JOCE WAS SITTING quietly in Dr. Dave’s study and she was thinking about Miss Edi and her beloved David. She knew what happened next. He was killed and she was burned.
“That’s only the beginning of the story,” Luke said softly.
“The beginning? That was the end of it.”
“No,” Dr. Dave said. “Right after you told me about General Austin I wanted to go to New Hampshire and see if I could get the letters.”
Joce looked at Luke. “That’s what you two were talking about that night at dinner.”
“Yes,” he said, “and that’s why I didn’t want you to go with me, but you nagged until I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I let you go, then you got your feelings hurt because—”
“You two already sound like an old married couple,” Dr. Dave said. “Save it for later. Show her the letters.”
Luke pulled a single piece of paper out of his grandfather’s briefcase and handed it to her. She dreaded reading the letters, as she was sure they’d be full of the accident and what Miss Edi had gone through in the two years it took her to recover.
6 October 1944
Remember Harcourt, the best secretary I ever had? I sent her on assignment with my driver, and it looks like they did more than I asked of them. She’s four months pregnant. I got so mad I would have made them get married, but he was sent to another unit and even I can’t find him. Harcourt wanted to transfer out but I won’t let her.
18 December 1944
Remember Harcourt? That guy she married got killed. Her kid’s due in the spring, so I’ll have to send her away after Christmas. Thank God she hasn’t grown a big belly yet so nobody knows. Without her my office will fall apart.
21 April 1945
Remember Harcourt? I just heard she was in a horrible accident where she was badly burned. She’s not expected to live. The nurse I talked to said the kid was stillborn. I don’t think any loss in this war has hurt me as much as this one. I had her transferred stateside so she can die at home.
Jocelyn read the excerpts three times before she looked up at Luke and Dr. Dave. “Baby?” she whispered, and tears came to her eyes. “That poor, poor woman. She lost more than even I thought she did.”
“No,” Dr. Dave said as he took Jocelyn’s hands in his own. “You have my grandson to thank for all of this, as he was the one who was suspicious.”
“Suspicious of what?” she asked as Luke handed her a tissue.
“That nothing rang true,” Luke said. “If you’d known Uncle Alex you would have understood. He said he owed Edilean Harcourt his entire life, and he wanted to pay her back. Giving her a job, letting her live for free in a house, that meant nothing to him. He’d done that for several people who’d worked for him all their lives.”
“Luke, what are you trying to tell me?”
“With Gramps’s help, I hired an entire team of researchers in England and we went back through a lot of World War II records.”
“To find out where the baby was…was buried?” Joce asked softly.
“Yes and no.” He sat down on an ottoman in front of her. “It was the name Clare that did it for me. Remember in the section where Miss Edi said she kept calling for David when everyone thought she was going to die?”
“Yes.”
“David Clare.”
Joce looked at Dr. Dave. “I’m not getting the point here. What am I missing?”
“Who else do you know is named Clare?”
“No one I know has that last name.”
The two men kept looking at her.
“My mother is named Claire.”
Dr. Dave and Luke smiled at each other.
“Wait a minute!” Joce said. “You’re not trying to tell me that my mother—”
“Was the daughter of Edilean Harcourt and David Clare. Yes, she was. Show her,” Luke said.
Dr. Dave handed Joce some charts such as she’d often seen on TV. DNA charts. She looked at them blankly.
“Sorry for all the secrecy, but if what we suspected hadn’t been true, we didn’t want you to be hurt,” Dr. Dave said. “It was easy to get DNA from you, and not so difficult to get it for Edi. She was a great letter writer and she’d licked a lot of envelopes.”
“Miss Edi was my grandmother?” Joce asked in a faint whisper.
“She didn’t know,” Dr. Dave said. “If she’d known, I’m sure she would have told you. I think that Alex knew about her pregnancy, but no one else did. She stayed in London where no one knew her so she wouldn’t have to answer questions. She was burned just a couple of weeks before she was due to deliver.”
“But the general said the child was stillborn.”
“We figure that’s what he was told. We have no paper proof, but it looks like Alfred Scovill was in Europe at the time, making contracts for helmets, and there was a dying woman who’d just given birth to a baby. As far as we could find out, the birth certificate was made out with Alfred and Frances Scovill as the parents—which, of course, wasn’t true because his wife was back home in the States. But it was wartime, and there were a lot of orphans, a lot of tragedies. No one asked many questions. I think Mr. Scovill took the baby home to his wife in the U.S., moved down to Boca Raton, where no one knew them, and never told anyone the truth. His only concession was to name the child ‘Claire’ from what the dying mother kept saying.”
When Jocelyn tried to stand up, her legs were so weak that she wobbled. Luke put his arms around her to steady her, and held her against him for a few minutes. But Joce pushed away and looked at him.
“This is why you said I might need a doctor here.” She was trying to make a joke, but neither man smiled. They were looking at her hard.
“Are you okay?” Luke asked.
“Just in a state of shock, that’s all. How I wish she’d known. Wish I’d known when she was alive. To share that bond!”
“But you did,” Dr. Dave said, taking her hand. “Alex found out about your mother, about the people who’d adopted her, and he bought a house close to them. He set it all up for her to administer the trust, but then he began to lose his memory.”
