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I slid into the seat next to him and said, quickly, before I could change my mind, “Was Genie doing drugs?”

He didn’t look up from his drink. “Why are you asking?”

“You haven’t answered my question.” But he didn’t have to; his face told the truth. “Did you know?” My words came out in a whisper.

He shook his head. “But I should have. All the signs were there.” Suddenly he frowned. “Did you?”

“Of course not!”

“So what made you ask?”

“A …” I didn’t know what to call Mitch, and I stumbled on the word. “A friend.”

“A man friend?” Dad missed nothing.

“Yes. A man friend. When I told him about Genie, he said it sounded like she was doing drugs. I was shocked. I got angry and told him he was being ridiculous.”

“And what did he say?”

“That he must have gotten the idea from what I’d told him.”

“That’s how obvious it was? A friend of yours, a stranger who never met Genie, could read between the lines? How could we have been so blind? Melba and I keep asking ourselves that, over and over again.”

“But how do you know it’s true?” I still had a tiny shred of hope.

“Remember Eli Pierce?”

I remembered Eli. Remembered sitting in Genie’s room, watching her get dressed for the senior prom. That was the night she’d suggested keeping Cake Sisters going after she went off to college. I remembered my relief as Genie said, “It’s not like I’m leaving for the ends of the earth,” in her don’t-be-stupid voice.

Then, from that deep place where I’d buried it, another sentence came bubbling up. “I could really use the money.”

“What does Eli have to do with it?” I asked.

“He was arrested last year for dealing drugs, and it turned out he’d kept meticulous records of all his sales. Can you imagine anything more moronic? The prosecutor came to see me because Genie was one of Eli’s best customers. He let me see the books; she’d been buying cocaine from him for four years. Just a little at first, but by the time she graduated college she’d built up quite a habit. It was all there in black and white. I managed to keep Genie’s name out of it, but the evidence was indisputable.”

“Oh, Dad.” I could barely stand to see the pain on his face, and I hugged him, burying my face in his shoulder. “How horrible for you. You should’ve told me.”

He kissed the top of my head. “You had enough troubles. Melba and I didn’t think you needed one more.”

“But maybe I could have helped you! At least I could have tried.” They’d only wanted to spare me pain, but, still, it made me angry; they’d treated me like a child, kept me from sharing their grief. “We’re family. We need to help one another, and we shouldn’t keep secrets. Especially one as big as this.”

Dad lifted my chin so he could see my face. “You were so ready to blame yourself for Genie’s death, and we thought knowing about the drugs would make it worse. Her death was an accident, but we keep wondering if the drugs were a contributing factor. You would’ve felt the same, and we wanted to save you from that. We weren’t trying to hide anything from you.”

“But you did hide it from me!”

Dad swiveled on his stool, turning away, and I knew I had to stop. I reached for his arm. “I know you wanted to protect me. Thank you for that.” But I had to ask the next question, even if it hurt him. “Do you think we could have stopped her if we’d known?”

I could see him weighing his answer, wondering if he should tell me what he really thought. Finally he said, “If I’m honest, I have to admit that I don’t really know. We could have tried. And I know this: Anything would have been better than nothing. But she hid it so well. She was such a paragon; everyone was always congratulating me for her grades,
her talent, her industriousness. How do you know when someone as perfect as Genie’s in trouble?”

“Maybe,” I said, “you recognize the price of perfection.” The words came flying out of my mouth, and I understood that they’d been with me ever since the fight with Mitch.

Then I saw the anguish on Dad’s face and touched his arm. “You know everything you said to me after Genie died? How it wasn’t my fault? I think you need to say them to yourself now. Nobody ever had a better dad. Genie and I were two lucky girls. You were always there for us. Always.”

Dad drew me to him again, hugging me hard. “Thanks, sweetie,” he said. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“We have a lot more to talk about,” I said, “but right now I need to make a phone call.”

“Melba?” he asked.

“That call can wait till morning. This one can’t.”

MITCH WAS DISTANT
at first, limiting his answers to yes and no. But as I stumbled on, explaining that he’d been right, the iron finally went out of his voice. When I ran out of words, he said, “I’m going to ask you two questions, and I want you to be straight.”

