In the Still of the Night

headlong dash into the woods.
    “Lily. Look at how you’re behaving. We’re having guests. Guests don’t like overwrought, hysterical hostesses. They’re coming to enjoy themselves, and you’ve turned, my dear sister, into the least enjoyable person in the world.”
    Lily glared at him, then relaxed. “You’re right. I absolutely hate it when you’re right.“
    “As seldom as it happens, I can see how it disconcerts you,“ Robert said with a toothy grin. Even making faces didn’t destroy his good looks.
    Lily heaved a great sigh. “Okay. I’m pleasant now.”
    He poked his forefingers at the corners of her mouth. “Then look like it, for Pete’s sake. Everything’s copacetic.“
    “If you say so. And I have noticed Jack sticks those articles next to anything to do with Hoover. It’s a real skill at making a point without beating it to death. He was a good choice.”
    Jack Summer had been the downtrodden reporter on the local paper when Robert and Lily first arrived in Voorburg the summer before. When the incompetent editor went elsewhere, the brother and sister learned that they were the owners of the newspaper. Or would be when they’d served their ten-year sentence at Grace and Favor. They and Mr. Prinney, the estate’s attorney, who had the final word, had debated cutting their losses and letting the paper fail or turning the editor’s job over to Jack Summer. Mr. Prinney later told them that he’d feared that Jack, being young, brash and untried, might take the failing newspaper under altogether.
    Going along with the pretense that Robert and Lily were the actual owners and he was acting on their behalf, he had, however, hired Jack and was surprisingly pleased at the results. In spite of the increasingly desperate financial status of virtually everyone in town, Jack had increased the circulation significantly.
    “You have invited Jack to some of the festivities, haven’t you?“ Robert asked, snapping off a daffodil flower and tossing it in the trug.
    “Robert, don’t just pick off the heads. Pick the whole stem.“
    “Oh?“ Robert looked at the lonely, beheaded flower. “Right.“
    “I’ve not only invited Jack to the big Dutch dinner Mrs. Prinney is making,“ Lily went on, “I’ve written another note to Mr. West asking permission to let Jack interview him for the paper at his convenience. And I’ve written to all the guests about the fête as well.”
    Robert pretended to swoon. “You really are the goat’s whiskers, Lily.”
    She tossed a bunch of new, still tender, half-curled ferns into the trug. “Is that good or bad?“ she asked.
    “I’m not sure,“ Robert said, surprisingly serious. “I’m still uneasy about why Julian West, a notable hermit, is coming here.“
    “I don’t care why,“ Lily said. “I’m just glad he is.“ But Robert’s uncharacteristic worry was starting to infect her, too.
    Julian West, the man who had accepted the Brewsters’ invitation, was a very famous writer, extremely popular with men readers and even with a smaller group of women who enjoyed military history. He wrote war novels. His earliest, before the Great War, had been acclaimed as “brutal but truthful“ and “brimming with the romance and blood of American history.”
    He’d covered several battles of the Revolution with style, wit and impeccable research. One was from General Washington’s point of view, and it was the first time many otherwise well-read people realized that the badly dentured hero had a Great Love in his life who wasn’t his wife.
    Another of the Revolutionary War books featured Aaron Burr, the hero turned traitor that the public had loved and then hated. And the critics had swooned over his ability to get inside the historical figure’s head and make him a little bit sympathetic. That book, titled simply Hero, had been a best-seller for nearly two years.
    Then he’d taken on the War of 1812 from the joint viewpoints of President James Madison and his wife, Dolley. This had been Lily’s favorite of his works. His perceptions of Dolley as she packed up the presidential home and fled with national treasures as the British were literally breathing down her neck were magnificent.
    Quite a remarkable feat for a man, Lily thought.
    Then the Great War had started and Julian West, the expert in wars, joined the American Expeditionary Forces under Pershing. There was a long hiatus in his books. He was said to have been wounded while attempting to rescue