“Taking their time, I suppose. You’d have to ask your grandmother that,” Irina responded.
Seth soon succeeded in winning Irina over, and the two of them began trying to solve the puzzle. Once a week, Alma received a box containing three gardenias that was left at the reception desk by a delivery boy. The box never included the sender’s name or the florist’s, but Alma displayed neither surprise nor curiosity. She also regularly received yellow envelopes, again with no indication as to who had sent them. Alma would throw these away after extracting from them a smaller envelope, with her name and old address at Sea Cliff handwritten on it. None of the Belasco family or their staff had either seen these envelopes or forwarded them on to Lark House in the bigger yellow ones. They knew nothing about the yellow envelopes until Seth mentioned them. He and Irina were unable to discover the identity of the sender, or why two envelopes and two addresses were necessary for the same letter, much less where this unusual correspondence ended up. Since Irina found no trace of the letters in the apartment and Seth nothing at Sea Cliff, they assumed Alma must have stored them in a safe-deposit box at her bank.
April 12, 1996
Yet another unforgettable honeymoon with you, Alma! It’s been a long time since I saw you so relaxed and happy. And for us to be greeted like that, in Washington, with the magical sight of one thousand seven hundred cherry trees in bloom! I saw something similar in Kyoto many years ago. Does the cherry tree my father planted at Sea Cliff still bloom each year?
I remember how you stroked the names inscribed in the dark stone of the Vietnam Memorial and told me that stones speak, that you can hear their voices, that the dead are trapped inside the wall and cry out to us, outraged at their sacrifice. I’ve been thinking about that. There are spirits all around us, Alma, but I believe they are free and do not harbor any resentment.
Ichi
THE POLISH GIRL