Seated at the large worktable, directly under a fluorescent light, she leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. Peter, who was working at the opposite end of the table, glanced up.
“Ready to call it a day?”
“Not really. My mind is churning with questions, especially about Scarlett’s year in New York.”
“Herallegedyear in New York,” he reminded her.
Gwen nodded. “There really isn’t any proof, is there?” She thought about how skeptical she’d been that morning when he’d first presented the photograph. She felt differently now.
“Not that I’ve ever found,” he said, “and believe me—I have left no stone unturned.”
Gwen let out a sigh. “I do believe you. And now I’m hungry. How about you?”
“I’ve been famished for the past hour, but I didn’t want to interrupt your flow.”
“Because you thought I’d want to quit and lock up?” she asked.
“Do you?” He sat back and watched her expression.
“No. Because I’m supposed to be the expert here, yet I’ve been missing a puzzle piece all these years, and I never even realized it.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Is it too much to hope that I’ve won you over with my brilliant historical discovery?”
She chuckled softly. “I don’t know aboutbrilliant. Lucky, for sure. And yes, I confess that you have my attention. And I still want to watch those interviews before we visit Mrs.Dion tomorrow.”
Her stomach growled again, and Peter sat forward. “How about I spring for a pizza?”
Gwen tossed her pencil onto the table. “Sounds good. Let’s order one.”
Peter reached for his phone, and she gave him the name of a local shop. After he placed the order, they gathered up their belongings and left the archive room. Gwen locked the door behind them and followed Peter downstairs to the front parlor.
“Can I do anything to help?” he asked as she turned on the flat-screen television that Susie had rolled into the room before leaving for the day.
“No, just make yourself comfortable.”
She searched for the DVD with interviews from 1995 and slid it into the machine, then joined Peter on the sofa. Together, they watched the raw footage from the first interview with a woman who had once been the family’s housekeeper. She described Scarlett as a friendly, intelligent young girl who loved to perform. She was always dancing and singing and copying the choreography fromGuys and DollsandGentlemen Prefer Blondes.
A half hour later, the doorbell rang. Peter got up to tip the pizza-delivery man while Gwen turned off the television. Then they moved to the dining room to eat at the large mahogany table.
“This is very nice,” Peter commented, looking up at the crystal chandelier. “You know, this house is not what I expected. I thought it would be 1950s or ’60s decor, but it’s very Victorian.”
“Like I said, her father was old school in every way.”
While they ate, they talked about Scarlett’s death in Switzerland, which had shocked the world in 1979 because she was only thirty-six years old, still young and beautiful, and no one had known she was ill. For years, the tabloids had speculated that she was still alive and living secretly abroad. Even today, the occasional report of a sighting somewhere in the world went viral on the internet or made it to the front page of a tabloid.
Peter reached for a second slice of pizza. “I find it interesting that Scarlett’s life is often described as tragic because of her early death and the fact that she died alone in a foreign country. But as a family member and a woman, do you consider her life tragic?”
Gwen sipped her water. “I never thought so before today. I mean, of course any death is tragic, especially at a young age, but I wouldn’t have said her whole life was tragic. Quite the opposite. She followed her dream and broke free from her controlling father and achieved incredible success professionally. She wrote music that will live forever. I have no doubt that she derived a great deal of satisfaction and fulfillment from that, from being able to pursue her art. So no, it wasn’t all tragic. It was a life well lived, in my opinion.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “But you said you never thought it was tragic before today. You feel differently now?”
Of course she did. How could she not?
Gwen took a few seconds to formulate her answer, sipped her water, and cleared her throat. “If Scarlett had a baby, that means she was separated from her child. Either the child died or she gave it up, and that changes everything, because a woman never gets over something like that. On top of it all, she chose—or was advised—to keep her pregnancy a secret, so she couldn’t confide in anyone or share her pain. That’s tragic all on its own.”
“I agree,” Peter said. “And that’s what made me want to write this book. Her life seemed like a dream in so many ways, but there was areal woman behind all that success. A woman perhaps with a broken heart. Yet she achieved great things regardless. That makes her stronger than anyone knows.”
Gwen took a breath and let it out slowly. She thought of her own small, brokenhearted life, constantly clouded by the shadow of her grief and loneliness. Day after day, it was the same. She never veered from her familiar routine, perhaps for some sense of control or security—or to avoid letting go of what she had lost.
