Lavender Morning Read online

  When the door was opened by a handsome, gray-haired man, Jocelyn almost said she was there to see his father. “You’re Miss Edi’s David?” she blurted out, wonder in her voice.

  He gave her a dazzling smile and said, “You have made my entire week. No, my whole year. I can hardly wait to tell Jim about you.”

  Jocelyn laughed. “I’ve heard all about the grandfather jealousy, Dr. Aldredge, but I didn’t know it extended to the generation in between.”

  “Oh, yes. It goes all the way down—and back. I can’t imagine what would happen if Luke had a child.” At that he gave her a glance up and down.

  “Shall I take that look as a fertility check?” she shot at him.

  David blinked a moment, then smiled. “Jim said you had a saucy sense of humor, but it’s better than he said. Won’t you come in? My wife has made herself scarce for the afternoon, so we have the privacy to talk. And, by the way, call me Dave, or as the town does, Dr. Dave.”

  As soon as Joce stepped inside, she saw why he’d bought the house. The entire front of it was glass and it looked onto a small, storybook beautiful harbor. Sailboats and small motorboats and little docks led into the lovely James River.

  “Wow!” was all she could say.

  “We like it,” Dr. Dave said, obviously pleased that she thought it was pretty.

  The downstairs of the house was mostly one open room, with living, breakfast, and kitchen all in one area. To the side was a dining room that had been turned into a TV-library. Across the front of the house was a glassed-in porch with wicker furniture, and it looked like the place that got the most use.

  She knew her guess was correct when she saw there was a little table set for two on the long porch. The dishes matched the napkins and the place mats, so she knew someone had gone to a lot of trouble.

  “I guess I should have asked what you like to eat but—”

  “Luke told you everything about me,” she said.

  “No.” Dr. Dave looked surprised. “My grandson would probably hit me over the head with one of my own golf clubs if he knew I’d invited you here. He has a true belief that he can solve all his own problems all by himself.”

  “And you don’t think he can?”

  “I don’t believe anyone can solve their problems all by themselves. What about you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said cautiously. “I don’t think I ever thought about it before, but I guess not. I know that I grew up being very attached to Miss Edi, and she helped me with whatever problems I had.”

  “Ah, yes, now we get down to it,” Dr. Dave said as he removed the cover off the big soup tureen in the center of the table. “Do you like cold vichyssoise?”

  “Love it. But only if it’s from organic potatoes.”

  Dr. Dave chuckled. “You’ve spent some time around Ellie.”

  “No, just her daughter and all the other relatives.” At the thought of Sara, Jocelyn couldn’t keep her face from turning red.

  “So Sara has a new boyfriend, does she? Bit noisy, are they?”

  Jocelyn took a sip of the soup. Delicious. “Jim stopped that.”

  “So I was told, and my wife made me leave the room when I started to laugh. Jim always was a bit of a prude. I can’t imagine why my daughter married him.”

  Joce knew he was teasing, but she didn’t like it. Jim Connor had been very good to her. “Maybe because he’s the kind of man who looks after people and cares about them and helps whenever he’s needed.”

  “I see,” Dr. Dave said, sitting down and taking a sip of his soup. “Like father, like son.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that Luke and his father are very much alike. That’s why Luke got along with the other grandfather so well. I’d offer Luke a trip to Disney World and Joe would offer him two days on a smelly boat. I always lost out.”

  “Were you disappointed that Luke didn’t become a doctor?” she asked.

  “Why, no,” Dr. Dave said, as though he’d never thought of the idea before. He got up to get some rolls out of the oven. “Mary Alice would skin me if I forgot these. Only Henry, Sara’s father, wanted to be a doctor. The rest of them did what they wanted to.”

  Jocelyn broke a roll, buttered it, and took a bite. She’d had enough of chitchat. “So what happened between you and Miss Edi?”

  “People don’t know this, but we broke up before we left for war.”

  Jocelyn could only blink at him. “But I thought…”

  “Everyone, including us, thought we were going to get married. I asked her, she said yes, and I slipped the ring on her finger. But a few weeks after that, Pearl Harbor was bombed and everything changed.”

  “Or did things change because of what happened earlier in that year?”

  It was Dr. Dave’s turn to look surprised. “You do your research, don’t you.”

  “I know that Alexander McDowell supported Miss Edi after her retirement, and I assume it was probably his money that sent me to college. Now why would he do something like that?”

  “Would you like some more soup?”

  “Love some.”

  “And I have sandwiches. Cucumber, tuna, chicken salad, and egg salad. Help yourself,” he said as he put the big plate on the table.

  “Okay,” Jocelyn said as she took a tuna salad sandwich and bit into it. “Something happened in Edilean about the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor on the seventh of December 1941, and because of it, a whole lot of things changed.”

  “Please tell me you aren’t going to dig and snoop until you find out what happened.”

  “I’m afraid I am.”

  Dr. Dave gave a sigh. “Young people always want to know family secrets.”

  “From people who already know them,” Jocelyn said.

  Dr. Dave chuckled. “I knew I was right in asking Mary Alice to get us a chocolate cake from The Trellis.”

  “You mean one of those nine-layer Death by Chocolate things? They aren’t an urban legend?”

  “They’re real, and I have one. Now what is it you most want to know?”

  “Right now, I’m interested in 1944.”

  “Edi’s story,” Dr. Dave said as he took the empty bowls off the table. He waved to Jocelyn to stay where she was. “So you read the story I gave Luke.”

  “Sort of. Actually, he read it to me.”

  Dr. Dave put the dishes down on the kitchen island, then turned to her slowly. “What do you mean? He read it to you?”

  Joce stood up and wandered around a bit, looking at the pictures on the walls. Unless she missed her guess, they were original works gathered from around the United States. “Just that. I was baking cupcakes for that…that party and he read to me.” She said the word with so much anger that she had to take a couple of breaths. Where had Bell flown in from? Milan? London? Paris? All just to ruin Jocelyn’s first venture into society where she now lived. Between working that day and Bell’s hateful little stunt, Joce hadn’t talked to even one person about Miss Edi—which had been her main objective of the day. That and earning money.

  “Who else was in the house?” Dr. Dave asked.

  “Just us,” Joce said, then gave him a sharp look. “Have people been saying that Luke and I—”

  “No, I’ve heard nothing, and thanks to e-mail, texting, and the telephone, my wife and I hear pretty much everything that goes on in that town. So you and my grandson were alone in your house, you were baking cupcakes, and he was reading to you?”

  “Yes,” she said, giving him a puzzled look. “Am I missing something here? Did I commit some Southern taboo? Sara keeps telling me I’m a Yankee, and Tess…Well, who knows what Tess thinks?”

  “No,” Dr. Dave said softly, “you did nothing wrong. It’s just not a way I’ve seen my grandson before. He’s pretty much of a loner.”

  “Loner?” Joce said. “He’s married. Did you forget that?”

  Dr. Dave took his time as he removed the cover off a big cake holder, and under it was the wonderful chocola