design, nothing more. It has nothing to do with that group of academy girls you speak of or with Angel Heights."
I felt her hand on my shoulder and knew she was about a sniff away from shoving me out the door.
"Now, if you'll excuse me," she said, "I must go and see to my granddaughter. I hear her waking from her nap."
"Boy, did she ever have her drawers in a wad!" I said to Augusta as we backed out of the driveway. "I'm beginning to have a sneaky little suspicion she was trying to get rid of me."
"Don't be vulgar, Arminda, but you're right. The woman was rude. And clearly not telling the truth."
It was cold in the car, and Augusta bundled herself into her downy wrap and turned up the heat. "I could use a cup of that tea," she added with a hint of a shiver.
"You were there?"
She nodded. "Oh, yes, but of course you didn't see me. I didn't want to intrude."
"Then I suppose you noticed how upset she became when I mentioned the pin?"
"Indeed, I did. And that's not all I noticed," Augusta said. "Peggy O'Connor made a point of saying the engraving on her grandmother's stone had nothing to do with a group of girls from the academy."
"Right," I said. "She made that clear."
"Arminda, you never mentioned the academy.… I believe there's a place up on the left where we can get some tea," my angel pointed out.
"Pluma," my grandmother said.
"Pluma what?" Augusta and I had just walked in after our unrewarding drive to Georgia and back when the phone started to ring, and I could tell from the demanding way it jangled that Vesta was on the other end.
"Pluma Griffin."
The name meant nothing to me, but she sounded as though she meant for me to respond in some way, and so I did. "Who's that?" I asked.
Deep sigh here. "You were asking about the other members of that group my mother belonged to, weren't you? Well, Pluma Griffin was one of them."
"I thought you said you couldn't remember."
"I'm eighty years old," Vesta said, sounding more like forty. "I'm supposed to forget things, Minda. And I probably wouldn't think of it now except that when I was helping Gatlin sort through some of Otto's mess this morning, I ran across an old book she'd given Mama. It was a volume of poetry—one of those maudlin, flowery things people used to weep over, and she'd written an inscription in the front."
"Do you know what happened to her?" I was so excited to hear the news, I almost forgot to be tired.
"Well, she died." Vesta paused, baiting me, I guess, and when I didn't answer, she continued. "Moved away from Angel Heights probably before I was born—worked in a library somewhere in Charlotte, I think. Anyway, when Pluma retired, she came back here to live with a niece."
"The niece—she still here? Do I know her?"
"Don't know how you could forget her," Vesta said. "Martha Kate Hawkins was Hank Smith's receptionist for as long as he practiced. Lives in one of those assisted living places out on Chatham's Pond Road."
"Do you think it's too late—?"
"Don't you dare go there before you come by here and get this book!" Vesta said. "I don't want the old thing, and yet I'd feel guilty throwing it away. Let's shove it off on Martha Kate."
Augusta had put on a Crock-Pot of chicken vegetable chowder before we left that morning, and it smelled almost as good as chocolate. Stomach complaining, I left her up to her elbows in biscuit dough and did as my grandmother commanded.
The slender volume of poetry titled The Heart Sings a Blessing was frayed at the edges and bound in a faded blue. On the flyleaf, Pluma Griffin had inscribed in now fading brown ink
For Lucy, I won't forget!
Forever, Pluma
"Forget what?" I wondered aloud.
If Vesta knew, she didn't answer, for just then her doorbell rang, and she went to admit Edna Smith, who tumbled breathless and red-faced into the nearest chair.
"Scared of elevators," she explained to our unspoken question.
"Good grief, Edna, don't tell me you walked up four flights of stairs!" Vesta said, sending me a silent message to bring water.
"I didn't get this winded from sex—'scuse me, Minda," our visitor panted between gulps.
"You know I would've called first, Vesta," Edna said when she was able to breathe normally, "but this just came to me all of a sudden, and I can't talk to just anybody about it." She