“Okay.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not this time. What else do you want to know?”

“If you are actually apologizing.” I thought I heard the beginning of a smile in his voice, or at least the beginning of a thaw.

“Yes.”

There was a small silence. Then Mitch said, “You know, I think I’d like to meet your father.”

I WOKE UP
the next morning with a knot of pain centered somewhere in the middle of my chest. The signs had all been there, and I’d ignored
them. Mitch was right: I hadn’t wanted to know. Any more than I’d wanted to admit that Genie was dead. I pulled out my phone and dialed Aunt Melba.

When I heard her voice, I pictured her sitting in her green kitchen, surrounded by her daisies and the omnipresent halo of smoke. “Dad told me about the drugs.”

“I know,” she said. “I wish he hadn’t; I don’t see what good it will do you.”

“It’s not about doing good. I had a right to know the truth. And I think it might have been better for us—all of us—if we’d faced this together. Maybe I could have helped you. Did that ever occur to you?”

“Oh.” She sounded so surprised. “You know, I forget sometimes that you’re grown up. Forgive me, Billie. I’m sorry.”

“Now I feel like I never really knew Genie. I’m trying to understand, but I can’t. Why did she need drugs? She had everything.”

“Apparently it wasn’t enough.” I heard Aunt Melba take a pull on her cigarette, holding the smoke for a moment. “Genie reminded me so much of my sister. So talented—and so dissatisfied. Like your mother, she held herself to very high standards. Impossible standards. Maybe it was too much for her too.”

“What do you mean too?”

“No matter how well Barb did something, she always thought she should have done it better. It’s not an easy way to live.”

“But Genie did everything so easily! And everyone loved her.”

“Billie, you were her little sister. No matter how she behaved, you thought Genie held up the sky.”

There was so much heartbreak in her voice, and I thought it was as much for me as for Genie. And maybe a bit for herself too.

“Do you think there was anything that could have stopped her?” I don’t know what I expected Aunt Melba to say or even what I wanted to hear. But her answer was totally unexpected.

“If you’re asking if I think there’s anything we could have done, from what I’ve read, probably not. The only one who could have stopped Genie was Genie. But I will tell you this, Billie Breslin, and it’s something
I know as well as I know anything in this world. If Genie had known how much her death would hurt you, I think she would have done anything to prevent your grief. She would have hated how hard this hit you. Hated it”—her voice broke—“even more than I do. And let me tell you, that’s a lot.”

“Oh, Aunt Melba.” A great wave of tenderness swept over me. “I had no idea.”

“Your father feels the same, you know. We love you very much.” I sat there holding the phone, not knowing what to say next. And then, all at once, I did.

“Aunt Melba”—I hoped she could hear how much I meant this—“don’t you think it’s time you and Dad got married?”

I
LAY IN BED LONG AFTER AUNT MELBA HUNG UP, CLUTCHING THE PHONE
to my chest like a stuffed animal, unwilling to get up and face the day. I was falling back to sleep when a knock on my door jerked me awake. “It’s me.” Dad’s voice. “Mrs. Taber just called.”

“Has she changed her mind?” I got up to let him in. “Decided she won’t talk to us after all?”

“Not that.” He walked in, clothes rumpled as if he’d been up for hours. “She’ll see us, but she doesn’t want to wait until tonight. She wants us to come this morning. Right now, in fact.”

“I wonder why?”

“No use in speculating,” he said. “We’ll know soon enough.”

LULU CAME TO
the door looking so polished that it put me off; whatever she was about to tell us, she had prepared for very carefully. Today she wore a beautiful poppy-colored sweater over tailored gray wool slacks, and her hair had been curled into thick white waves around her face. Her lips were redder, and there was color in her cheeks. Yesterday she’d looked almost boyish; today she could have passed for one of those Fifth Avenue ladies who terrorized Maggie. “Good morning.” She seemed almost formal. “Please come in.”

Walking toward the dining room, I noted that the furniture, while old, had a grace and simplicity I’d missed on our first visit. As I passed
a Shaker bench, I reached out to touch the warm cherrywood; it was soft against my palm.

