Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published by Penguin Group USA 2016
First published in the UK by Harper 2016
Copyright © Beatriz Williams
Cover design by Alexandra Allden © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photographs © H. Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images (front); Shutterstock.com (all other images).
Beatriz Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008134938
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780008134945
Version: 2016-10-27
The first photograph arrives in the mail on the same day that my husband appears on television at the Medal of Honor ceremony. Itâs accompanied by the customary note written in block capital letters. By now, I know enough about politicsâand about my husbandâs family, I supposeâto suspect this isnât a coincidence.
Thereâs no return address (of course, there wouldnât be, would there?), but the envelope was postmarked yesterday in Boston, and the stamps are George Washington, five cents each. A plain manila envelope, letter size, of the sort they use in offices: I flip it back and forth between my fingers, while my heart bounds and rebounds against my ribs.
âTiny, my dear.â Itâs my husbandâs grandmother, calling from the living room. âArenât you going to watch the ceremony?â
She has a remarkable way of forming a sociable question into a court summons, and like a court summons, she canât be ignored. I smooth my hand against the envelope once, twice, as if I can evaporate the contentsâpoof, presto!âin the stroke of a palm, and I slide it into one of the more obscure pigeonholes in the secretary, where the mail is laid every day by the housekeeper.
âYes, of course,â I call back.
The television has been bought new for the occasion. Generally, Granny Hardcastle frowns on modern devices; even my husband, Franklin, has to hide in the attic in order to listen to Red Sox games on the radio. The wireless, she calls it, a little disdainfully, though sheâs not necessarily averse to Sinatra or Glenn Miller in the evenings, while she sits in her favorite chintz chair in the living room and drinks her small glass of cognac. It drowns out the sound of the ocean, she says, which I can never quite comprehend. In the first place, you canât drown out the ocean when it flings itself persistently against your shore, wave after wave, only fifty yards past the shingled walls of your house, no matter how jazzy the trumpets backing up Mr. Sinatra.
In the second place, why would you want to?
I pause at the tray to pour myself a glass of lemonade. I add a splash of vodka, but only a tiny one. âHave they started yet?â I ask, trying to sound as cool as I look. The vodka, Iâve found, is a reliable refrigerant.
âNo. Theyâre trying to sell me Clorox.â Granny Hardcastle stubs out her cigarette in the silver ashtray next to her chairâshe smokes habitually, but only in front of womenâand chews on her irony.
âLemonade?â
âNo, thank you. Iâll have another cigarette, though.â
I make my way to the sofa and open the drawer in the lamp table, where Mrs. Hardcastle keeps the cigarettes. Our little secret. I shake one out of the pack and tilt my body toward the television set, feigning interest in bleach, so that Franklinâs grandmother wonât see the wee shake of my fingers as I strike the lighter and hold it to the tip of the cigarette. These are the sorts of details she notices.