Tribute
out some of the books. Some might be salvageable.
Who read Zane Grey? she wondered. Who enjoyed Frank Yerby and Mary Stewart? She piled them up, dug out more. Steinbeck and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She started to pull out a copy of The Great Gatsby , and her fingers depressed the sides. Fearing the pages inside had simply deteriorated, she opened it carefully. Inside, in a depression framed by the raw edges of cut pages, sat a stack of letters tied with a faded red ribbon.
“Trudy Hamilton,” Cilla read. “Oh my God.”
She sat with the open book on her lap, her palms together as if in prayer, and her fingertips pressed to her lips. Letters to her grandmother, sent to a name Janet hadn’t used since childhood.
The address on the top envelope was a post office box in Malibu. And the postmark . . .
Reverently, Cilla lifted the stack, angled it toward the light.
“Front Royal, Virginia, January 1972.” A year and a half before she died, Cilla thought.
Love letters. What else could they be, tied with a ribbon, hidden away? A secret of a woman who’d been allowed precious few under the microscope of fame, and surely concealed by her own hands before, like Gatsby, she died young, tragically.
Romanticizing it, Cilla told herself. They could be chatty letters from an old friend, a distant relative.
But they weren’t. She knew they weren’t. Laying them back in the book, she closed it and carried it downstairs.
She showered first, knowing she didn’t dare handle the treasure she’d unearthed until she’d scrubbed off the attic dirt.
Scrubbed, dressed in flannel pants and a sweatshirt, her wet hair pulled back, she poured a glass of Ford’s wine. Standing in the hard fluorescent light—and boy, did that have to go—she sipped the wine, stared at the book.
The letters were hers now, Cilla had no qualms about that. Oh, her mother would disagree—and loudly. She’d weep about her loss, her right to anything that had been Janet’s. Then she’d sell them, auction them off as she had so many of Janet’s possessions over the years.
For posterity, Dilly would claim. For the public who adored her. But that was so much crap, Cilla thought. It would be for the money, and for the reflected glow of fame, the spread in People with photos of Dilly holding the stack of letters, her eyes sheened with tears, with inserts of her and Janet.
But she’d believe her own spin, Cilla thought. That was one of Dilly’s finest skills, as innate as her ability to call up those tear-sheened eyes on cue.
What should be done with them? Should they be hidden away again, returned to sender? Framed like a signed record and hung in the parlor?
“Have to read them first.”
Cilla blew out a breath, set the wine aside, then dragged a stool to the counter. With great care, she untied the faded ribbon, then slipped the top letter out of its envelope. The paper whispered as she unfolded it. Dark, clear handwriting filled two pages.
My Darling,
My heart beats faster knowing I have the right to call you that. My darling. What have I done in my life to earn such a precious gift? Every night I dream of you, of the sound of your voice, the scent of your skin, the taste of your mouth. I tremble inside as I remember the sheer glory of making love to you.
And every morning I wake, afraid it’s all just a dream. Did I imagine it, how we sat by the fire on that cold, clear night, talking as we had never talked before?
Only friends, as I knew what I felt for you, what I wanted with you, could never be. How could such a woman ever want someone like me? Then, then, did it happen? Did you come into my arms? Did your lips seek mine? Did we come together like madness while the fire burned and the music played? Was that the dream, my darling? If it was, I want to live in dreams forever.
My body aches for yours now that we are so far from each other. I long for your voice, but not only on the radio or the record player. I long for your face, but not only in photographs or on the movie screen. It’s you I want, the you inside. The beautiful, passionate, real woman I held in my arms that night, and the nights we were able to steal after.
Come to me soon, my darling. Come back to me and to our secret world where only you and I exist.
I send you all my love, all my longing in this new year.
I am now and forever,
Only Yours
Here? Cilla wondered, carefully folding the letter again. Had it been here
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