“What is it?” Mike pressed.
“You know how they were caught, don’t you?” she asked.
We both shook our heads.
“I don’t know all the details, but her father followed her out one evening, down to the cove, by the beach. You know the one?”
Mike nodded. “Yes.”
“I think they went there sometimes to be alone. Anyway, your great-grandfather saw them together and he was furious—he lost it. I only learned about this a few years later. Edith never talked about it to me, but she did once tell me that she’d lost something very precious once, down by the cove—someonevery precious. I put two and two together.”
I shook my head a little in disbelief. “Did you and Edith never talk about this, later in life?” I asked. “Even after you changed your opinion on it?”
“No,” she said, looking back down at the picture.
“But why?” I asked.
“Perhaps she never fully trusted me enough to share it with me.”
“So you don’t know if she ever saw him again, after that night?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She hung her head. “I wish I could have been a different kind of friend to her, back then.”
“Do you know his name?” Mike asked.
She shook her head. “She never said.” She looked down at the picture. “This is the first time I’m meeting him, and I’m glad I am.”
She passed me the picture and I took it.
“I should have been a better person. I should have been stronger and I should have had my own mind, but I didn’t.” The sadness in Mrs. Devereux’s voice was unmistakable, laced with a lifetime of guilt and regret.
I pulled her into a hug; I felt compelled to hold her. She hugged me back and the moment meant so much to me. And then she turned and walked slowly back to the library. Mike and I stood in silence for a while. I was trying to imagine what that terrifying moment must have been like for them, when they were caught together.
“I’d love to see the cove,” I said.
Mike turned and looked at me. “Me too . . . but, uh . . .” He stopped talking and looked at me strangely.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s just that the cove is interesting, these days, and it might be a bit of an issue, getting to it,” he replied.
“What do you mean, ‘an issue’?” I asked, as he walked back around the car and climbed in.
He looked over at me briefly. “You’ll see.”
