Moonlight in the Morning Read online

  To her left she heard a door open and close. She went through the double doorway toward the sound and entered a long, narrow conservatory, with three walls and a ceiling of glass. Shades with thin bamboo sticks sheltered the room from too much sun.

  At one end was a cozy circle of chairs, again of different styles and fabrics that had been skillfully chosen to seem mismatched but that were perfectly attuned to one another.

  Around the furniture were plants. There was a variety of them, but for the most part, there were hundreds of orchids. They hung from the ceiling in square wooden pots, their white and green roots peeping out, their long, graceful leaves arching, the stalks of exotic, colorful orchids floating above. A bench went around the perimeter of the room, and it was covered with a mixture of potted plants. There were feathery ferns nestled among the exotic flowers.

  She’d never seen such a variety of orchids. There were big, wide ones that looked like giant butterflies and ranged in color from brilliant fuchsia to dazzling white. Tiny flowers, some of them speckled, clustered on other stems. She saw big gaudy flowers, the kind matronly women wore on their shoulders in the time of President Eisenhower.

  On the floor were huge pots, some of the containers so big they’d need a crane to move them. Spilling out from them, cascading down, were thousands of the beautiful flowers. Under the shelf, in complete shade, were strange-looking blooms that had a sac at the bottom, with petals of deep purple and green.

  Jecca did a slow turn to look about the room. “Gorgeous! Truly breathtaking,” she said, as words seemed to fail her.

  “I’ll pass on the compliment to Tris.”

  Jecca turned to see her friend emerge from the plants and for several moments there was squealing and hugging.

  “You look great!”

  “So do you!”

  “Have you lost weight?”

  “I love that color on you!”

  They hugged more, truly glad to see each other. They’d met on their first day in college when they’d been assigned as roommates, and they’d never parted. They had shared a dorm room and later an apartment, first with just each other, then Sophie had been added. The three of them had been a great team, each girl with her own love of an area of art, each with her own personality.

  Whereas Kim’s only love was jewelry, Jecca just wanted to create. She was the one who used her mother’s old sewing machine to make curtains. And Jecca knew all about the rods needed to hang them. “Courtesy of Layton Hardware” was a frequent saying in their bare-bones apartment. Sophie used to say that if Jecca had her toolboxe t her to she could fix anything.

  Now, the two women, hands on shoulders, kept looking at each other. “The whole summer!” Kim said. “I can’t believe it! Did you bring enough paper? Enough paint?”

  “I hope so. But if I run out, how far do I have to go to get more?”

  Dropping her hands, Kim looked serious. “You have to take a puddle jumper to the big airport where you can get an oxcart, then—”

  “Okay, I stand corrected,” Jecca said, laughing. They were nearly the same height, but Jecca’s dark hair was short, while Kim’s auburn was longer. While they were both very pretty young women, their personalities made them look very different. Jecca always looked as though she were about to laugh, while Kim was more serious. Jecca had always attracted men to her, but Kim sometimes seemed to scare them away. If someone had suggested climbing a pole, Jecca would have agreed to give it a try. Kim would have said, “Let me make some calculations to see if I can do it.” Jecca liked adventure; Kim liked to succeed.

  “Hungry?” Kim asked.

  “Starving.”

  “Nothing’s changed.” Kim smiled, still unable to grasp that her friend was really there. She started toward the dining room.

  “I hate to leave this room,” Jecca said, looking back at the conservatory and the orchids. “I can’t wait to do some painting in here. I’ve been learning some new techniques of how to put light in my work, and I plan to give it my full attention. Who made this place?”

  “Tristan.”

  “Oh. Right. The doctor next door.”

  They went through the living room, past the staircase, and into a big white kitchen. In the center was a heavy oak table that looked as though it was put there when the house was built. Gleaming white subway tiles covered the walls. The appliances were top of the line—about forty years ago.

  “I’m back in time,” Jecca said.

  “And aren’t you lucky?”

  “I am,” she agreed. “I want to hear everything that’s happened in your life lately.”

  “Me the same,” Kim said as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a quiche, salad, olives, asparagus in a vinaigrette sauce, and bottles of raspberry-flavored sparkling water.

  “Nice,” Jecca said. “Did you cook all this?”

  “It’s from our local grocery, and before you ask, we have pretty much any cheese Zabar’s does.”

  “Velveeta?”

  “Of course. We’re Southern.”

  Smiling, Jecca picked up a couple of plates that were on the countertop.

  “We could eat out there with Tris’s orchids,” Kim said, and Jecca had her arms full of plates and food before she finished the sentence.

  Kim got a Rim">Kim tray, filled it, and they went back to sit among the plants.

  Jecca looked about the room as she began to eat, noticing the way the light came through the windows and played off the colors of the flowers. She thought how to layer her watercolors to achieve just that shade of pinkish red. “My apartment isn’t as big as this conservatory—and certainly not as pretty.”

  “Mrs. Wingate’s husband added it right after his father died. But Tris put the plants in here and he takes care of them. He was over here a lot when he was a kid. The Wingates never had children, so Tris and his sister sort of filled in.”

  “Nice for all of them,” Jecca said. “This food is good.”

  “Not what you expected in backwater little Edilean?” Kim asked.

  “After all the times I’ve been here, I know about you guys. You people love to eat.” She nodded toward the doorway that led into the house. “So tell me about the other people living here. Please tell me no one’s going to be knocking on my door at two A.M. wanting to chat.”

  “The truth is,” Kim said as she took a long drink of water, “I don’t really know all the details. I hadn’t been out here in years until I started trying to get the apartment. Right now Mrs. Wingate is in her shop in town, and—”

  “What does she sell?”

  “Heirloom clothing.”

  “What’s that? Vintage clothes?”

  “Oh no,” Kim said. “It’s a type of sewing. I don’t know much about it, but . . .” She lowered her voice. “There’s a woman named Lucy in the apartment across the hall from you, and she sews all day long. She makes nearly all the clothes Mrs. Wingate sells.”

  Jecca leaned forward. “Why are you whispering?”

  “Lucy is very reclusive. I think she may be agoraphobic but no one mentions it.”

  “Scared to leave the house?” Jecca asked, also whispering.

  “That’s my guess. Even though I’ve been here several times in the last couple of weeks, I’ve never met her, never even seen her. I think she stays in her apartment nearly all the time.”

  Jecca leaned back in her chair. “Sounds good to me. The last thing I want is to get involved with people this summer. I have enough to do in my real life with Andrea.”

  “Speaking of which, how’s your boss’s honeymoon going?”

  “You think she’d tell me?” Jecca asked. “The fact that I’m the one who got her gallery out of debt and started showing artists who actually sell, is that a reason to let me know what’s going on? And there are the three times she kept me at the gallery until dawn as she cried about yet another boyfriend dumping her. Are those enough reasons to send me a postcard?”

  Kim laughed. She loved hearing Andrea stories and