Lavender Morning p.33 Read online

  “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?