Today the dining room’s large round table was set with beautiful antique china, and an arrangement of sweet peas, violets, and lilies of the valley nodded from the center. “Thank you for the flowers.” Lulu brushed a hand across them so that the scent of the lilies came wafting toward us. “It was very thoughtful.”

We sat, exchanging polite comments about Sammy’s flowers and the weather. After a few minutes the conversation fizzled out and we descended into an awkward silence, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Are you hungry?” she finally asked. “I’m making a cheese soufflé. All air, which must be why it seems like such a perfect brunch dish.”

“The only thing that will make a soufflé fall,” I said it reflexively, the way I always did when someone mentioned the dish, “is if it knows that you’re afraid of it.” Remembering where I’d first heard the quote, I gasped and began to apologize.

To my relief, Lulu gave a small gurgle of laughter. “That’s one of my favorite of his sayings. I think of Mr. Beard so often—sometimes when I’m cooking, I feel as if he’s right there with me, standing at the stove. I was so lucky to have found him; I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through the war without his letters. They gave me something to look forward to. I often wonder what made him continue writing to me all those years. He was so kind.”

“Anybody would have,” I said impulsively. “Your letters are amazing. So full of life. I don’t think anyone could have resisted them.”

“Really?” The look she gave me was truly surprised, and I saw that she had never considered them anything but ordinary. “You haven’t said how you found them.”

I went back to the beginning, to the locked library and Sammy’s discovery of the room we would come to call Anzio. I told about the library ladies and then about Bertie and Anne.

Lulu listened quietly. “That’s quite a saga,” she said when I’d finished, “and you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to find me. But you have yet to tell me why.”

I knew this was important, that I had to get it right. Dad gave me a little nod of encouragement. “As I said, your letters are so full of life that Sammy and I felt we knew you. When they ended and you vanished from us, it was like losing a good friend. We weren’t ready to let you go. We wanted to know what happened next. We wanted to know that you were all right.”

She stared at me for a long minute, trying to decide whether to believe me. “But there’s something else, isn’t there?”

“I wanted to know how everyone’s life turned out. Not just you—also your mother and Mr. Jones, the Cappuzzellis, Tommy Stroh. But most of all I wanted to know if your father ever came back. It was so frustrating, not being able to know.”

“Like losing a book before you come to the end.”

“Exactly!”

“But I don’t think that’s all. There’s something more you want.”

There seemed no reason to deny it. I nodded.

“You’re wondering if I still have Mr. Beard’s letters. You’re in publishing, and you probably feel they’d make a fine article, maybe even a book.”

She was no fool.

“And then,” she continued drily, “there are all those lost recipes.” She straightened her shoulders and looked directly at me. “I’m sorry to tell you it’s all gone—the letters, the recipes, everything.”

“You didn’t save them?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

“Of course I saved them.” Her voice was sharp. “They were very dear to me. For safety’s sake I kept them in the shop. I was aware of their value, and I decided it was safer than keeping them here. Ironic, isn’t it? They vanished in the fire along with everything else.”

“Oh, no!” My response was so immediate, so obviously heartfelt, that she stood up quickly, pushing her chair carefully back beneath the table, and said, “I can tell you the end of the story. But not until I get our brunch. Mr. Beard wasn’t entirely right about fear: Soufflés do fall.”

When she’d left the room, Dad leaned across the table. “I don’t think—” he started, just as Lulu returned, the soufflé rising with majestic
grandeur above its dish. He bit off the sentence as we watched it collapse.

I accepted a piece, although I had no appetite, and then a second because the flavor was so rich, the texture so light. Lulu was not always what I’d expected, but she certainly was a wonderful cook. “More?” she asked, and I said, “Well, just a tiny piece,” thinking that no cook can resist an appreciative eater.

“So what would you like to know?” The soufflé was gone. Dad shot me a glance, and I knew he was warning me to ease in slowly.

“What happened to Tommy?” It seemed a safe place to start.

“He passed away almost twenty years ago. Heart attack. But we remained good friends all his life. He was the closest thing I ever had to a brother.”

“He wasn’t your boyfriend?” I couldn’t help asking.