She paused, covering the mouthpiece, and glanced up at Rory. “She wants to know who the friend is.”
Rory hesitated, weighing how much to say. She’d do herself no favors by being indiscreet with the family’s secrets. “Tell her it’s a very close friend of her brother’s—from the war.”
Paulette repeated Rory’s words verbatim, listened a moment, then nodded pertly. “Yes. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and reached for a notepad, jotting down an address and a hastily scribbled map. “Ms. Purcell says you’re to come to the house. This is the address. Someone will meet you at the gate.”
Rory tried not to look astonished as she took the slip of paper and dropped it into her purse, as if this were exactly what she’d expected to happen. “Thank you so much for your help, Paulette.”
It took less than fifteen minutes to reach the address on Bellevue Avenue. She turned into the drive, coming to a halt before an ornate iron gate. A woman in faded overalls and a wide-brimmed straw hat scrambled up off her knees, abandoning her garden and her pile of weeds. She tilted her sunglasses down, peering at Rory.
“My name is Aurora Grant,” Rory called as the woman approached. “I’m here to see Cynthia Purcell.”
“Paulette said you came from Boston.”
Rory ran her eyes over the woman, registering the similarities. The silvery-gold curls peeking out from beneath the straw hat, the pale eyes and wide mouth. “Are you Thia?”
She brushed off her hands and parked them on her hips. “Why are you here?”
“I was hoping to speak to your brother about his fiancée.”
She adjusted her hat to better shade her eyes. “My brother doesn’t have a fiancée.”
“But he did have one during the war. I’d like to talk to him about Soline Roussel.”
“Right,” Thia replied with a peculiar crispness. “You’d better come inside.”
Rory parked at the top of the drive, trying to imagine Soline, fresh off the boat from war-torn Paris, taking in the grandeur of the Purcell family home. It was just short of palatial, three stories of cream-and-gray-colored stone with high mullioned windows and a dizzying number of gables.
If not for the interference of Owen Purcell, Soline might be mistress of this house. She would have been here when the news arrived that Anson was, in fact, alive. And when he came home, she would have been here to help him recover from his injuries. There would have been a wedding and children. Happiness instead of sorrow. Joy instead of grief.
If not for Owen.
Thia said nothing as she led Rory to the mudroom at the back of the house. She kicked off her shoes, hung her hat on a peg just inside the door, and headed for the kitchen sink. “Let me scrub up, and I’ll pour us some lemonade.”
Rory tried to be inconspicuous as she studied Anson’s sister. She was somewhere in her fifties, tall and earthy with sun-kissed cheeks and heavy wheat-colored waves that fell past her shoulders. That she was related to the man in the photographs couldn’t be denied, but there was something else, some quality she couldn’t put her finger on, that, in spite of the uncomfortable nature of her visit, put Rory at ease.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said as Thia filled a pair of tall glasses with ice and lemonade. “I know this must be . . . awkward.”
Thia handed off one of the glasses, then sipped from her own, her pale eyes meeting Rory’s over the rim. “Perhaps we should go into my study, where we won’t be interrupted. Nadine’s here today doing the blinds, and the woman has ears like a bat.”
It suddenly occurred to Rory that Thia might have jumped to the wrong conclusion about why she’d come. “I’m not here to cause trouble, Ms. Purcell. I don’t want anything from you, if that’s what you think.”
“I know why you’re here. I’ve known since Paulette phoned. Come with me.”
Thia’s study was at the back of the house, an airy room with interesting art on the walls—her own?—and an antique writing desk positioned dead center. Behind the desk, a pair of french doors led out to a small patio. Thia closed them, then pointed to a peach-colored sofa, indicating that they should sit.
She settled across from Rory, her grass-stained overalls and bare feet strangely at odds with the room’s feminine decor. “Where should we begin?”
Her matter-of-fact tone was a little unsettling. Rory took a sip from her glass to regroup, then met Thia’s gaze. “With Soline.”