ticking of the clock is steady in the background, and the rustling of papers accompanies us too as I read through the rest of the letters—the ones Aurora passed me wordlessly when I held out my hand for them.
She was right, of course, when she said Elabeth—it’s plainly Elabeth’s name at the bottom of the letter, her handwriting in every one of these declarations of love.
But Elabeth Henson was my grandmother’s sister. My grandmother was Katherine—Kitty, the younger sister who went to visit friends in St. Louis as reported by Elabeth.
Based on what I’ve read in these letters, it’s not hard to guess what happened.
Somehow I still want to ask my dad about it anyway. There’s a distinct feeling of wrong-footedness tangled in my chest, not necessarily upset but definitely confused.
Grandma left me this house. I remember her as brisk but loving in her own way. Was she someone who would have had an affair with her sister’s boyfriend?
I guess, when I think about it further, there was maybe an air of resentfulness about her sometimes—or maybe I’d call it discontent.
But what ever happened to Elabeth? I don’t know much about her, and I don’t remember ever meeting her. She clearly didn’t end up with Goddard.