“Alzheimer’s,” Jocelyn said.
“Yes. He set everything up through MAW and he concocted that story about knowing the people who adopted you. We figure Alex meant to let Edi spend some time getting to know you, then he’d tell her the truth. But Alex…he simply forgot.”
Luke went to a side table and mixed her a drink. “I think you need this,” he said as he looked at his grandfather.
Jocelyn took the drink and sipped it. “I can feel that you two have something more to tell me. Better get it out before I faint from what you’ve already told me.”
“We found David Clare’s relatives.”
She looked up at the two tall men, both of them hovering over her, watching her as though she might collapse at any moment. But their words made her feel less like collapsing than anything they’d said. It would take her a long time to deal with the fact that Miss Edi never knew what they were to each other, but the idea of relatives was startling.
“You mean I might have relatives who have an IQ over seventy, who don’t make it their life’s work to belittle me and make me feel bad?”
“Actually, I think that’s what all relatives do,” Luke said. “My cousins—Ow!” he said when his grandfather punched him on the arm.
“You have the telephone number?” Dr. Dave asked Luke.
“Sure. Right here with me. I thought I’d call, then Joce could—”
She snatched the paper out of his hands. “They’re my relatives; I’m calling.” She went to the big phone on Dr. Dave’s desk. “Shall I put it on speaker?”
Both men nodded.
Joce took a couple of deep breaths, then called the number in upstate New York. Immediately, a man’s voice answered. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but I’m looking for anyone connected to a man named David Clare, who fought in World War II.”
“Speaking.”
Jocelyn shrugged in puzzlement to the two men. “Are you related to him?”
“I guess I am,” the man said, chuckling.
“You know about Sergeant David Clare who served with General Austin, that David Clare?”
“Young lady, I don’t know how else to tell you that I am David Clare and that I served with old Bulldog Austin.”
“You,” Jocelyn began, but her voice dropped to a whisper. “But you were killed.”
“I was reported dead, but actually, I was held prisoner until the war was over. I can assure you that I am alive, not particularly healthy, but alive.”
“Did you know Edilean Harcourt?”
There was a long pause from him. “Yes. She was…killed in 1944.”
“No. Miss Edi died only last year.”
The man’s voice rose in anger. “I don’t appreciate this. Edilean Harcourt was killed in a fire when a jeep exploded.”
“She wasn’t,” Jocelyn said, near to tears. Was she really talking to Miss Edi’s David—to her own grandfather? “She lived. Her legs were horribly burned, but she lived. I met her when I was ten years old and she was my guide, my foster mother—I don’t know what you call her. When she died, she left me her old house—”
“Edilean Manor,” he whispered.
“Yes. Miss Edi never married. She spent most of her life traveling all over the world with a Dr. Brenner and helping him with disasters. They—” Joce broke off and looked at Luke. “I think he’s crying.” But then Joce could no longer hold back her tears.
Luke took the phone from her, and by that time a man was yelling. “I don’t know who the hell you are to make Uncle Dave cry, but—”
In the background, Luke could hear, “No, no, no. It’s about Edi. They knew Edi.”
The angry young man stopped shouting. “You know something about Miss Edi?”
“You’ve heard of her?” Luke asked.
“Are you kidding? I grew up hearing that name. The Lost Love, the only woman Uncle Dave ever loved. You know something about her? Like where she’s buried? Wait! Uncle Dave wants the phone back.”
Luke put the phone back on speaker so they could all hear.
“Who are you?” David Clare asked.
“I think I’m your granddaughter,” Joce said before she started crying again, then David also gave way to tears.
The young man took the phone over again. “Holy hell! What is up with you people?”
In the background David was saying, “Come here. Now. Today. I want to see you now.”
The young man said, “It looks like he wants you to come here. If you do, should I have a defibrillator on standby?”
“We may need one for both of them,” Luke said, then took the phone off speaker and quickly told the story of Miss Edi being pregnant and delivering the baby, but no one thought she’d live, so a man named Scovill adopted the baby.
“You mean Uncle Dave had a kid?”
“A daughter named Claire.”
“Claire Clare,” the young man said, amused.
“Yeah,” Luke said, looking at Joce, who was crying hard. “Claire Clare. Could we visit? Would that be all right?”
“What I’m wondering is why the hell you’re still on the telephone. Can you take a red-eye?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, looking at Joce. “Can we be there tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“Listen, uh…” He didn’t know the man’s name.
“Eddie,” the man said, then paused. “My name is Edward Harcourt Clare. I was the last of the litter, so they let Uncle Dave name me. If I’d been a girl I’d have been named Edilean.”
Luke looked at Jocelyn. “His name is Edward Harcourt Clare.”
Joce started laughing and crying at the same time.
“Okay,” Luke said, “let me check flights, and I’ll call you back in an hour and tell you when we’ll be there.”
“When you get here, we’ll never get the lot of them to stop crying.” Pausing, he lowered his voice. “I just want to say that this is great of you. Uncle Dave has been like a second father to all of us kids. I can’t begin to tell you all that he’s done in our little town. He’s not well and he doesn’t have long, but to get to see his own granddaughter…Well, thanks. All I can say is thanks a lot.”