LITMIR.BIZ

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eleven months ago and short enough that Molly could recall it almost word for word.

      Dear Molly, Hilda had written. Our winter has been hard. The kitchen pipes froze twice last week and the price of fish is very high. Cadie Boudelet’s new grandchild came down with bronchitis, poor little thing. The Livingstons had a chimney fire last week and nearly burned the house down. Our TV broke and we have decided not to get another because there’s never anything worth watching, so I try to get to the library once a week. I sold four quilts at Christmas which brought in a bit of extra money. It started snowing at the end of November and hasn’t stopped since and here we are in April already. Your father hardly ever leaves the house because he’s afraid of falling on the ice. Hoping this finds you and your little girl well, I remain your loving Mother.

      Typically there was no question about their life. No spark of interest in Ariel’s doings and only the most cursory inquiry about her health. The apparent indifference had fueled a decade-long resentment in Molly which she’d been sure nothing could undo. But the unguarded joy on her mother’s face when she realized who it was standing at her bedside left that resentment in tatters, and had Molly questioning her assessment of those sparse, uninformative letters.

      Suddenly she saw the loneliness written between the lines; the utter emptiness of a woman who’d given up hope of the kind of affection which tied families together. The recognition left her awash in yet another wave of guilt.

      “But, I’m here now, Momma,” she whispered, stuffing the sodden tissues back in her pocket and fumbling her way down the darkened hall to the kitchen. “And I’ll make up for the past by seeing to it that whatever future you’ve got left is the best I can make it.”

      Nothing in the kitchen had changed. The same old refrigerator, past its best when Molly had been a child, still clanked along in the corner. The same two-burner stove stood on the far side of the sink. What was surely the world’s ugliest chrome kitchen set—table topped with gray Formica, chair seats padded with red plastic—filled what floor space was left. The only new addition was the calendar thumbtacked to the wall near the back door, and even it looked exactly like its predecessors, except for the date.

      Small wonder her mother showed no interest in getting well. A caged hamster racing endlessly on its treadmill led a more interesting and varied existence.

      There was canned tomato soup in the cupboard, and in the refrigerator a block of cheese, some butter, a jar of mayonnaise, and half a loaf of bread. Molly found the cast iron frying pan where it had always been, in the warming drawer below the oven, and set to work. She might have come a long way from the days when she’d worn hand-me-down clothes, but the lean years in between had taught her to make a nourishing meal out of whatever she happened to have on hand. Hot soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, with tea on the side, would serve for tonight.

      The kettle was just coming to a boil and she was turning the sandwiches in the frying pan one last time when the back door shot open and sent a blast of cold air gusting around her ankles. But it didn’t compare though to the chilly glare of the woman who came in with it.

      Cadie Boudelet never had been one to smile much, but the drawstring of disapproval pulling at her mouth gave new definition to the term “grim-faced.” “I heard you were back,” she announced balefully. “Bad news travels fast in these parts.”

      “Lovely to see you again, too, Mrs. Boudelet,” Molly said, unsurprised to find nothing had changed here, either. The Boudelets and every other neighbor had viewed her as an outcast ever since she turned ten—a Jezebel in the making, with the morals of an alley cat in heat already in evidence—and a warm welcome would have left her speechless. “Is there something I can do for you, or did you just stop by to be sociable and say hello?”

      “Hah! Still got the same smart mouth you always had, I see.” Cadie slammed an enameled casserole dish on the table and crossed her arms over her formidable breasts. “I brought your ma a bite for her supper, so you can throw out whatever you’ve got cooking there—unless you were making it for yourself, which is likely the case since you were never one to think of anybody’s needs but your own.”

      Sorely tempted though she was to dump the contents of the casserole over the woman’s self-righteous head, a brawl on her first night home would hardly further her mother’s recovery, Molly decided. So steeling herself to restraint if not patience, she wiped her hands on the dish towel she’d tied around her waist and said, “I understand you’ve been very kind to my mother since she came home from the hospital, and for that I’m grateful. But now that I’m here, you need go to no more trouble on her behalf.”

      “No more trouble? Girl, a load of it walked in the door when you decided to set foot in town again, and all the fancy clothes and city airs in the world can’t hide it. Just because you snagged yourself a rich husband don’t change a thing and you’d have done your ma a bigger favor by staying away. She don’t need the aggravation of your being here when she’s got all she can do to deal with your daddy’s passing.”

      Just how unwisely Molly might have responded to that remark was forestalled by the sound of the front door opening and footsteps coming down the hall. A moment later, Dan Cordell appeared in the kitchen.

      “Good grief!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “Doesn’t anyone around here believe in waiting to be invited before they march into someone else’s house?”

      “No need to,” Cadie informed her. “People around here got nothing to hide—as a rule, that is. ’Course, that could change, depending on who’s living in the house in question.”

      Accurately sizing up the scene, Dan raised a placating hand. “Just thought I’d stop by to make sure you were handling things okay before I call it a day, Molly, that’s all. Is that one of your fabulous casseroles I can smell, Cadie?”

      The drawstring around her mouth relaxed enough to allow a smirk of pleasure to slip through. “It is. And there’s plenty more at home, if you’ve got time to stop for a bite, Doctor.”

      The smile he cast at the old biddy left Molly wondering how the icicles draped outside the window didn’t melt on the spot. “Thanks, but it’ll have to be some other time. I’ve got a dinner engagement tonight and I’m already running behind. Molly, can we speak privately a moment?”

      “You listen to what the doctor tells you, girl,” Cadie warned, wrapping her shawl around her head and yanking open the back door to let in another Arctic blast. “He knows what he’s talking about and your ma’s lucky he was there to look after her when she needed the best. He’s a good man, is our Doctor Cordell.”

      In the silence she left behind, Molly stared across the kitchen at Dan, an age-old bitterness souring her tongue. “Tell me something, Doctor. How come you’re everybody’s fair-haired darling despite your many past delinquencies, while I remain forever a pariah, no matter how much I might have reformed?”

      “Maybe I work harder to change public opinion than you do, Molly,” he said, propping up the wall with his altogether too impressive shoulders. “Or maybe I don’t go quite as far out of my way to offend people. You’ve been home what…an hour? Two? And already you’re squaring off with your next door neighbor. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, you’d probably have wound up decking Cadie when you should be on your knees thanking her.”

      It—he!—was the last straw! Cadie Boudelet was a tiresome, ignorant woman who seldom bothered to learn the facts before she arrived at a conclusion, which rendered her opinion of Molly, or anyone else for that matter, irrelevant. But that he should have the nerve to stand there mouthing holier-than-thou platitudes, as if the mere idea that Molly might not have achieved heights of perfection comparable to his caused him intolerable pain, just about made her throw up and she wasted no time telling him so.

      “You make me sick to my stomach, Dan Cordell! If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a man who pretends he’s above reproach to the one person in the world who knows differently. And if you think sticking ‘Doctor’ in front of your name entitles you to change history, you’re even more arrogant than you are insufferable!”

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