“Should we do something?” I asked. “Should we tell my father?”
Ruth thought about it, then shrugged. “Maybe not. It would just make Russell madder. And he’d probably take it out on poor Millie and spoil your wonderful engagement party.”
“Poor Millie,” I whispered.
***
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“I want to help you,” Brooke said. “But I’m still not clear on what you think I can accomplish. Besides, you never finished telling me about these friends of yours. Or how you plan to make amends with them.”
“I certainly did,” Josephine snapped. “I told you about Millie. And Ruth. And Varina.”
“You told me that Varina is still living and that your friend Millie was my grandmother,” Brooke said. “But what about Ruth? And why do you need to make amends with these women?”
“Oh.” Josephine looked down at the Chihuahuas, who were dozing on her lap. “Sometimes I do get a little forgetful. And sleepy.”
Brooke laughed. “Sometimes I dream of sleeping ’til noon. My son creeps into my room two or three times a night. I don’t think I’ve gotten more than four uninterrupted hours of sleep since he was born.”
“Why don’t you just lock him in his room? Or lock your own door, for that matter?”
Brooke tried not to show her shock. “You’re joking, right? Lock a three-year-old in his room? What if there was a fire? Or he really needed me in the middle of the night?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t think of that,” Josephine said with a shrug. “That’s why Preiss and I never had children of our own. I don’t think I would have made a good mother.”
Brooke silently agreed with that assessment. “Anyway, it’s time for Henry to transition to a big-boy bed. Maybe then he’ll let me sleep in peace.”
“Is Henry a family name?”
“Yes. He’s named for my grandfather. Millie’s husband. I suppose you knew him too?”
“I regret now that I never met him. But Ruth said he was a good man, and I heard he was good to Millie.”
“Mama was only sixteen when he died, and she was devastated. I think he was much older than Granny,” Brooke said.
“I believe that’s what I heard.” Josephine nodded. “Thank goodness he left Millie well fixed. You know, Millie’s father—he’d be your great-grandfather—losteverything in the crash of ’29. If it hadn’t been for her grandparents, they would have been penniless.”
Brooke gazed at the pin fastened to Josephine’s chest. “I’m a little confused. Earlier, you said my grandmother had those pins made for her bridesmaids. But you just told me you never met my grandfather.”
Josephine ran a bony finger over the pin. “Millie was engaged to someone else. His name was Russell… something.” She looked up at Brooke. “Can you believe I’ve forgotten his last name? That’s the wedding I was to have been in. But it never came off. Later, Millie married your Henry. Ruth said he was very distinguished. Some type of educator, I believe?”
“He was an English professor at Kenyon College, in Ohio,” Brooke said. “His first wife died in one of the influenza epidemics, and Mama said he’d been a widower for years before he met Granny at a party in Boston. They got married a month later. Can you imagine doing that now?”
“Quite the whirlwind courtship,” Josephine said, her tone acerbic. “But dear Ruth said the wedding was a lovely, intimate affair.”
“You were going to tell me more about Ruth,” Brooke prompted.
“She had the loveliest red curls,” Josephine said. “And a temper to go along with them. A spitfire, we called her. But she had a tender heart. And she was such an animal lover. She’d find an abandoned kitten behind the dining hall at school and rescue it. Sneak it into our room, feed it milk with a medicine dropper. She hated any kind of injustice, hated cruelty. Ruth was a crusader.”
“Whatever happened to her?”
Josephine shrugged. “We… had a disagreement. I suppose it came to a head with the ’72 election. Ruth despised Nixon. She was what Preiss called a limousine liberal. Came by it honestly. Her mother was a suffragette.”
Brooke shrugged. “Was that so awful? She sounds pretty amazing to me.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Josephine said. “It was a different time. Ruth was so… preachy. So damn certain about everything. Now? I see that our quarrel was silly. She and Millie were wonderful friends. We were like sisters. Closer than sisters.”
“I know what you mean about missing your oldest friends,” Brooke said wistfully. “My best friend, back in Savannah? Holly? She was Harris’s sister.”
