I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(62)

I nodded. “What he left out was that he and Edith had done it before; there was a system in place. They just slid Sarah and her baby into it.”

“You’d make Nancy Drew proud,” said Dev. He raised his palm, and I slapped it.

“You, too.”

But neither of us sounded especially happy. We should’ve been triumphant because Dev was right when he said we’d found out a lot. But mostly what I felt was deflated, even sorrowful.

“I think . . .” I began.

“What?” said Dev.

“Well, maybe this is it. We’ve figured out all we can figure out.”

He smiled and leaned over to bump my shoulder with his. “Unless you want to go scour every major northern city, looking for Mr. Big City.”

“Sounds fun, actually,” I said, then I sighed. “I just wish we’d learned more of Edith’s story.”

“We don’t know the middle part, all those years. I guess we’ll never know it.” Dev brightened. “But we know how it ended.”

My eyes filled with tears. “We know that whatever happened during those years, she survived it all. She lived on, even after leaving everything she knew behind. She became an amazing person.”

“And she left you her house,” said Dev.

“She was taking care of me, a woman she didn’t even know.” I wiped my eyes and smiled. “Like she took care of all those other women. She was worried about me, so she gave me a safe place.”

“A sanctuary.”

Outside the car, dusk had ended, and the summer night surrounded us. Pinprick stars floated above the trees edging the restaurant parking lot. I couldn’t find the moon.

“So this is where Edith’s story ends, I guess,” I said.

“With you,” said Dev. “You’re Edith’s happy ending.”

“Honestly, right now, I feel sad.”

“Hey, happy endings aren’t allowed to be sad.”

I suddenly understood that, yes, I was sad that we hadn’t found out all of Edith’s story, but that wasn’t the entire reason.

I wanted to ask Dev my favorite question. It was there, hovering above us, singing itself over and over, like a mockingbird, waiting for one of us to ask it, but what I realized right then was that if you didn’t have an answer to it, the question lost its magic. And if the answer were “Nothing,” “So what’s next?” became, in an instant, the saddest question in the world.

“I wish this weren’t over. I’ll miss—” I found I couldn’t look directly at Dev, so I stared out the windshield. “The search,” I finished.

After a few seconds, Dev said, “I’ll miss that, too.”





Chapter Twenty-One

Edith





December 1956



Before she noticed the smear of blood on his tan windbreaker, before he had spoken a single word, Edith knew, not exactly what he was going to say to her, but that whatever it was would change everything. Tranquil John, John of the steady voice and unflappable nerves, cerulean-eyed, eye-of-the-storm John stood on her porch, lips pale, weight shifting from foot to foot, hands rubbing together as if he were trying to warm them. Indeed, he was shivering, head to toe, shivering in bursts, as if electric shocks were running through him. And because it troubled her, the sight of him cold, and maybe also because she wanted to buy a moment, to postpone knowing whatever frightening thing he had come to tell her, she opened her front door wider and said, scolding him, “That flimsy jacket’s not enough for this weather. For heaven’s sake, come in.”

He came in and she shut the door behind him, but the shivering persisted. She saw the blood, then, a handprint like children make in school on his jacket, dashes of it on his white shirt, still a wild red, fresh blood, and panic shot through her.

“Oh, God, you’re hurt.” She reached toward him, but he stepped back, dodging her touch.

“I’m fine.” He stared down at the blood as if he were seeing it for the first time. “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t want to visit this trouble on you, but I didn’t know, I couldn’t think what else to do,” he said.

“Of course, you should’ve come,” she said.

He shook his head. “However this thing plays out, if you’re involved in it, you’ll be at risk. More than you’ve been so far.”

John pressed his hands to the top of his head, trying to calm himself. When he dropped them to his side, the shaking had abated, but he looked at her with stricken eyes. “You can say no, and, God help me, Edith, you should say no. Just say that one word, and I’ll go away and never mention this again.”

Edith remembered John on the beach in the pouring rain, how he’d found her wandering in the storm and brought her home, how he’d warmed her and talked to her and stayed all night.

“You’re my true friend and I’m yours,” she said. “Whatever you’re asking, I’m saying yes.”

“You can still say no after I tell you.”

“I won’t.”

Suddenly cold, she pulled her hands inside the cuffs of the sweater she wore, one of Joseph’s. Now that it was winter, she’d taken to dressing this way when she was home alone, her body cocooned, lost inside Joseph’s oversized clothing, safe and warm.