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It was all neat and clean, and the sooner it could be executed and Adele could see the back of them the better.

“You will understand if I don’t say thank you for coming,” she said to Mrs. Barnes on Rosewood House’s front porch.

Mrs. Barnes looked out to her carriage, where her driver sat waiting for her. “I hope you will believe me when I say that our friendship meant a great deal to me.”

Adele raised a brow.

“I never thought you were a good match for Guy,” Mrs. Barnes continued. “I should have said something when you first came to me.”

“It would not have mattered what you said. Mama was determined I should marry him.”

Mrs. Barnes looked down as she toyed with the tassel hanging off the handle of her parasol. “I know I have no right to ask, but what will you do?”

“What do you mean?” asked Adele.

“Will you return to England?”

Adele shook her head. “It is no longer home. It hasn’t been for a long time.”

“Then you fell in love with Pasadena after all.”

For the first time since Mrs. Barnes’s arrival, Adele smiled. “Perhaps I did.”

chapter sixty-four THERESA

July 3, 1960

When Theresa returned to the front porch, she found that Matt had joined Miss Pearce on the swing, but neither was speaking.

“Is this the box you meant?” she asked, holding the tea chest up.

Miss Pearce looked up at her and reached out a hand. “Thank you, Miss Johnson.”

Theresa watched Miss Pearce open the box’s hinged lid and pull out a well-worn envelope from among a collection of things. Miss Pearce set the box aside and handed the letter to Matt, who opened it.

“When Alex left, I did nothing. He had chosen to do his duty, and I didn’t feel it was right to intrude on his life with his wife. However, about ten years later, I received a letter,” said Miss Pearce.

“Dear Adele,” Matt began to read. “I write to you not knowing entirely why other than our business feels unfinished.

“They have sent me to France to fight. To call it hell would be too kind. I look around me at my fellow soldiers and wonder who will go home to their families and who will be buried here in the deep mud.

“Perhaps it is being confronted with this much death that has made me reflect on the things that I have not done. The things that I wish could have been. I know that if I had stayed, I would not have been able to stay faithful to Annabel and my marriage. I would have hated myself for that, and I would have made you hate me, too. Yet I cannot lie and tell you that it has been easy to stay away.

“Annabel gave birth to a daughter, little Pamela. She is the apple of her mother’s eye and already at nine she runs rings around all of us. There are times when I look at Annabel and wonder about what might have been if things had been different, but then I see Pamela and I know that I should not wish too hard for that.

“I don’t know why I am writing to you. Maybe facing so much death makes a man contend with his past. I wanted you to know that, although it was not an easy thing to leave you, I have made my peace.

“This will be my only letter. I can’t risk hurting Annabel if she were ever to find out what you were to me. I know it’s unfair to write to you and then ask you to forget me, but I cannot help it.

“I hope you have found the happiness that I have found in my daughter. Yours always, Alex.”

When Matt finished, his eyes remained fixed on the paper. “My grandfather was killed on the battlefield in 1917.”

Miss Pearce nodded. “I know.”

“How?” asked Matt.

“When I received that letter, I began to scour the lists of the dead. I found Alex’s name a few weeks after that letter came,” said Miss Pearce.