Royal Holiday - Jasmine Guillory Page 0,76

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