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chapter sixty-one THERESA

July 3, 1960

He left you?” asked Matt.

“Yes,” said Miss Pearce, her voice cracking a little. “He did.”

“But—” said Theresa.

“He was not free, Miss Johnson,” said Miss Pearce. “And perhaps he was wiser than I was. I had felt betrayed by Guy, and I turned to the first man who seemed decent and good. Alex saw something in me that no one else had. He believed that I could be something other than a society wife. An accessory. For that, I will always be grateful.”

“Did you know that I was his grandson when you hired me all those years ago?” asked Matt.

“Yes,” said Miss Pearce.

“How?” asked Matt.

Miss Pearce turned to Theresa. “Would you be so good as to go into my bedroom? It is the room at the top of the stairs on the right. In the closet, you will find a box on the shelf. Please bring it to me.”

Theresa jumped up and ran up the stairs to the part of Rosewood House she’d never been in before. She opened the door to Miss Pearce’s bedroom and made straight for the closet, easily finding an old wooden box printed with the logo of a tea company on the side. She pulled it down from the shelf and turned for the door, but her eyes caught on something. On an oak dressing table, there sat a neat pile of gauze bandages and a set of nail scissors next to a notebook marked with a pencil. Near the bandages was a dark brown pill bottle. She crossed the room and picked up the bottle. They were antibiotics prescribed in the middle of June to an Adele Pearce.

She set the bottle down and, almost without thinking, nudged the notebook open to the page marked by the pencil. It was a datebook with neat entries written down on each page. She scanned a few pages and then she jerked her hand away, backing away from the dressing table.

Finally, Theresa knew why Miss Pearce had really hired her to write her story. It had been staring her right in the face from the very beginning, if only she had known to look for it.

chapter sixty-two ADELE

October 1907

It was possible, Adele learned, for one’s heart to break for a future that would never be and mourn a past that was gone at the same time, just as it was possible to feel simultaneously the deepest unhappiness and a strange sort of hope.

She stayed on the porch of the caretaker’s cottage for some time after Macalister rode off with nothing but the sound of towhee and quail for company. Finally, when the sun began to arch behind the trees, she shook her head and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other back to the main house.

From the growl in her stomach, she knew her first priority must be food, and she let herself into the kitchen. After a few minutes spent searching, she found a bit of cheese and some hard biscuits in a tin in a cupboard. She ate those and then went out to the orchard to pick an orange in the waning light of the day. She did not know how to cook, but she would go to Vroman’s to buy a book and learn.

There was no question of her hiring a servant like Hildy to do for her until she understood just how much money she would be able to raise from the sale of her jewelry. The pieces should fetch a fair amount, but what would she do when the money ran out? She had no income and no means of making money. Being first a gentleman’s daughter and then a wealthy man’s wife had left her ill-equipped to fend for herself.

No. She would not pity herself. She had Rosewood House, and that was a start.

November 5, 1907

Rosewood House, Altadena

Dearest Margot,

I doubt very much that it will surprise you that, since my last letter, I have decided that it is time for me to not only leave the Gables but to leave Guy. I will write to you one day to tell you of what happened in Pasadena, but trust me when I say that I could not remain any longer in a marriage that was built on lies.

The truth is that I neither loved my husband when I consented to be his wife nor came to love him after our years together. I appreciated the security he could bring Mama and Papa, and for a time, I lived like a duchess in a house unlike any I ever could have imagined back in London. However, it proved not to be enough.

Perhaps you, with your loving marriage, will not be able to understand, but I do not think I am suited to be a wife. It is true that it was all that Mama ever hoped for me—and for a great many years I, too, held that ambition. Yet seeing you with James made me realize that the happiness you share is something I would never be able to find with Guy.

And so, I begin my life here at Rosewood House, a woman alone. I will not pretend that in making this choice, I will be accepted into society as I once had been. We have all heard the tales of ostracization that women who separate from their husbands face. We all nod knowingly, feeling certain that that could not be us. And yet here I am, a woman on her own, with no one to keep me company but the birds and the coyotes that howl at night.

I hope you will not find this all too scandalous and that you will agree to write to me. The company of your letters is the one thing I shall miss the most if it is gone.

Yours faithfully,

Adele