The rest of the afternoon flew by in a flurry of activity. Since it was impossible to select appropriate clothing for an unknown destination, Annelise and I crammed everything from snowsuits to bathing suits into suitcases. And since we didn’t know how long we’d be away, there were quite a few suitcases.
The only thing I knew for certain about our secret hideaway was that it was child-friendly, and the only reason I knew that was because Bill assured Will and Rob that there was no need for them to pack every toy they owned, since there would be plenty of things for them to play with where they were going.
At some point Bill called me downstairs to introduce me to Ivan Anton, the head of the security detail from London.The broad-shouldered young man declined my invitation to dinner, telling me that he and his team would be spending the night in the field, as well as on the hillsides and at strategically placed locations along the narrow lane.
“We’ve set up a secure perimeter around the cottage,” Ivan informed me. “No one will get past us, Mrs. Willis.”
“Shepherd,” I corrected automatically. It was a common mistake. I hadn’t changed my last name when I’d married Bill Willis. “I’m Lori Shepherd. But call me Lori. Everyone does.”
Ivan nodded. “You can rely on me and my team, Lori. We’ll look after your home as if it were our own.” He touched his fingers to his brow in a casual salute and went back to patrolling his secure perimeter.
I went back upstairs, to continue packing.
Stanley—wisest of cats—decided to keep clear of our flying feet by curling up in Bill’s favorite armchair in the living room. He remained there until dinnertime, when he joined us in the dining room, where he did his utmost to persuade us that the veal-and-ham pie had been baked exclusively for him.
After dinner we gathered around the kitchen table for a spirited game of Go Fish that lasted well past the twins’ normal bedtime. When the game ended, Annelise went upstairs to her room to pack her own bags, and Bill went up, too, to put the boys to bed. Stanley went with them—he was, for all intents and purposes, Bill’s cat—but I didn’t intrude. I knew I’d have the twins with me, wherever we went, but Bill didn’t know when he’d see them again. I wanted to give them as much father-and-sons time together as possible.
I put the playing cards away, emptied the dishwasher, and taped notes to the kitchen cabinets, to help Ivan Anton and his team find whatever they might need to make their own meals. It was approaching ten o’clock when I returned to the study.
The lights above the mantel shelf were still lit, but I put a match to the logs in the fireplace anyway. When the flames were leaping, I took from the bookshelves a blue-leather-bound book and settled with it in the armchair I’d occupied earlier, during my disquieting conversation with Bill.
The blue book was a journal of sorts. I’d inherited it from my late mother’s closest friend, an Englishwoman named Dimity Westwood. My mother and Dimity had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War. Although they never saw each other again after my mother returned to the States at the conclusion of the war, they maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic.
My mother treasured her correspondence with Dimity. Her letters were her refuge, her favorite escape from the routines and responsibilities of everyday life, and she kept them a closely guarded secret. I knew nothing about the letters, or her friendship with Dimity, until after both she and Dimity were dead.
Until then I’d known Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, a fairy-tale figure from my childhood, the main character in a series of bedtime stories invented by my mother. The truth about Aunt Dimity had come as quite a shock, as had the news that my fictional heroine had bequeathed to me a very real fortune along with the honey-colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious cache of letters, and a journal bound in blue leather.
It had come as a far greater shock to discover that Dimity, though deceased, had not altogether departed the cottage. Despite having what some might consider a significant handicap, she continued to visit her old home. She was far too civilized to announce her presence by moaning in the chimneys or hovering in a spectral mist at the foot of my bed. Instead, she wrote to me, as she had written to my mother, continuing the correspondence not in letters, but in the blue journal.
Whenever I opened the journal, Dimity’s handwriting appeared, an old-fashioned copperplate taught in the village school at a time when indoor plumbing was an uncommon luxury. I had no idea how Dimity managed to bridge the gap between life and afterlife—she wasn’t too clear on the mechanics of it either—but the how had long since ceased to concern me. My friendship with Aunt Dimity may have been the most surprising of surprise presents, but it was a gift beyond price, and I accepted it gratefully.