Page 4 of Dear Bookworm Beauty
“You talk about Josephine La Monte like you know her or something.”
“I feel like I do. I feel like she and I could have been friends—”
“If you weren’t born in different centuries?” Renee chimes in.
“Well.” I shrug. “Yes.”
She shakes her head at me. “I will never understand you.”
I don’t say it, but I don’t need Renee to understand. She may look at me like I’m crazy for wanting to pursue this, but Grant never once made me feel like pursuing this was a dumb idea.
My phone buzzes on my nightstand. I reach over and see it’s a message from Grant.
GRANT: I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow.
ME: Sounds good.
GRANT: And the coffee I bring doesn’t count as our date.
I laugh to myself.
ME: Fair enough. See you then.
3
GRANT
If someone had told me yesterday that in less than twenty-four hours, I'd find myself driving to Alexandria, Virginia, in search of answers to a mystery about a painter from the Civil War with Laurel, I'd ask them what they were smoking and if they had some for me.
“It should be the next exit,” Laurel points ahead at the sign.
I can feel the excitement radiating off her with each mile closer we get to the La Monte house. Almost as soon as she got in the car this morning, Laurel has been giving me a crash course on everything she knows about Josephine La Monte. And it’s a lot. I now know why Laurel acted the way she did when she read the letter.
Even if the life Josephine led wasn't exciting, I love listening to the excitement in Laurel's voice as she talks about her. She’s barely taken a breath in the three hours we’ve been on the road. It almost sounds like she is talking about an old friend from when she was young and not someone she never met that lived over a hundred and fifty years ago.
“There is only one reference of Josephine potentially getting married. His name was Albert Winthrop. He served with her brother in the Civil War and came to stay with the family over the summer of 1867.”
“Two years after the war ended?” I ask.
“That’s right,” she says. “Her father wrote in a letter about how Albert had asked for Josephine's hand in marriage. He wasn't against the match, but Josephine refused even to consider it."
“I think we finally understand why.” I smile conspiratorially at her.
I can’t help it, but I’m getting caught up in the mystery of what happened to Gad and why he and Josephine didn’t get married?
“Thank you for coming with me,” Laurel says. “And letting me ramble on.”
"Are you kidding?" I laugh. "I need to know what happened just as much as you do. And besides, I could listen to you read your grocery list, and I'd be interested."
Laurel turns her head, letting her long hair shield her face, but I still see her smile in the reflection of the window. Hope fills in my chest that I’m not the only one that feels anything between us.
We pull off the highway, and Laurel leads me to the ancestral home of Josephine La Monte. It turns out Laurel already knows the descendent, Evangeline La Monte, who still lives there. They’ve talked on the phone and exchanged emails over the last year as Laurel has been working on her thesis.
We both wanted to bring the letter that we found, but that could have gotten us into serious trouble if something were to happen to it. So instead, Laurel took a picture of it on her phone to show Evangeline.
We stop in front of the old house, not surprisingly it looks like it’s from another time.
“There she is,” Laurel points to the older woman sitting on the front porch. “That’s Evangeline La Monte.”
