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It was late, just past nine, and Maya realized she and Brad had made no headway whatsoever on their quest to find her family’s heirloom. Instead, they’d spent hours on that lush green couch, watching the fire lick away the logs, telling each other stories about their past. It was here, as he glowed in the soft light, that Brad finally revealed his truth: that fifteen years ago, his wife died of cancer.
“I was thirty-five, and she was thirty,” he explained, his hand wrapped tightly around Maya’s. It was as though he felt he would float away without her. “We were trying really hard to have a baby. I’d wanted to be a dad forever, and Delilah was born to be a mother. Eventually, two months turned to six months, which then turned to over a year of trying. We went to the doctor, who conducted some tests— and found the ovarian cancer. It was already really far along. He gave her no more than two months to live.”
Brad’s eyes glistened, and Maya held tighter to his hand. She wanted him to know she was there for him; she wouldn’t let him go.
“Miraculously, she lived more than six months after that,” Brad said. “And we did everything. I took an entire year off of school, and we traveled all over the East Coast. She was terrified of flying, but we still boarded a plane to go to Rome because she’d always wanted to go.”
Maya’s heartbeat quickened. She’d just been to Rome with Nick, scouring those ancient streets for pasta. It wasn’t hard to imagine Brad with Delilah, both trying to make sense of a horrific situation. Perhaps they’d eaten gelato and watched the sun go down, their hearts breaking in tandem.
It was the most tragic story Maya had ever heard. And yet, it made sense. Brad was the kindest, softest man she’d ever met. When he’d first volunteered to help her with the festival, she’d assumed he had a wife or a girlfriend. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to assist a woman from the city just out of the goodness of their heart.
“I don’t know what to say, Brad,” Maya whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek. “She must have been really special.”
“She was!” Brad managed his first smile in ages and tried to laugh at himself. “She was too good for the world, maybe. I’ve tried my best to uphold her spirit since then. To be kind to everyone. To take time with every student. She was a teacher, too, and she had a special talent with the children. It was as though she could read their minds.”
“It’s like that with you, too,” Maya reminded him. “They know they can trust you. It’s beautiful to see.”
Brad checked the time and abruptly jumped from the couch as though he’d just returned to his body from far away. “My goodness. I’d better get home.”
Maya and Brad killed the fire and shut out the lights en route to the foyer. Although Maya now had the keys to the estate, she wasn’t up to sleeping in the big mansion by herself. Not yet. Together, she and Brad walked to their cars wordlessly. Before they parted, they hugged for a long time, and Maya could feel Brad’s heartbeat, strong and powerful beneath his ribcage.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Brad assured her. “If you’ll have me.”
“Please do,” Maya said. “This big place is too much for me.”
Maya drove back to the Hollygrove Bed and Breakfast with tears raining down her cheeks. When she entered, most everyone was upstairs in their rooms, save for Tom, who was hard at work on his screenplay, tugging his hair.
“What you told me about your aunt’s mansion made me so inspired,” he announced, his eyes buggy.
Maya laughed and yawned. “Can I come to the premiere of your movie?”
“Absolutely,” Tom promised. “You can have a front-row seat.”
Maya slept like a rock upstairs and awoke far later than she’d planned. Yet again, she’d missed breakfast. Felicity left her a croissant, jam, and camembert and wrote her a tiny note that said: “I hope you find what you’re looking for! XOXO, Felicity.”
Renewed with a sense of purpose, Maya drove back to the mansion by herself after lunch and charged into the house, flicking on all the lights. Based on her brief tour of the house yesterday, it seemed that “storage” was located on one of the upper floors. She gritted her teeth and strode upstairs, where a long hallway seemed to go far into the distance— far further than the house should have allowed. A part of her wondered if it was actually bigger on the inside than the outside. But that was ridiculous.
Maya peeked into the first few rooms, which seemed to be guest bedrooms, complete with four-poster beds, old-fashioned lamps, and ornate paintings hanging on the walls. Eventually, she discovered what had to be her aunt’s bedroom. It was the largest of the bunch, with enormous windows that looked out over the rolling hills and yonder blue mountains. The bed was made, and it looked freshly made, as though the maids had arranged for Maya to sleep there whenever she wanted to. She sat at the edge. The mattress was wonderful— far more comfortable than the vintage feel of the room should have allowed.
Maya tugged open the drawers of the nightstands, hoping that Veronica had slipped her necklace into one of them without remembering. Of course, that was wishful thinking. But on the fourth drawer, she discovered a very small photo album dated from seventy-five years ago. In it were photographs of two little girls— Bethany and Veronica. In them, Veronica was five or so, while Bethany was maybe two or three. They wore dresses with poofy skirts beneath, little Mary Jane shoes, and big, exuberant smiles. They were photographed in the ballroom, the library, across the veranda, and on the rolling hills outside the house.
Maya nearly stopped breathing. Never had she seen her mother so small, so adorable. To Maya, Bethany looked so much like Phoebe when she was small. She took a photo with her phone and sent it to Phoebe with the text:
MAYA: Guess who!
PHOEBE: Oh my. She looks just like me, doesn’t she?
MAYA: Yes! But it’s your grandma! My mother!
Now, Maya no longer felt on a mission for the silly heirloom. Rather, she wanted to scour as many family photographs as she could. She needed to know why her mother abandoned her very rich family and moved to Pennsylvania with her father.
Maya was immersed for the next several hours, so much so that when Brad knocked on the door downstairs, she didn’t realize he was there until he called her on the phone.
“I’m downstairs!”
“Wow! What time is it?”
Brad laughed. “Did you enter a time warp?”
