I will, won’t I, Kitten? You’ll come home to see your parents and eat at least four different dishes made with Massachusetts cranberries? That’s how it is at my house. My grandfather will joke about how Ben Franklin was an idiot for choosing the turkey as our national bird, but he admits it tastes better than eagle. We’ll all laugh, but once again I will secretly wonder how he knows what eagle tastes like until it’s too disturbing to ponder any longer, and I drown the thought in mashed potatoes and gravy.
How long will you be able to stay? If you’re around on Saturday, I’d love to bring you to our fraternity social. All the locals bring in a leftover pie from Thanksgiving, and we eat ourselves sick again.
Don’t work too hard, Kitten. I had no idea you were thinking about teaching, and your stories of the fifth-grade shenanigans you deal with by turns make me laugh andwant to throttle the little hooligans who give you such a hard time. I’m glad you have your cousin to sympathize with you, although her second graders sound easier to manage.
You didn’t ask, Kitten, but I’ll tell you so that I can ask the same of you: I’m not dating anyone in Boston. Your mother can check with the biggest gossip at the club or anywhere else, and they’ll tell you the same. I haven’t had eyes—much less the heart—for anyone since you ran away. How about you, Kitten? Do you and your cousin live the carefree life of single girls in your apartment, entertaining gentleman callers and going out on the town? Or are you too distracted, perhaps, by the memory of a certain handsome young man pining for you back in Boston?
Yours,
Dear Heart
I set the letter down, feeling unsettled and trying to understand why.
“Someone’s got it bad,” Jay says. “And his very stupid name is Dear Heart. But at least he gave us some clues.Smitten Kitten is teaching fifth grade. He’s probably at Harvard if he’s finding it difficult. I looked up his return address. It’s in the Back Bay, so probably rooming with rich kids in the brownstones so he’s close to campus without living in Cambridge. And now we know Smitten Kitten was roommates with her cousin …” He breaks off. “You’re frowning. What’s up?”
I look up from the letter. “Everything he says is too perfect. Too smooth.”
Jay shrugs. “Speaking as a guy who writes a lot of drafts, maybe that’s the form talking. Who knows how many letters he started and threw away before he said it exactly how he wanted to in that one?”
“I guess that’s true.” But I have a strong allergy to smooth-talking men, and this letter is triggering it. I’m borderline twitchy, and I have to force myself to stay seated instead of getting up to rummage in the kitchen for nothing in particular.
“Back to the clues, then?” he asks.
I look down at the paper. “He mentions several letters from her, which means at least some of his got to her at this address. And now I have a problem.”
“What problem?”
“With the first letter, there wasn’t enough information to do anything with. This one has enough info that I need to do something about it.”
“You mean find Smitten Kitten?”
I sigh. “Or Dear Heart.”
He sucks his teeth and eyes the letter. “What if it’s an unhappy ending? And Kitten and Dear are most likely not around anymore. These were written sixty years ago.”
I give him a steady look, and he smiles.
“Yeah, you have to find them. I understand how much a single letter can shape a person, much less their future. I seeit all the time in my research. I was trying to let you off the hook.”
I tilt my head, curious about the phrasing. “Would you try to find them if I took the out?”
His smile turns sheepish. “Yes. But I’m not trying to get a brand-new museum open.”
“And I’m not trying to meet a book deadline. Neither of us has time for this.”
“So we’ll team up and divide the work? I thought you’d never ask.”
I smile. This man … “You don’t need to do this. It’s not your headache.”
“Are you trying to ice me out of this, Phoebe? Because no, ma’am, I will not go quietly. I demand to be in on this juicy historical mystery.”
“All right,” I say—because I understand. “I take Smitten Kitten clues, and you take Dear Heart clues?”
“Deal.”
“I can’t tackle this until after the board meeting on Tuesday. I need to put all my energy into prepping for that. Does that work for you?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about the board meeting. I’m an eyewitness to what you’re doing around here, and I’m giving you five stars.”
