be your job to do your best to blend in. With any luck, Forrest won’t even notice you’re there.”
“But won’t he recognize me? My face has been plastered in at least half as many magazines as Gloria’s since everything that went down at the Opera House,” Jerome pointed out.
Hank had given him a pitying smile. “Jerome, you’re black. Put you in serving clothes and you’ll be practically invisible to wealthy white folks like Forrest and his crowd. Forrest is the sort of man who, if he did read any of those Manhattanite articles, never would’ve looked past the pretty girl on your arm in the photos. A guy like you? You’ve only ever been an invisible man to him.”
Jerome had spent his whole life avoiding this kind of serving-the-white-man work. But Hank had made it clear that if Jerome wanted to escape Lowell and see his beloved fiancée anytime soon, he was going to have to get over his pride and do what needed to be done.
Unable to find anything out of the ordinary on the mahogany desk, Jerome began opening the drawers on each side. In the middle drawer on the left, he found a thick beige envelope. He withdrew two steamship tickets to Paris. The boat was leaving in a week. He also found a folded slip of notebook paper in the envelope. It was a sort of list written in impeccably neat handwriting:
Height: 5′2″
Weight: 105 lb.?
To Bring Along:
7 day dresses
7 evening dresses
4 skirts
4 blouses
Shoes? Ask Marlene at Bloomingdale’s
Dial Madame Barbas/House of Patou as soon as we arrive
The handwriting looked masculine, but what was all this about skirts and blouses … unless … Forrest was planning to whisk a girl away to Paris!
Jerome felt his throat close up. From the way Forrest had been acting outside, it wasn’t too hard to guess who that girl might be.
Gloria had said she’d talked to Forrest about Jerome—it wasn’t like this man had no idea Gloria was no longer available. What, did Forrest think that because Gloria was engaged to a black man, it didn’t count as a real engagement? How dare Forrest try to steal his girl! It would serve the man right if Jerome ripped up these tickets right now.
But that was a big, stupid risk that Jerome knew he couldn’t take. Besides, he knew if Forrest offered Gloria a trip to Paris, she’d refuse him. He returned the tickets and list to the envelope and put them back where he’d found them.
Jerome moved to the dresser. He went through it drawer by drawer and found far less clothing in the last one than there should’ve been. He reached through the stacks of polo shirts to the bottom of the drawer and grinned when the wood lifted easily under his hands. He cleared out the drawer and lifted the false bottom.
His eyes were drawn first to a small black velvet box in the corner. Inside? A ring that made Gloria’s look like a child’s plaything. It had a white-gold band, and several tiny diamonds were grouped into the shape of a flower at the center. Maybe the ring was just a family heirloom—maybe it had nothing to do with Gloria—but the sight of it still made Jerome queasy.
Jerome glanced at the door and listened hard for footsteps or voices, but the coast was still clear. He turned his attention to a large leather-covered book that took up most of the space in the bottom of the drawer. Jerome flipped through the photo album and recognized a handsome young boy with dark, glinting eyes as a younger version of Forrest. In one picture, the boy looked about five or six. He stood at the edge of a pond, fishing rod in hand. A mustached man in a casual checkered shirt and trousers stood behind Forrest with a hand on his shoulder. Forrest was laughing, but the man’s expression was grave.
Jerome had to look at the picture for a few moments before he realized why the man seemed familiar. He hadn’t been bald back then—he’d had dark, silky hair just like Forrest’s, and it swept over his forehead in the exact same way. Though the man’s pale eyes were more sinister, they had the same appealing glimmer as Forrest’s—and like Forrest, the man was remarkably handsome.
This was before the man had gotten the scar that stretched across his face.
Without the scar, the resemblance between Forrest’s man Pembroke and Forrest was unmistakable. The clefts in their chins, their long, straight noses, their