“I recruited William to work at the church fête,” I protested in injured tones. “I thought he enjoyed announcing the raffle winners.”
“He does, Lori, but it’s not only the church fête, is it?” said Bill. “He reads the lessons at church, plays Joseph in the Nativity play, judges the roses at the flower show, pays for the brass band at the gymkhana, holds the sheep dog trials in his south meadow. . . .” Bill shook his head. “I could go on, but you get the picture. It all adds up. He may be content to let sleeping neighbors lie.”
“I suppose so,” I said grudgingly.
“You’re not, though,” said Bill.
“I’m not what?” I asked.
“You’re not content to let anything lie,” Bill declared, laughing. “You’re planning to investigate your new chum, aren’t you? You’re going to make the rounds at church tomorrow morning in order to dig up whatever gossip you can find about Arthur Hargreaves.”
“Why wait until tomorrow morning?” I retorted loftily. “I’m not the only inquisitive soul around here. I can think of someone close at hand who’s bound to know more about Arthur than we do. I thought I’d ask her about him after lunch.”
“A fine idea,” said Bill. He popped the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth, brushed the crumbs from his fingers, and pushed his chair away from the table. “I was hoping to grab some daddy-daughter time with Bess while the boys are at the stables.”
“Grab all the daddy-daughter time you want,” I told him, getting to my feet. “If you need me, I’ll be in the study, chatting with Aunt Dimity.”
Four
Hardly anyone knew about Aunt Dimity. Bill was one of the scant handful of people who were aware of her existence. I didn’t advertise her presence in the cottage because she wasn’t a normal house guest. She was, in fact, about as far from normal as it was possible to get.
When I was a little girl, my mother told me stories about a wonderful woman named Aunt Dimity who lived in a magical, faraway place known as England. They were my favorite stories and since none of my friends were familiar with them, I grew up believing that my mother had invented Aunt Dimity for the sole purpose of entertaining me, her only child. Many years passed before I learned that my mother had modeled her fictional creation on a real-life Englishwoman named Dimity Westwood.
Dimity Westwood had been my mother’s closest friend. The two women had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War. They’d been very young, very frightened, very brave, and very determined to live life to the fullest despite long work hours, short rations, and the ever-present threat of high-explosive bombs blowing them to kingdom come.
When the war in Europe ended and my mother returned to the States, she and Dimity maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic. After my father’s sudden death, those letters became my mother’s refuge, a peaceful haven in which she could find respite from the rigors of teaching full time while raising a rambunctious daughter on her own.
My mother was extremely protective of her refuge. I knew nothing of her close ties with Dimity Westwood until I was almost thirty years old and both she and Dimity were dead. It was only then that I learned through a law firm—Bill’s law firm—that the seemingly fictional Aunt Dimity had been a living, breathing woman who’d bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, the honey-colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious correspondence she’d exchanged with my mother, and a curious book filled with blank pages and bound in smooth blue leather.
It was through the blue journal that I came to know the real Aunt Dimity. Whenever I gazed at its blank pages, her handwriting would appear, an old-fashioned copperplate taught in the village school at a time when one-room schoolhouses were commonplace. I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time Aunt Dimity wrote to me, but after I’d calmed down enough to read what she had written, I quickly realized that my mother’s best friend had become mine.
I had no idea how Aunt Dimity managed to pass through the barrier between this world and the next, and she wasn’t too clear about it, either. I occasionally thought that I might be her unfinished business on earth, an ongoing project she had to complete before she could move on. When I was in a less egocentric frame of mind, however, I suspected her of sticking around simply because she couldn’t fathom spending eternity without a daily dose of village gossip. As I had pointed out to Bill, I wasn’t the only inquisitive soul in the cottage. And for that, I was profoundly grateful.