But what was she to do? Certainly not stay here alone. Simon would discover the truth about her family soon enough, and he’d be furious. At least they were already married. It wasn’t like he could unmarry her now.
Simon tossed a small suitcase onto the bed, presumably for her to pack. “Hurry up, Olivia.”
She froze. “Who’s Olivia?”
He pressed back his eyebrows as if they had wrinkles. “I said Izzy.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m tired, baby. Grab the kid or I will, but we need to rumble out of here.”
“Please, Simon—”
“Louie’s not my friend. He’s trying to force me into giving him a cut of our money.”
She shivered. “We should talk to the police then. Not my parents.”
“Either way, I don’t want to leave you here. He might show up again in the morning.”
“Then stay with me!”
“I’m going to Elms.” He swept into the den and returned with Greta awkwardly cradled in one arm. “And I’m taking her in case Louie gets shifty with us.”
She had no choice but to go with him, quickly preparing two bottles and a hastily packed bag of clothes and diapers. As she slid into thefront seat, Greta secure in her lap, she tried to ignore the bobby pin that pricked her on the seat.
Who had been riding with Simon? And why wouldn’t he tell her exactly where he’d been?
The man she’d fallen in love with seemed to have disappeared, leaving behind a stranger who gritted his teeth while the baby—theirbaby—sobbed.
If only they could go to a movie tonight like regular newlyweds. Escape whatever was troubling him, and whoever had been in his car.
She fed Greta her bottle as they sped south, dreading, more than anything, what was to come.
18:Harper
Via Belle might have lived in Catawba sixty years ago, but as Harper read her biography, she felt a spark of sisterhood between them, connecting over their love of story.
A glass of iced tea beside her, Harper curled up on an Adirondack chair, the porch screen deterring birds and bugs alike with a fan whirling overhead to ward off summer heat. A professional gardener maintained their triple-acre wonderland while Gerald and Marcia were in Florida.
Boss Man circled her chair like Harper’s main role in life was to entertain him. She tossed the cat a treat from a seemingly bottomless bag,Lady of the Lakeopen on her lap. With her script overnighted, she tried not to think of its arrival in Hollywood, but a mix of emotion kept vying for her headspace. She was excited at the possibility of working with someone like Sissie, but the director could—probably would—choose someone else to write her script.
Then again, what if Sissie actually picked her? And what if panic set in, stealing her words?
She took a long sip of the sweet tea. Right now she needed to focus on what she could control. Find a new story worth telling. One that would capture hearts and minds alike.
Via’s books, she was quite certain, would reflect the nostalgia that Sissie wanted. Harper could adapt one for a contemporary audience, in honor of her mom, but before she proposed this idea, she wanted to find out everything she could about the woman who wrote from a tower in the trees.
Lifting the biography again, she started chapter four. She didn’t know why Dr. Elijah Lamb chose to publish Via’s story—perhaps he was as intrigued as Harper by the novelist’s life and writing—but he had clearly done his homework. The first third of the book he’d spent recounting Olivia Belle’s childhood in Richmond, Virginia. Her growing-up years with a father who was equal parts theologian, minister, and writer. Olivia’s mother died when she was five, and her father encouraged his only child to embrace writing as a calling.
After she turned fifteen, Olivia began submitting articles to a number of children’s and then Sunday school magazines. By the time she attended college, she was making a steady income from her writing.
Olivia’s aunt—Hattie Belle—wasn’t a writer, but she lived with Olivia for decades, reading and editing everything that Olivia wrote until Hattie’s tragic death in 1941, almost four years after Olivia’s husband died.
It sounded like Olivia had been close to her aunt, like Harper had been with her mom, and the common grief from such a loss was shared across the decades. Had her aunt’s voice lingered in Olivia’s heart and mind?
Even now, Harper sometimes thought she heard her mom speak. It was only the memories, words Angeline would have spoken, and here, in Marcia’s home, some of those memories were crystal clear.
Harper used to watch as her mom strolled through Marcia’s gardens with a bucket of bird food, filling the feeders and topping off water inthe birdbaths. Then she would cut flowers and arrange them inside. Even though both her marriages failed, her mom was a hopeless romantic.
