Brendan held her foot on the brake and peered through the windshield at the house to which Franny Granola had directed her. It had to be a mistake.
The long driveway, flanked by ancient oaks, evergreens, and rhododendron, had shrouded the home with a living curtain of privacy until she came around the last curve and broke into the clearing. Then the full impact of the place assaulted her senses, as the architect and landscaper had obvi-Dusly intended. The house stood like a magnificent pearl against the green of the lawn. Three stories high, all white, with massive turrets, twin spires, and Victorian gingerbread, it was a palace, not a private house.
Brendan looked around for some kind of historical marker, some indication that the place was open for tours. But she saw nothing. Only a silver-blue BMW convertible parked next to a three-tiered fountain at the end of the front walkway.
She drove forward another hundred yards, stopped, and got out. The estate was totally secluded, surrounded by gardens and woods, and so hushed that it gave her the odd sensation that she should tiptoe up the brick walk to the door.
She took a deep breath, shouldered her bag, and rang the bell.
A pleasant-looking young woman answered the door, dressed in faded jeans and a Vanderbilt sweatshirt. "May I help you?"
Brendan fumbled in her bag and handed over a business card. "I'm Brendan Delaney with station WLOS."
"I see. I'm sorry, Miss Delaney, but you see, I simply don't give interviews."
Brendan regarded the young woman. She seemed like a gracious, well-brought-up girl in her twenties—a college student, perhaps. She had straight blonde hair cut very short and brown eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. There was nothing pretentious about her, either in her tone or her manner. And she was smiling—but she clearly did not want a reporter on the premises.
"I—I'm sorry," Brendan said. "I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear. I'm not here for an interview. I'm looking for someone, and I was given this address. An elderly woman, in her eighties. Perhaps I've made a mistake. Forgive me for disturbing you."
"Wait." The girl stepped out onto the porch and peered at Brendan. "What's her name, if I might ask? The woman you're looking for?"
"Archer. Adora Archer."
The brown eyes flitted away for a moment. "And why are you looking for her?"
Brendan considered her answer. Gut instinct told her that this young woman was more likely to be swayed by personal motives than professional ones. Never mind the story. She could get to that later. "Letitia Cameron sent me. She's a very old friend of Miss Archer's, and she—"
A transformation swept over the girl's face, a look of wonder, almost awe. "I can't believe it. After all these years. Please, come in, Miss"—she looked at the card again— "Miss Delaney."
Brendan followed the girl through a marbled foyer into a high-ceilinged room on the left. A library, with tall bookcases flanking an enormous fireplace. Comfortable, overstuffed chairs and a love seat circled around the hearth, and the girl waved a hand. "Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? Coffee or iced tea?"
"Not right now, thanks." Brendan sat down and placed her bag on the oriental rug at her feet.
"Letitia is alive, then?" the girl said eagerly. "Granmaddie will be so thrilled."
"Granmaddie?"
"My grandmother. Adora Archer. Or, rather, Adora Lovell." She took one look at the expression on Brendan's face and began to laugh. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't introduce myself, did I? I'm Dee Lovell."
For a minute all Brendan could focus on was the truth that Adora Archer was still alive. That she was sitting across from the old woman's granddaughter. That even if Adora didn't live here, this young girl obviously kept in touch with her and could set her on the right track.
Then her mind came to attention. Dee, the girl had said. Her name was Dee. But the receipt for the Playhouse tickets had been under a different name. C. Archer Lovell. Who, then, was C. Archer, the mystery Lovell whose American Express Gold card had paid for the tickets? Not this fresh-faced youngster, surely.
The reporter in her kicked in. "You live here? Not just you." This house had to be eight thousand square feet, minimum. Brendan had seen whole apartments smaller than the library they presently occupied.
"Some people would consider this a little excessive, I realize," Dee admitted. "But I wanted a peaceful place, somewhere I could write and not be disturbed. And when I found this on the Internet, in the very mountains where Granmaddie grew up, well, I just fell in love and couldn't resist it. It gives me"—she grinned broadly— "a sense of place, you know?"
Suddenly something clicked in Brendan's mind, like the tumblers of a lock falling together, a door swinging open. A Sense of Place. Wasn't that the title of a novel that won the Pulitzer a couple of years ago? By some new, relatively unknown writer—what was her name? Cordelia something.
"You are Cordelia A. Lovell, the Pulitzer novelist?" Brendan knew her jaw was hanging open, but she couldn't help herself.
Dee laughed. "Guilty as charged. I thought you knew."
"Forgive me. I had no idea. I simply didn't make the connection." Briefly Brendan told the girl how she had come to find them, from the C. Archer Lovell on the credit card slip and the cross reference to Addie Lovell in the Playhouse workshop records. "I'd heard rumors that Cordelia Lovell had moved to this area, but you—well, I expected—"
"Someone much older?" The girl grinned. "I'm not as young as I look, Miss Delaney I'm thirty-seven. But I have to confess that I allow the misconception to go uncorrected—I even encourage it, on occasion. The truth is, I don't like being a celebrity. I value my privacy. And thankfully, my small measure of success has made seclusion possible." She ran a hand through her hair. "I write under the name Cordelia. But friends know me as Dee, and my credit cards are issued in the name C. Archer. It helps keep me from being recognized too often."
"I can't believe it," Brendan repeated. "Cordelia Lovell." She shook her head. "And Adora Archer is your grandmother? And she's alive?" Brendan knew she sounded like a complete idiot, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.
"Yes, and yes." Dee chuckled. "Very much alive. You'll see soon enough."
"She's here?"
