I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(68)

I went back to the photos. Could this man have been Edith’s lover? It was true that the photos had an air of detachment, but the person in them would have had to have known she was taking them. He and Edith had to have been familiar with each other for her to get so close to him.

“These clothes and shoes and things,” I said. “They look expensive. And formal, not the kind of thing people typically wear for a beach trip, even in winter.”

“Let me see,” said her mother, holding out her hand.

“Yes, tell me what you think. You’re the style star.” It was true; even with her reading glasses resting on the tip of her nose, she looked ridiculously glamorous.

I restacked the photos and handed them to her.

She stopped on the one with the oval-handled leather bag, set the photo on the floor, and tapped it with her long forefinger.

“Mark Cross,” she said.

“You mean the name stamped on it?” I said. “You can read that? But I thought the man’s initials were G.G.”

“Mark Cross is a leather goods designer, very expensive. It shut down in the 1990s but was resurrected a couple of years ago. In its new incarnation, the company reissued a lot of its older, classic designs. That’s why I recognize this duffel; it was one of the reissues.”

“Is the company based in a particular city?” I asked. “Maybe a northern city?”

“There was a store on Fifth Avenue. No longer there, but back in the 1950s I’m pretty sure it would have been.”

My mother continued to look through the other photos, but I held on to the Mark Cross one, my heart starting to beat hard.

“Okay, Mom, what if G.G. was Mr. Big City? I mean, maybe it’s a long shot, but he was here; Edith knew him well enough to take all these photos; assuming he’s George Graham, he came the first time not long before the first shadow ledger guest arrived; and Edith either didn’t know his address or was keeping it a secret. Also, the lawyer who represented John Blanchard came from an upper-crust New York firm, and doesn’t it seem likely that if John, one of the cogs in Mr. Big City’s machine, got in trouble while being a cog, Mr. Big City would do whatever he could to get him out of it?”

“Oh, my God,” gasped my mother.

“I know! It really could be him.”

But when I turned to look at her, her gaze was riveted on a photo in her hand.

“Mom? Did you hear what I said?”

She looked up at me, staring absently through her glasses, and shook her head.

“No, no, I didn’t. Sorry. But, oh, Clare.”

She turned the photo she held around so that I could see it. It was the one of the man’s hand holding the glass.

Wide-eyed, her voice so breathless I could barely hear it, my mother said, “The ring. Clare, I know that ring.”





Chapter Twenty-Three

Edith





December 1956



For the first eight hours of the journey, Edith made things happen. She pressed the gas pedal, and the car accelerated. She pressed the brake, and the car rolled to a stop. She drove through towns, noting their names, the dark gas stations, the church steeples piercing the sky. She drove along deserted roads and watched her headlights carve a tunnel of light for the car to travel through. She passed stands of trees, roadside motor inns with partially burned-out signs. She spoke words of reassurance to Sarah, who lay propped up with a pillow and wrapped in blankets in the backseat, her baby in her arms. She ate a sandwich. She stopped twice, briefly, to stretch her legs, change Steven’s diaper, consult her road atlas, and check on Sarah, who both times eked out a smile and a hoarse, heart-cracking “I’m fine.” Edith grew impatient, wanting to go faster, stick to bigger roads, take a straighter shot, but the only priority greater than getting to where they were going as quickly as possible was not getting caught along the way, so she reasoned with herself, stuck assiduously to the speed limit and to her winding, circuitous route.

But just as the sun came up, things began to happen to Edith. The world outside the car windows changed, wavering like a heat shimmer, leaning in to press against the sides of the car or circling around it like a carousel. And the car began to drive itself, hurtling along at fifteen miles an hour, crawling at forty, or sitting motionless as the buildings and road signs and trees rushed by it in a blur. To keep herself awake, Edith began to sing, and the songs chose her instead of the reverse. Sometimes, she sang without knowing she sang, talked without topic or direction. When she stopped at a gas station, she told the attendant that Sarah was her sister who had recently been in a car accident, that they were going to visit relatives in Maine; she babbled brightly on about blueberries, lobster, bears, and moose, until the attendant said, “You seem a little fatigued, ma’am. Might want to check into a motel and get some sleep,” and she said, “As soon as we get to the next town, I promise we’ll do just that.” She didn’t keep the promise, but she came close, pulling the car into a motel parking lot and lying down across the front seat.

Four hours later, a sound woke her. She thought at first it was the baby crying, but it was Sarah, groaning in pain. When Edith turned around, the sight of the woman knocked the wind out of her like a punch. Sarah’s eyes were unfocused, her face glazed with sweat, and she trembled as if an invisible person had her by the shoulders and were shaking her until her teeth rattled. Edith got into the backseat, coaxed water and aspirin down Sarah’s throat. With great effort, she kept her voice low and soothing, but fear was charging through her, beating out a loud prayer inside her head: Just let her live, just let her live, just let her live, I’ll do anything if you just let her live.