Edie flipped through the pages with her thumb before turning the book spine-side-up and shaking it. Another piece of Phoebe’s yellow stationery fluttered out. “We don’t have to!”
“How did you know about that book?” She bent down to pick up the paper.
“Cosima, god love you, but Itoldyou my phone’s bricked, Morag doesn’t have TV or the internet, I don’t have money for a train pass, and I’ve been here ten days. Walking in the rain and memorizing this library have been my primary pastimes, other than fantasizing about cooking in Morag’s kitchen or looking for her furniture polish.”
Cosima was chagrined. “Right. Of course. Lucky us, in this case.”
“What does it say?” Edie sat down on a love seat with mauve and baby-blue stripes. Cosima could have taken the rocking chair across from her, but she didn’t. She sat on the other side of the love seat and held up the note so Edie could see it, too.
When Cosima read it, she couldn’t help her fond huff of laughter. Her mother must have been so pleased with herself when she wrote this clue. “It says, ‘Rosemare.’”
Edie’s brow wrinkled. “Do you know what that means?”
“I do. My mother was the kind of person that loved the meanings behind names—the literal meanings, the cultural ones, the stories. If you met her, it wasn’t unusual for her to translate your name or tell you something about it. Like ‘Whitelock.’ It refers to a white field or meadow.”
“I’ve read that somewhere. What does ‘Rosemare’ mean?”
“Literally, it just means ‘a pink mare’ or a pink horse. The wallpaper in my room is pink, with rows of prancing horses.”
“I have been dying to see your room.” Edie surged to herfeet, then fumbled for a hold on her sweatpants, whose attempted escape revealed three inches of purple cotton underwear patterned all over with tiny white hearts.
Cosima averted her eyes as she got up. “You could’ve asked,” she said, following Edie from the room.
“I could’ve asked the resident Hollywood depressive to have a look at her giant suite?” When Edie reached the stairs, she stopped and turned around. “Yeah? When? Should I have had my meals sent up to your room so we could chat over them together for a change in scenery?”
“Fair, but remember, my mother’s dead.”
And then Cosima couldn’t believe she’d said it. Said it likethat. Like a little jab in a bout of what Edie called their “charming banter.”
Frozen in place, Edie put her hand over her mouth, and—maybe because she’d been studying Edie’s face at close range—Cosima understood she was holding back laughter.
That was what made Cosima laugh. It felt strange enough to her throat and chest that she mainly choked, but then Edie was giggling madly, and it turned out her genuine laughter was infectious, so Cosima laughed more while Edie shushed them and laughed, and they stumbled up the stairs bent double.
Cosima flung open the door to her room. It must have been nice once. The large bed was flanked by original Lane dressers and a small dining set centered on quite a lovely ivory cut-pile wool rug that needed cleaning.
“You weren’t kidding about the pink. This is outrageous.” Edie crossed to where there was a big, darker pink square on the wall opposite the bed. “Looks like there was art up once.”
Cosima walked to the closet to retrieve the stack of framed pictures of her mother. She laid them out on the table with a flourish. “I wouldn’t call it art.”
Edie put her hand over her mouth again. “Morag decorated this room after your mother’s stay as a tribute to Phoebe Frank?”
“It seems she did. Well, notdecorated, but the pictures, the plaque, the binder ofShip of the Cosmostrivia questions in the bedside dresser, and the decoupage roses around where Mothersignedthe wallpaper”—Cosima pointed to the spot—“do give the room a certain air of homage.”
“Grieving or not, I wouldn’t want to sleep in a room with that many pictures of my mom peering at me from the walls. Why would she sign the wallpaper? Obviously, Morag embellished the signature with the roses, but is that because she discovered the signature afterward? Or did she ask your mom to literally autograph the room?”
Cosima looked more carefully, then leaned close and slid her nail under a long, thin cut in the pink paper. “I’m going to guess she signed it as a kind of ‘X marks the spot.’ I’m ripping it off.”
“That’s fine,” Edie said. “But, for accounting purposes, let the record show thatyoubroke the shepherdess and ripped the wallpaper. I can’t afford surcharges.”
Smiling, Cosima carefully followed the cut with her fingernail, lifting and tearing off the paper until it revealed a corner of yellow stationery, which she pulled out. “Here we go. Oh, there’s a lot of writing on this one.” It slowed her heart down to see it. Her stomach clenched.
Edie must have sensed the shift in mood, because she eased away, putting space around Cosima to afford her greater privacy. “Take your time reading it. It will give me a chance to snoop.” She clasped her hands behind her back in a show ofI won’t touch anything.
While Edie looked around the room, Cosima sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes instantly adjusted to her mother’s heavily slanted, dramatic script.
My love,
I don’t yet know who you are, but I do know that you will exist. I knew you would exist not three days from the moment I met your father, a man I haven’t even made love to yet.