"She lives here, yes. With me. But she's out at the moment. If you don't mind waiting, she should be home before long." She kicked her shoes off and tucked her feet under her. "Now, tell me about the story you're working on."
Brendan started. "Story?" She hadn't said anything about a story, she was sure of it. Only that Letitia had sent her to look for Adora Archer.
"I'm no fool, Miss Delaney. I know there's a story here somewhere. Heaven knows I've felt often enough what I see in your eyes right now. And unless I miss my guess, it's a story that won't let go of you. A destiny of sorts."
So she did know, Brendan mused. And she understood. Of course she would understand. She was a writer. Good stories were her bread and butter too. Her passion. Her life.
As Brendan related to Dee Lovell the events of the past few weeks—finding the blue bottle in the attic of Cameron House, and how enamored she had become with the idea of finding these women and discovering the outcome of their lives—she could see the young woman's excitement mounting. At last she finished, reached into her bag, and drew out the clouded glass bottle.
Dee reached for it, holding it carefully, touching its surfaces as if it were an icon from a sacred oracle. "This bottle holds my history too, you know," she said reverently. "And there's so much I don't know. I wonder—"
Just then the front door slammed shut. "Cordelia?" a woman's voice called out. "Sweetie, where are you?"
"In the library, Granmaddie," Dee called back. "Come in here—we've got company."
Brendan's heart began to pound.
Adora Archer had come home.
Brendan would have sworn that nothing could ever take her off guard as much as meeting Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cordelia A. Lovell. But she was wrong. Granmaddie—Adora Archer Lovell, now called Addie—was an even bigger shock.
She stood in the doorway, a diminutive woman no more than five feet tall, clad in a purple and green silk running suit and bright purple high-topped tennis shoes. Dazzling platinum blonde hair curled out wild and windblown from her forehead, and she paused only for a moment before dashing into the room and plopping down on the love seat next to her granddaughter.
"Hi, sweetie," she said, giving the girl a kiss on the cheek. "Sorry I'm a little late. You know how those old geezers at the center love to talk."
"Granmaddie goes to the senior center at Opportunity House on Thursdays," Dee explained.
"Yes, and I don't know for the life of me why I bother. Half of those folks are fifteen years younger than me, and still all they want to do is sit around on their keisters playing bridge. I did get Davis McClellan to dance with me today, but I practically had to drag him out onto the floor, and then everybody kept yelling at us to turn the music down."
"Not everybody stays as active as you do, Granmaddie."
"Well, they should, and that's the truth. Use it or lose it, that's my motto.
I can't wait till the Playhouse starts rehearsals again. I've heard they're going to do Camelot this year. I may audition for the part of Guinevere." She threw back her head and laughed, then snapped to attention and fixed her gaze on Brendan. "Who in blazes are you?"
Dee stroked the old woman's arm. "Granmaddie, this is Brendan Delaney. She's a reporter with WLOS, the television station."
"Caved in, did you?" She patted Dee on the cheek. "I thought you said you had absolutely no intention of doing interviews." The old woman nodded in Brendan's direction. "She's a gifted one, my granddaughter. But I guess you know that, or you wouldn't be here."
"Brendan didn't come to interview me, Granmaddie. She's here to talk to you."
"Yes, Mrs. Lovell," Brendan began, "I—"
"Oh, posh. None of that 'Mrs.' stuff. It's Addie. If you can't manage to be friendly, you can just run along."
"Yes, ma'am. Addie, I mean," Brendan faltered. "The reason I'm here—"
Addie held up a hand, and Brendan stopped mid-sentence. The old woman's attention focused for the first time on the cobalt blue bottle, sitting on the table next to Brendan's chair. Her hand began to shake, and tears welled up in her eyes. "It can't be," she breathed. She turned to Brendan. "Where did you get that?"
Brendan repeated the story she had told to Dee just a few minutes earlier—how the bottle had been discovered, and how she had determined to track down the four women and find out the end of the story When she got to the part about Letitia Cameron, Addie took in a quick breath.
"Tish," she whispered. "Alive?"
"Yes." Brendan smiled. "I spoke with her last week. You sent her a postcard from the Playhouse—"
"Carousel" Addie finished. "I didn't know where she was—I just used the last address I had, from oh, fifteen years ago, maybe. I really didn't know if it would ever reach her."
"It was forwarded several times, but yes, it was finally delivered. Letitia said she had tried to call, but couldn't get a number from information."
"Our telephone is unlisted," Dee explained. "Otherwise—"
"I understand." Brendan leaned forward toward Addie. "I would like it very much if you would tell me your part of the story, Addie. You went to California, Letitia said, to follow your dream. But she didn't know much of anything after that."
"It was such a long time ago," Addie murmured, looking from Brendan to Dee and back again. "Such a long time. I tried to forget, but I couldn't. And now you come here with that—" She pointed at the bottle. "It's a sign, I think. A sign that maybe it's time, once and for all, to let the truth be told. Some of it I have never told anyone—not even my granddaughter." She paused and passed a hand over her eyes. "There have been too many secrets over the years, secrets I'm tired of keeping to myself."
Brendan got out her tape recorder and pad and moved her chair closer to the love seat.
"Are you sure you want to hear this? All of it?" Addie reached out a hand toward Dee. "It might make a difference in your feelings about your old grandmother."
"I'm sure." Dee smiled and squeezed the hand. "Nothing will ever change my love for you, Granmaddie." She motioned to Brendan, who handed her the glass bottle. "You and Letitia actually wrote out your dreams and put them into this bottle?"
Addie nodded. "And two other friends too—Eleanor James and Mary Love Buchanan." Her eyes took on a distant, faraway look. It was Christmas Day 1929. . . ."