Neither Bill nor his father had ever heard of Fortescue Makepeace, and the name Aubrey meant nothing to them, but they urged me nonetheless to visit the family solicitor as soon as possible.
“I shall take my grandsons to school tomorrow morning,” Willis, Sr., informed me, “and I shall retrieve them after school, leaving you free to confer with Mr. Makepeace.”
“My docket’s pretty full, but I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Bill chimed in.
“Wow,” I said, beaming at them. “The villagers may not have surprised you, but you’ve managed to astonish me.”
“In what way? ” asked Willis, Sr.
“I didn’t expect you to be so supportive,” I replied. “I thought you’d accuse me of making a promise I couldn’t keep and plunging headlong into yet another wild goose chase.”
Bill shook his head. “You seem to forget that, as estate attorneys, Father and I have had rather a lot of experience with last wills and testaments.”
“A deathbed wish is sacrosanct,” Willis, Sr., explained. “Whether you can fulfill it or not is irrelevant. The pursuit is all.”
“You may succeed or you may fail,” Bill put in, “but you’re obliged to try. By the same token, we’re obliged to help you. Not that obligation matters in this case. We’ll do our best for the Pyms because”—he shrugged—“they’re family.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “Thanks, both of you. With Team Willis behind me, I can’t fail.”
“And on that hopeful note,” said Bill, getting to his feet, “I will bid you good night. I have to be at the office by seven tomorrow for a conference call, so it’s time for me to hit the sack.”
“I, too, shall retire,” said Willis, Sr., rising. “Will and Rob will expect a certain degree of energetic enthusiasm from me on the way to school, and I must not disappoint them.”
“Coming, Lori?” said Bill.
“I’ll be up in a bit,” I replied. “My brain is spinning too fast for sleep right now.”
“Don’t let it overheat,” he said. “You’ll need to keep your wits about you when you meet with Fortescue Makepeace.”
He bent to kiss the top of my head, then accompanied his father upstairs. Stanley promptly jumped down from the window seat and padded after them, determined, no doubt, to hop into bed with Bill and claim the warm spot behind Bill’s knees.
I waited until silence reigned on the second floor, then made a beeline for the study, where I hoped to speak with the one person who might be able to calm my spinning brain. I’d kept mum about my little side trip because, although Willis, Sr., understood many things, I wasn’t convinced that he’d understand my relationship with Aunt Dimity.
It was, to be sure, a fairly odd relationship. For one thing, Aunt Dimity wasn’t my aunt. For another, she wasn’t entirely alive. Since her body had been laid to rest in St. George’s graveyard before Bill and I had moved into the cottage, most people would, in fact, describe her as completely dead. But I wasn’t one of them.
Dimity Westwood had been born and raised in England. She’d also been my late mother’s closest friend. The two women had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War and they’d maintained a steady correspondence long after the guns had fallen silent and my mother had sailed back to America.
To call the pair pen pals would be to understate the depth of their friendship. Dimity’s letters had helped my mother to recover from my father’s early death and to face the subsequent challenges of full-time work and single parenthood. Their lifelong correspondence had provided my mother with an oasis of peace in her unexpectedly chaotic world.
My mother was very protective of her oasis. When I was growing up, I knew Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of my favorite bedtime stories. I didn’t learn about the real Dimity Westwood until both she and my mother had joined the ranks of the dearly departed. It was then that Dimity had bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, a honey-colored cottage in the Cotswolds, the letters she and my mother had exchanged, and a curious blue-leather-bound journal.
It was through the blue journal that I finally came to know my benefactress. Whenever I spoke to its blank pages, Aunt Dimity’s handwriting would appear, an elegant copperplate taught in the village school at a time when a computer was a clever man who worked with numbers. I’d nearly fainted the first time Aunt Dimity had communed with me from beyond the grave, but I’d long since accepted her as an indispensable presence in my life. I considered myself thrice blessed to call the heroine of my childhood my friend.