Chapter 22: Gran's Last Page

Victoria's POV

We did not open the page in the lawyer's office.

He put the envelope into my hands at the door of the yellow Victorian, with the wax unbroken.

"She said to read it somewhere she'd know," he said.

I knew where she meant.

Behind the burned house, past the gatehouse, Gran had kept a row of plum trees after she sold the walnuts.

Half of them had survived.

We got there at sunset.

Jude had a sleeping bag from his truck and a thermos of coffee.

The ground was black in places, and the bark of the nearest tree was scorched on one side.

On the other side it had put out new leaves.

I sat down against the trunk and broke the wax with my thumbnail.

Jude sat beside me with his shoulder against mine.

The page was written in blue ink, in the slanting hand I had known since I was nine.

"My dear girl," I read aloud. "If you are reading this with company, I have done one thing right."

I had to stop.

Jude put his hand over mine.

"I met your pilot once," I read. "He sat in my cockpit seat with his cap in his hands."

"He told me he did not know who I was, or why I cared who answered a telephone."

"That's true," Jude said, hoarsely.

"I asked Beck to put him on nights."

"I told Jude to answer on the first ring, and I did not say why."

"I wanted to see what kind of man picks up a stranger's number every night for nothing."

"He did. Nobody told him to be kind, and he was."

I wiped my face with my wrist.

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