Alice patted her sensible, high-quality purse. “But I have most of those letters right here. When they came back, Robert saved them.”

Shay worked at keeping her mind on her driving, and it was hard. She wanted to pull over to the side of the freeway and read all of her father’s letters, one after another. “Why didn’t Rosamond want him to see me or even talk to me?”

Alice sighed, and if she bore Rosamond Dallas any ill will, it wasn’t visible in the sweet lines of her face. “Lord only knows. She wasn’t very happy as a child, you know, and I guess she didn’t want anything to do with anyone from Springfield. Not even her own baby’s father.”

Rosamond had said very little about her life in Springfield, only that her mother drank too much and her father, a railroad worker, had died in an accident when she was four years old. “Did you know Rosamond as a girl?”

Alice shook her head. “I only met her after she’d started to date Robert. She was beautiful, but I—well, I had my misgivings about her. She was rather wild, you know.”

Shay could imagine her mother as a young girl, looking for approbation and love even in those prefame days. It was strange that the search had never stopped, that Rosamond had gone from man to man all her life. “I wish I’d known about you and about my father.”

Alice reached across the car seat to pat Shay’s knee. “You’ll know me, and I’ve brought along things to help you know your father, too.” Suddenly the elderly woman looked alarmed. “I do hope I’m not keeping you from your work, dear!”

Shay thought of the commercials and the irate customers and the stacks of contracts and factory invoices she had left behind at Reese Motors. “My work will definitely keep until tomorrow. You can stay for a while, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Nobody waiting at home but my parakeet, my cat and my bridge club. Now tell me all about this boy of yours. Hank, isn’t it? You know, it’s a funny thing, but your great-grandfather’s name was Henry and they called him Hank, don’t you know.…”

Chapter Ten

Shay bit her lower lip as the ringing began on the other end of the line. It was just plain unconscionable to awaken someone at that hour of the night, but after reading her father’s gentle, innocuous letters, she felt a deep need to touch base.

On the third ring, Mitch answered with an unintelligible grumble.

“She wears bowling shoes,” Shay said.

“You woke me up to tell me that?” He didn’t sound angry, just baffled.

“I thought you’d want to know.” She paused, drew a deep breath. “Oh, Mitch, Alice is a wonderful woman.”

“She’s your grandmother. What else could she be besides wonderful?”

“Flatterer.”

“You love it.”

I love you, Shay thought. “Good night, Mitch,” she said.

He laughed, a wonderful rumbling, sleepy sound. “Good night, princess.”