Lizzie Borden Read Free Page A

widowed?”
    “He was. . . that is my mother died when I was very young, but now he has another wife, quite a worthless one, I might add.” Lizzie surprised herself. This was the type of gossip that came from other people’s mouths, not from hers.
    Beatrice leaned close. “I have a worthless stepmother as well. There’s nothing more distressing, is there?”
    “No. Do you live at home with them?”
    “No, no, I have a flat in the city.”
    “London?” Lizzie’s imagination fired up.
    Beatrice smiled. “Yes, London. My parents live well out into the country.”
    Beatrice had large, full lips and Lizzie found her eyes irresistibly drawn to them. Certain sounds were almost lisped, and it was so very becoming. . .
    “Do you read?”
    “Avidly,” Lizzie said. “And you?”
    “Yes. And I hunt.”
    “Do you? I fish.”
    “I love to fish. What will you see while you’re in Europe?”
    Lizzie rummaged in her bag for her itinerary and brochures, notes that had been taken. It came out looking like a terrible mess, a big wad of untidiness. She looked up at Beatrice, with her peach smile and her peach dress, trussed up tightly at the bodice, and she felt foolish and inept.  “Oh,” she said, “Just probably the usual. . .”
    “Do let’s see,” Beatrice said. “You look like a true traveler.”  Lizzie smiled. She’d love to be a true traveler. For the next hour, they went over all her notes, checked the itinerary and Lizzie took more notes while Beatrice told her all the best places to eat, to visit, to see and to smell.
    “Europe is best seen, smelled, tasted and felt,” Beatrice said. “Remember this, Lizzie. You must be yourself and make use of all your faculties on this trip. Let nothing escape. And that will continue when you return to America.”
    What an odd thing to say, Lizzie thought, yet this woman, undoubtedly in her middle-to-late thirties, had something Lizzie did not. Lizzie was happy to take advice—any advice—from a woman such as this.
    Then Beatrice took her pen and wrote out an address in Surrey. “Send me postcards, Lizzie. I would so love to hear of your trip. You can only see Europe for the first time once, you know. How I envy you seeing Europe for the very first time! Tell me everything.”  And when the ferry landed, they hugged. Lizzie sent her a postcard every day and when she got home there was a letter waiting from Beatrice. Before she unpacked, she wrote back, telling of her return trip, and every day since then, Lizzie had written portions of a letter to Beatrice, her best and only friend in the world, so she could share every minute detail of her life with someone who cared. She considered it her living diary. She mailed her musings off to Beatrice once a week, but it oftentimes took more than a month to receive an answer to a question, as the mail service to Britain was so slow. Sometimes she worried about what Beatrice did with all her letters; did she keep them, someday to be discovered and used against her, or did she destroy each one after it was answered?
    She saved every letter from Beatrice that she received, and when she read them, each word had the flush of those succulent peach-painted lips and that soft lisp with a British accent.
    Beatrice was a godsend.  And now she’d sent a book. That book.
    Lizzie had had a particularly bad time the previous summer. She was plagued with the sick headaches that were so severe they made her vomit. They came upon her suddenly, frequently, with no apparent cause, and no apparent remedy. It was a torturous time, and relief didn’t come until fall, when the weather turned somewhat cooler.
    Beatrice had written, “My dear Lizbeth, I am afraid for you. Three weeks have gone by without a letter (most unusual), and I am afraid something terrible has happened. Please. . .”
    And Lizzie had written back a humble letter filled with graphic descriptions of the headaches, their history, their symptoms, and things she’d tried,