Aunt Dimity Goes West (3 page)

ranch nearby, where they’ll be able to ride with
real
cowboys.
” Bill bobbed his head enthusiastically. “They’ll have a tale or two to tell their friends when they start school in the fall, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t know if Annelise—” I began, but Bill rode

right over me.

“It’ll be the adventure of a lifetime for Annelise,”

he declared. “She’s been to America before, with us,

but she’s never traveled outside of Boston. She’ll jump

at the chance to see the Rockies.”

I sat back on the sofa, folded my arms, and regarded

Bill narrowly. He was trying much too hard to persuade

me that his scheme was flawless. Wifely instinct told

me that he was withholding a vital piece of information.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s the catch?”

“Catch?” said Bill, with an air of injured inno-

cence. “Why do you think there’s a catch?”

“Because you’re chirping like a deranged cheer-

leader, that’s why.” I made a beckoning motion with

my hand. “Out with it, Bill. Spill the beans. What

haven’t you told me?”

“Well, yes, now that you mention it, there is one

small catch.” Bill cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and said, “I can’t go.”

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Nancy Atherton

“You . . .
what
?” My jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind? Do you seriously expect me to tackle the

glorious, untamed wilderness
without
you?”

“I’m sorry, Lori, but I have no choice.” His shoul-

ders drooped and he hung his head, like a defeated

Little Leaguer. “As you pointed out after breakfast, I

have to get back to work. Things have piled up since

I’ve been gone, things I can’t pass on to the London

office. I have to see to them personally or we’ll lose

at least seven of our best clients. You know I’d come

with you if I could, but . . .”

His words trailed off on a crestfallen sigh that

cut me to the quick. Bill had devoted himself to me,

day and night, for weeks on end. He’d never run out of

patience or good humor, and he’d never uttered one

word of complaint. He’d conceived of a marvelous

journey with nothing but my well-being in mind, and

all I could do was whine about him staying behind.

Shame flooded through me like molten lava.

“Is this”—I ran a finger along the cowboy hat’s

brim—“why you were up so late last night? Were

you using your computer to plan the trip?”

“Yes,” Bill answered, without looking at me.

“Well,” I said softly, “I’ll miss you like blazes, but

apart from that, I think it’s a brilliant plan.”

Bill’s head snapped up. “You do?”

“As you said, it’s the only thing we haven’t tried.” I

shrugged. “Who knows? It just might work.”

“It will,” said Bill, with great conviction. “I know

it will.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

15

I brushed a few stray cat hairs from the sofa. “I

can’t wait to tell Stanley. He’ll be thrilled to have you all to himself. And you can fill me in on breaking news

while I’m away.”

“If Sally Pyne wears her hideous tracksuit to the

flower show, you’ll be the first to know,” Bill said,

with his hand on his heart.

He took the hat from my head and dropped it on

the coffee table, then moved onto the couch and put

his arms around me. I snuggled as close to him as my

shoulder would allow.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a vacation in

the States,” I mused aloud.

“You won’t have to lift a finger,” Bill promised.

“I’ve arranged everything, airline tickets, a rental car, a driver—”

“Why do we need a driver?” I asked, stiffening. It

was a touchy subject. I didn’t share my husband’s low

opinion of my driving skills.

“Your arm may feel better, but your range of mo-

tion is still limited,” Bill explained gently. “You won’t be able to handle mountain roads.”

“Maybe not,” I said, conceding the point, “but what

about Annelise? She can drive.”

“Annelise is English,” he reminded me. “Do you

really want her careering around hairpin bends on the

wrong side of the road?” He shook his head. “I don’t

think so. I’ve hired the cabin’s caretaker to look after you. His name is James Blackwell and he lives on the

property, so he knows his way around. He’ll pick you

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Nancy Atherton

up at the airport, take you to the cabin, and act as your chauffeur while you’re there. He’ll be a great guide,

Lori, and he’ll see to it that the cabin is stocked with food, drink, and firewood.”

“How long will we be away?” I asked.

“As long as you like,” said Bill. “I booked open-

ended airline tickets and I checked with Danny—he’s

not planning to use the cabin this summer and no one

else has asked to borrow it.”

I wondered briefly why the cabin was so unpopu-

lar, but decided not to question Bill about it. If the

place turned out to be a one-room shack equipped

with kerosene lanterns and an aromatic outhouse, I’d

make the best of it. I’d do whatever I had to do to keep the smile on my husband’s face.

“Wow,” I said admiringly. “You really have thought

of everything. What would you have done if I’d re-

fused to go?”

“I would have canceled the trip and tried some-

thing else.” Bill kissed the top of my head. “Like a brain transplant.”

“I’ve always wanted to stay in a log cabin,” I as-

sured him hastily. “When do we leave?”

“The day after tomorrow,” Bill replied.

I stifled an incredulous squawk and forced myself to

comment benignly, “The sooner, the better. Bluebird,

Colorado, here we come!”

I’d scarcely finished speaking when a chorus of

earsplitting shouts came from the hallway.

“We’re going!” bellowed Rob.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

17

“We’re going!” hollered Will.

Our pajama-clad sons galloped into the living room

and pranced gleefully in front of the fireplace. Annelise followed at a more sedate pace, but her face was shining. I pursed my lips and looked at my husband, whose

eyes were trained on the ceiling.

“You wouldn’t have mentioned the trip to Will,

Rob, and Annelise before telling
me
about it, would you?” I asked.

“I might have let a few details slip,” Bill allowed.

“Inadvertently.”

