Her hands trembled as she flipped it over.

Vivian—How’s sunny California? I must thank you for your advice about how to talk to Miles—on the very day you left, I apologized to him and asked him if we could talk, and he agreed. It hasn’t been perfect, but at least it’s been a dialogue. He liked you very much, by the way, but then, how could anyone not?

Regards,

Malcolm

P.S. Your luggage tag with your address on it fell off your suitcase; I found it on my bedroom floor yesterday. I hope it’s okay that I wrote?

 

He’d scrawled his address on the bottom.

She felt the smile spread across her face. She could hear his voice as she read the postcard. She’d missed him so much.

But she’d told him they shouldn’t see each other anymore after she left England, and she knew she’d been right about that. If she replied to this postcard, wouldn’t it just prolong her case of the winter blues?

Oh, the hell with it. She needed something to look forward to, and the sun hadn’t come out in a week.

At lunchtime the next day, she went to a nearby bookstore and bought a postcard of a cable car.

Malcolm—It’s rained constantly since I got home; “sunny California” indeed. I’m thrilled to hear that about you and Miles; please tell him I said hello. Has he changed his mind at all . . . or have you? Did I tell you Julia gave me her recipe for scones before I left Sandringham? I haven’t tried my hand at them, but I’m going to do it as soon as I get a kitchen scale—all of her measurements are in grams!

Vivian

 

His next postcard came a week later. This time it had the London Eye on the front, with fireworks above it. Were those some of the same fireworks they’d seen? She laughed at herself. No, of course not; that photo had probably been taken years before. She flipped the card over.

Vivian—Neither of us has changed our minds, at least not yet, but we seem to understand what’s in each other’s minds a bit better. We’re going fishing this weekend, which I hope will give us some time to sort things out more. And I’m agog that Julia gave you her secret scone recipe; you’ll have to tell me how they turn out. Too bad we won’t be able to share them. How are you feeling about that new job?

Malcolm

 

She grinned at the card and smiled out into her damp garden.

After that, it was rare for a few days to pass without her getting a postcard from Malcolm, or sending one to him. Every time she got home and grabbed her stack of mail out of her mailbox, she got a rush, knowing there might be a card somewhere in the pile. Whenever she walked by a bookstore or stationery store, she dipped inside to find a postcard to add to her stack at home.

She knew this was dangerous. She knew it would only prolong her feelings for Malcolm, which needed to die down already. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to care. It was winter, the Bay Area was apparently getting three years of rain this month, and she needed something to cheer her up, something to look forward to. She would make herself worry about this in the spring.

On a Sunday afternoon, she was just getting home from the grocery store when her phone rang.

“Oh, my mother is answering the phone finally, hmm?” Maddie said.

Vivian laughed.

“Hey, girl, how’s your weekend been?”

She could hear Maddie washing her dishes in the background.

“Good, except I haven’t heard from you for days. Where have you been?”

Vivian opened her refrigerator to unload her groceries.

“Just working. There have been a lot of meetings in the past few days, since I become acting director in a few weeks. And yesterday I was at Aunt Jo’s all day.”

“Ooh, acting director so soon! When do you become permanent director?” Maddie asked.

Maddie sounded so excited and proud of her.

“They posted the job listing on Friday, so I have a month or so to put together my application.”

At least four people had come by her office on Friday afternoon to make sure she knew the application was up on the hospital website. She hadn’t even looked at it yet—she’d made a ton of calls on Friday to help connect a patient with services, and she’d been busy all day Saturday. She had plenty of time, though; she didn’t have to look at it yet.

“Oh!” Maddie turned off the water. “Perfect timing! Have you started working on your application? Do you need any help with it? I’m sure Theo could look it over for you; he’s great at that kind of stuff.” Vivian heard a rumbling in the background. “See, he says he’d be happy to.”

Vivian closed her refrigerator door.

“Thanks. I might take him up on that.”

Maddie was silent for a moment.

“Mom, is everything okay? You sound . . . I don’t know, off somehow. Is Aunt Jo okay? Is anyone else in the family sick, or . . . ?”

Vivian sat down on the couch.

“No, no, everything is fine. Aunt Jo is great, actually; I just talked to her at lunchtime. I’m just tired, I guess. Maybe I should go to bed early.”

Vivian stared out the window after she got off the phone with Maddie. The rain was starting again. She sighed and got up to put away her canned goods.

Chapter Fifteen

Malcolm stopped at Waterstones on the way home to see if they had any new postcards. He had plenty of them now, all in a pile in the middle of his coffee table, but he was always looking for more.

He and Vivian wrote to each other a few times a week; sometimes, he even wrote before waiting for a reply from her, and he thought she did, too. He’d told her as much as he could fit on a postcard about his conversations with Miles, she’d told him about her recent excursions to some local museums, and they both told each other funny or entertaining or frustrating stories from their daily lives. He loved her postcards; he could hear her voice in his head as he read them. It was like she was sitting there on the couch next to him, that amusement and enthusiasm and laughter all together in her voice.

But he was getting worried about her. She’d sounded blue about her new job, which seemed already to be sucking up more and more of her time and energy, when she hadn’t even started yet. She’d never seemed enthusiastic about it, and Vivian was enthusiastic about everything she cared about. When she talked about her current social work job, her love for it shone through in her words, her expressions, her very body language. None of that came through when they discussed the director position. He wished he’d said something to her about that when she was in London.

He’d felt like it wasn’t his place to say that, though. They’d never really discussed finances—he knew she wasn’t wealthy, and that she’d struggled to raise Maddie alone, but he had no idea if she was in a difficult spot now and really needed the money from the new job or not, and he would never ask. Maybe that’s what was driving her to take this job? Because it certainly didn’t seem like it could be anything else.

Was he reading her wrong? Maybe. He hadn’t known her very long, after all. But he didn’t think so.

He wished he could see her again. The postcards brought him joy every day, but he wanted to talk to her, hear her laughter, see her smile, evaluate the tone of her voice when she talked about this job, maybe even try to ask a few more pointed questions about it. Just to see if she’d be okay. He’d even gotten to the point of looking to see what the airfare was from London to San Francisco—very reasonable, this time of year—but had stopped himself before he’d gone any further down that road. She’d made it clear when they’d talked about this on New Year’s Eve that she didn’t want that.