Though Win understood the origin of the gesture—he wasn’t a total clod—the feel of something else surged through every last miserable corner of his body. And, for the first time, he saw Pru wholly. She was not the blushing, demure girl he believed he knew.
“There you have it,” she said. “The reason I’m here, in a crumbling house, completely without plans. I have no one and nothing to go back to. I’ll return to America eventually, immigration isn’t going to let me stick around here forever, but even in my own country I don’t have a home.”
“Pru, there has to be someone for you,” he said. “How could there not be?”
“I have a few college friends but … hold on. Wait. What did you just say?”
“There has to be someone.”
“No,” she said. “Before that. Did you call me Prudence?”
“What? Oh. No.” He looked momentarily perplexed. “I called you Pru, probably.”
“Pru?”
“Sure. Everybody has a nickname. You know that. Me. Gads. GD. Have you not heard me say this?”
“No. Never.”
“Ah. Well. Must be only in my mind.”
“Pru makes less sense than Gads.”
“It’s short for Prunus laurocerasus, the Latin name for English laurel. I believe you Yanks call it cherry laurel.”
Win had teased her about the name before. On the one hand it was no different from her Berkeley friends Petal and Daisy. It was a plant, after all. On the other, its fruits were toxic, its cherries made humans ill. And Lord was it invasive. It grew all over the bloody place, just like a weed.
But of course Win loved the name because it was hers. He loved the nickname too, even if it was made of wishful thinking. English laurel? No, this Laurel was all American. Alarmingly, upsettingly so.
Forty-nine
THE BANBURY INN
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
It doesn’t do you justice, there’s that tooth effect I don’t like, which in you is certainly not apparent. I, too, think the dress un peu trop décolleté.
—Florence Deacon on Giovanni Boldini’s rendition of Gladys.
The portrait hung for several decades in the Grand Dining Hall at the Grange.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
Annie wasn’t a snooper by nature.
She didn’t have a big brother to spy on, no sisters with hidden diaries to pry open. Annabelle Haley spent twenty years in a scruffy farmhouse with only one other person who never seemed worth the effort. As it turned out, Annie hadn’t been looking closely enough.
“Nicola!” she yelled, skittering downstairs.
She glanced around. The lobby was eerily silent. Annie looked past one corner and then the next. She clambered over to Nicola’s computer and typed out an e-mail to Eric.
The words and sentences were jumbled together, the grammar poor. Also Annie used way more caps and demonstrative punctuation than was strictly necessary. But Eric would understand. He always did, and this was huge.
After closing out her e-mail, Annie called out for the innkeeper one more time.
“Hey, Nicola!” she warbled, scurrying toward the back door. “I’m going to borrow your bike. Be back in a sec! K thanks!”
Once outside, she jogged to the shed. In the distance was the squeaky scrawl of Nicola’s voice, which Annie took as permission. Sliding on her backpack, she hopped onto the bike and pedaled off.
Earlier that morning, while Laurel showered, Annie had snuck into her purse. The last time she’d done that was probably a decade ago, rooting through her mom’s bag to find quarters for the arcade. But it wasn’t money she was after this time.
After forty seconds of struggle, she extracted an overstuffed black leather Day-Timer, Laurel Haley’s definitive playbook. Annie flipped to the current date. At nine o’clock Laurel was scheduled to meet with an inspector. The time was 8:53.
The calendar didn’t include an address and it seemed impossible anyone would voluntarily let an inspector near the Grange. Nonetheless, the old estate had to be Laurel’s destination. Without a doubt, her mother was the woman from Gus’s story.
“You’re telling me the girl you’ve called Pru all along,” Annie said the previous day, after Gus finished the latest chapter of his tale. “You’re telling me that her name was Laurel?”
He nodded in confirmation.
“What about the Valentine?” she said.
But even as Annie asked the question, the pieces locked into place.
Laurel Innamorati Haley: Annie’s mom. Prunus laurocerasus, Pru, Miss Valentine: the girl from the story. Laurel, Pru. Innamorati, Valentine. In Italy, Valentine’s Day was known as la festa degli innamorati. Of course Gus wouldn’t use Laurel’s actual name. It wasn’t his style.
“Innamorati,” Annie said, winded as if struck in the chest. “Was that Pru’s real last name?”
“How did you know? Annie, you look peaky.”
“That … I think that’s the woman I ran into, the one staying at the inn who said the Grange is gone.”