Dear Rosa,
It is with some trepidation and yet with the knowledge that you will respect my confidence that I take my pen in hand to write.
I do not seek to reopen wounds which by this time have already partly healed but it is only a few days ago that I learned of your loss and wanted to extend to you and little Bernie my sympathy and prayers.
David was a fine man and a genuinely kind human being.
All of us who knew him will miss him.
I mention him in my prayers each day and I am comforted by the words of Our Lord and Saviour:
"I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even if he die, shall live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."
Sincerely yours in J. C.
Sister M. Thomas.
(Jennie Denton).
It was then, when Rosa went outside to call her son in from his play, that she heard the birds singing.
The next weekend, she drove to Burlingame to visit Jennie.
There were tiny white puffballs of clouds in the blue sky as Rosa turned her car into the wide driveway that led to the Mother House.
It was a Saturday afternoon and there were many automobiles parked there already.
She pulled into an open space some distance from the sprawling building.
She sat in the car and lit a cigarette.
She felt a doubt creeping through her.
Perhaps she shouldn't have come.
Jennie might not want to see her, wouldn't want to be reminded of that world she'd left behind.
It was pure impulse that she had followed in driving here and she couldn't blame Jennie if she refused to see her.
She remembered the morning after the engagement party.
When Jennie hadn't shown up at the studio, no one had thought very much about it.
And David, who'd been trying to reach Jonas at the plant in Burbank, told her that he couldn't locate him, either.
When the next day and the day after that had passed and there was still no word from Jennie, the studio really began to worry.
Jonas had finally been located in Canada at the new factory and David called him there.
His voice had been very curt over the telephone as he told David that the last time he'd seen Jennie was when he left her home the night of the party.
David immediately called Rosa and suggested she run out to Jennie's house.
When she got there, the Mexican servant came to the door.
"Is Miss Denton in?"
"Senorita, she not in."
"Do you know where she is?" Rosa asked. "It's very important that I get in touch with her."
The servant shook her head.
"The senorita go away. She not say where."
Deliberately Rosa walked past her into the house.
There were packed boxes all along the hallway.
On the side of one was stenciled Bekins, Moving Storage.
The servant saw the surprise on her face.
"The senorita tell me to close the house and go away, too."
Rosa didn't wait until she got home, but called David from the first pay telephone she came to.
He said he'd try to speak to Jonas again.
"Did you reach Jonas?" she asked, as soon as he came in the door that evening.
"Yes.
He told me to close down Aphrodite and have Pierce thrown off the lot.
When I said we might wind up with a lawsuit, he told me to tell Dan that if he wanted to start anything, Jonas would spend his last dollar to break him."
"But what about Jennie?"
"If she doesn't show up by the end of the week, Jonas told me to have her put on the suspended list and stop her salary."
"And their engagement?"
"Jonas didn't say, but I guess that's over, too.
When I asked him if we should prepare a statement for the press, he told me to tell them nothing and hung up."
"Poor Jennie.