Джеймс Эллрой - The Black Dahlia

Her second letter was postmarked Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was written on stationery for the Harvard Motor Lodge.

9/11/49

Dear Dwight—

I’m still such a liar, proscrastinator and chicken heart. I’ve known for two months, and I just got up the courage to tell you. If this letter doesn’t reach you I’ll actually have to call the house or Russ Millard. Better to try this way first.

Dwight, I’m pregnant. It had to have happened that one awful time about a month before you moved out. I’m due around Christmas and I want to keep it.

This is the patented Kay Lake retreat advancing. Will you please call or write? Soon? Now?

That’s the big news. Per the P.S. on my last letter, something strange? Elegiac? Plain funny happened.

I kept thinking about Elizabeth Short. How she disrupted all our lives, and we never even knew her. When I got to Cambridge (God, how I love academic communities!) I remembered that she was raised nearby. I drove to Medford, stopped for dinner and got into a conversation with a blind man sitting at the next table. I was feeling gabby and mentioned Elizabeth Short. The man was sad at first, then he perked up. He told me about an L.A. policeman who came to Medford three months ago to find “Beth’s” killer. He described your voice and verbal style to a “T.” I felt very proud, but I didn’t tell him that cop was my husband, because I don’t know if you still are.

Wondering,

I didn’t call or write. I put Lee Blanchard’s house on the market and caught a flight to Boston.

On the plane I thought of all the things I’d have to explain to Kay, evidence to keep a new foundation of lies from destroying the two — or three — of us.

She would have to know that I was a detective without a badge, that for one month in the year 1949 I possessed brilliance and courage and the will to make sacrifices. She would have to know that the heat of that time would always make me vulnerable, prey to dark curiosities. She would have to believe that my strongest resolve was not to let any of it hurt her.

And she had to know that it was Elizabeth Short who was giving us our second chance.

Nearing Boston, the plane got swallowed up by clouds. I felt heavy with fear, like the reunion and fatherhood had turned me into a stone plummeting. I reached for Betty then; a wish, almost a prayer. The clouds broke up and the plane descended, a big bright city at twilight below. I asked Betty to grant me safe passage in return for my love.