I transferred my gaze to Annelise. “You and the

boys wouldn’t have eavesdropped on our conversa-

tion, would you?”

“We might have overheard a word or two,” she ad-

mitted. “Purely by accident.”

“We’re going to Colorado!” Rob roared. “We’re

going to pan for gold!”

“We’re going to ride with cowboys!” Will yelled.

“We’re going to see buffalo!”

It sounded as though Bill had let more than a few

details slip, but I didn’t mind. I couldn’t remember

the last time the twins had made so much noise. They

were hopping up and down instead of tiptoeing, and

their voices were anything but hushed. Annelise’s eyes

were bright with anticipation and Bill was beaming

like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Their joy was so

contagious that I felt as if my troubles were at an end.

I should have known better.

Three

W e brought the evening’s celebrations to a

close with a marathon reading of the entire

Cowboy Sam
series, then put Rob and Will

to bed. Annelise promptly retired to her room and Bill

staggered into our bedroom, with Stanley at his heels,

to catch up on the sleep he’d missed the night before.

I stayed with him until he nodded off, then slipped

quietly out of the bedroom and went downstairs to

the study. It would have been pointless for me to stay

in bed. I wouldn’t have been able to close my eyes if I’d missed my nightly private chat with Aunt Dimity.

A private chat was the only kind of chat I
could

have with Aunt Dimity. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t

ashamed to be seen with her. She was the most intelli-

gent, compassionate, and courageous woman I knew,

but there was simply no getting around the fact that

she wasn’t, strictly speaking, alive.

To complicate matters further, Aunt Dimity wasn’t

my aunt. She was an Englishwoman named Dimity

Westwood, and she’d been my late mother’s closest

friend. The two women had met in London while

serving their respective countries during the Second

World War. When the war ended and my mother

Aunt Dimity Goes West

19

returned to the States, they continued their friendship

by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across

the Atlantic.

Those letters meant the world to my mother. After

my father’s early death, she’d raised me on her own

while working full time as a schoolteacher. She hadn’t

had an easy life, but the hard times had been softened

by her correspondence with Dimity. The letters my

mother sent and received became a refuge for her, a

place where she could go when the twin burdens of

widowhood and single motherhood became too heavy

for her to bear.

My mother kept her refuge a closely held secret,

even from her only child. She never whispered a word

to me about her old friend or the letters that meant so

much to her. As a child I knew Dimity Westwood only

as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of a series of

bedtime stories invented by my mother.

I didn’t learn the truth about Dimity Westwood

until after she and my mother had died, when Dimity

bequeathed to me a considerable fortune, the honey-

colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious

letters she and my mother had exchanged, and a curi-

ous blue leather-bound journal with blank pages. It

was through the blue journal that I’d come to know

Dimity not as a fictional heroine, but as a very real—

some would say surreal—friend.

Whenever I opened the journal, Dimity’s hand-

writing would appear, an old-fashioned copperplate

taught in the village school at a time when little girls

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Nancy Atherton

still dressed in pinafores. I’d nearly come unglued the

first time Dimity greeted me from beyond the grave,

but one mention of my mother’s name had been

enough to reassure me that her intentions toward me

were kindly. I’d long since come to regard her as my

most cherished confidante, and I hoped the day would

never come when the pages of the journal remained

blank.

The study was a bit messier than usual, strewn with

papers that should have been filed at Bill’s office. I tidied them into neat piles and placed them beside his

laptop on the old oak desk beneath the ivy-covered

window. Once the room was in order, I turned to say

hello to a small, pink flannel rabbit named Reginald,

who spent most of his time perched in a special niche

on the study’s bookshelves.

The sight of a grown woman conversing with a pink

flannel rabbit might strike some people as odd, but to

me it was as natural as breathing. Reginald had been

at my side for as long as I could remember. I’d shared

moments of triumph, woe, and everything in between

with him for nearly forty years, and I wasn’t about to

stop now.

“Hey, Reg,” I said, touching the faded grape-juice

stain on his snout. “Ever picture yourself in a cow-

boy hat?”

Reginald’s black button eyes glimmered in a way

that seemed to say, if only to me, that he’d never in his life imagined himself wearing anything as silly as a

cowboy hat, but that, if I insisted, he’d put up with it.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

21

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t think they make them

in your size.”

Reginald glimmered his relief. I gave his long ears

a friendly tweak, took the blue journal down from its

place on the bookshelves, and curled comfortably in

one of the pair of tall leather armchairs that sat before the hearth.

“Dimity?” I said, opening the journal. “Got a

minute?”

I smiled as the familiar lines of elegant copperplate

began to flow gracefully across the page.

I have all the minutes you need, my dear. How are you
feeling today?

“Fine,” I said. Then I recalled to whom I was speak-

ing and instantly revised my answer. “Okay, so the

nightmare woke me up again this morning, and I didn’t

have a moment’s peace all day because of the parade,

and my shoulder’s a little achy, but other than that I’m doing pretty well.” I glanced at the laptop and thought

of Bill staying up half the night, planning every detail of the trip. “As a matter of fact, I’m feeling better than I have in a long time.”

Splendid! To what do you owe your improvement?

Acupuncture? Meditation? Hydrotherapy? Or have you decided to try something new?

“Something new,” I replied. “How do you feel

about log cabins, Dimity?”

I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever felt anything about log
cabins.Why? Are you planning to build one, as a form of work
therapy? If so, I’d advise starting on something a bit smaller.

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Nancy Atherton

A bird table, perhaps, or a simple bookshelf. One can never
have too many bookshelves.