Bittersweet: A Novel by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Author:Miranda Beverly-Whittemore [Beverly-Whittemore, Miranda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Coming of Age, Psychological, Thrillers, Suspense
ISBN: 9780804138574
Google: d6ccAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00GQAOL6W
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2014-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

I spent that week with Kitty’s journal. Indo’s suggestion that I might someday own Clover had taken on a more urgent meaning in light of Ev’s recent revelations.

John had to keep up the façade of normalcy while they figured out what to do next, so he worked morning till night. Ev was bursting with plans for the baby, and wanted to spend every minute John was occupied with me. But I needed space. I methodically cooked us healthy dinners or pretended I was absorbed in Paradise Lost until she wandered down to the cove for a swim or settled in for a catnap. Then I’d spring into action, laying my hands upon that familiar book in the towel in the back of the bathroom cabinet, unwrapping it into another world, until I heard her footsteps and had to hide it away again.

Scanning through, I’d surmised that Kitty’s journal followed the course of a year, from the January entry I’d read that first day to a late December entry that read simply, almost sadly: “First snow. Late this year. The Tannenbaum is decorated. I lit a candle and prayed.”

In between, the yellowed, smooth pages were filled with Kitty’s perfect hand, sloped to the right, as though she was always pushing forward. She used black ink and a fine nib, and wrote her dates either like this: “Monday, July 14th,” or without a day of the week: “June 26th.” Never once did she mention the year.

From her first entry, I had gathered that she was writing sometime between 1929 and 1935, but, aside from occasional mention of the world’s miseries, she did not elaborate much on what was happening beyond her sitting room. That was what disappointed me the most. I had thought the journal would prove illuminating, shed some light on one delicious secret or another, but the subject matter of Kitty’s writing was positively navel gazing. She hardly seemed to lift her head from the page long enough to look out a window, so little did she mention what was happening in the rest of the world—the Great Depression, the gathering storm of what would become the Second World War. Instead she wrote of her silver pattern: “B. is insisting I go down to New York for a look at Tiffany, but I have assured him I’ll do just fine with his mother’s choice”; her lapdogs: “Fitzwilliam is a fine little pug, with a wheezy breath and hardy disposition”; and visitors: “We are being joined this week by Claude, Paul, and Henri. B. and I are so looking forward to offering them shelter until they decide where to settle.”

By Wednesday I had gotten through my first pass. I had nothing to show for it. So I started again, rereading the entries out of order, trying to find something secret, about the unexpected money, or the bankruptcy. On the second pass, I did find one secret, but it was personal and filled my heart with pity: “B. has been carrying on with one of the maids, P.

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