HELEN HATED THAT Nancy couldn’t even relax and enjoy her dinner. The girl only ordered soup and barely ate more than a few spoonfuls. She mostly spent her time looking worried and fiddling with the saltines until they’d dissolved into crumbs.
At 6:35, the door to the diner jingled open and Bertha Beaner burst in, her cheeks red and eyes blazing fire.
Helen lifted her hand to wave, but Bertha didn’t notice. She made a beeline for a table where Sarah Biddle sat with Clara Foley.
“What’s wrong, Grandma?” Nancy asked the same question Helen had been posing to her for the past half hour.
“I’m not sure,” Helen told her, watching the women bend their heads together, chattering furiously, before they all got up and went to another table filled with women Helen knew from Stitch and Sew and bridge club. “But something is definitely up.”
It was then that Bertha looked across the diner and saw Helen and Nancy.
She didn’t smile or wave. Instead, she scowled. The rest of the ladies stopped talking and glanced over as well.
“They look downright pissed,” Nancy whispered.
Helen thought that was an understatement, and she braced herself as the group of women—now half a dozen strong—stopped at the end of the booth she shared with Nancy.
Bertha set her palms on the table and leaned forward, directing her anger at Helen’s granddaughter. “I don’t know how you can work for Grace Simpson and hold your head up!”
Nancy visibly flinched.
“Don’t bully her, Bertha Beaner,” Helen said in her granddaughter’s defense. “She’s Gracie’s assistant, not her keeper.”
“Well, I read the filthy notes you dropped,” Bertha shouted at Nancy. She slammed down her fist. “And I won’t stand for that book getting published. Someone needs to put that awful woman in her place, and that’s what we aim to do right now! Come on, girls, Grace Simpson’s at LaVyrle’s!” she called out like a rallying cry and led her cohorts out the door.
“So that’s where it went,” Nancy muttered and grabbed her leather bag. She scooted out of the booth, rushing off before Helen could grab a twenty from her purse to toss on the table.
“Nancy, wait!” Helen called as her granddaughter set the bells to jangling on the diner’s front door.
Helen didn’t have far to go to catch up. Barely a block down Main Street, the crowd had gathered beneath the purple sign for LaVyrle’s Cut ’n’ Curl.
Nancy had stopped on the outskirts, and Helen did the same.
“Oh, no, this is my fault,” Nancy murmured. “Grace is going to kill me for losing those notes.”
“How is it your fault?” Helen asked, standing shoulder to shoulder. “You didn’t write the damn book. Grace brought this on herself.”
Bertha Beaner tried to push through LaVyrle’s front door, but a ponytailed Mary stood in the doorway, blocking her path. “Please, just go, or I’ll get the sheriff,” the girl said, trying her best to keep the agitated throng from pushing its way inside.
The sheriff’s office was right next door, Helen mused; she was surprised Frank Biddle hadn’t heard the noise and ambled over.
“Bring out Grace Simpson!” someone yelled.
“She used us!”
Helen remembered Nancy saying that Grace had a hair appointment before her dinner engagement in St. Louis. It certainly appeared that she wasn’t going to leave LaVyrle’s without plowing through an angry mob.
“Please, don’t shout!” The squeaky voice belonged to Mary. “Can’t we be civil to each other?”
“Grace Simpson doesn’t know the meaning of the word civil!” Sarah Biddle shouted back and started chanting, “Stop the press! Stop the press!”
Nancy tugged at Helen’s sleeve. “Maybe we should go. If Grace sees me here”—she swallowed—“she’s not going to fire me. She’s going to kill me.”
Before Helen could even respond, Grace appeared in the doorway. Pushing Mary aside, she stepped onto the stoop, draped in one of LaVyrle’s lavender capes. Her hair still had butterfly clips holding up chunks that had yet to be dried.
She stuck her hands on her hips. “Shame on you all for behaving like a pack of unruly children! All this shouting is giving me a headache.” Grace waved them away. “Just go on home, why don’t you. Go on home, you bunch of overaged crybabies.”
Bertha was the first to step forward. “You’re the lowest, Grace Simpson, lower than a cockroach, if you ask me!”
Grace stared her down. “I don’t recall that I did.”
“You’re a liar, that’s what you are.” Sarah Biddle reared her head next. “Taking what we told you in confidence and putting it in your sordid book for the world to read!”
“I didn’t betray you.” Grace shook her head. “No real names were used. Your identities will remain anonymous.”
“Horse hockey!” Bertha countered. “We won’t remain anonymous. Real names don’t matter in a town as small as this. Everyone will know regardless. I read those notes of yours, and I saw right through your silly pseudonyms.”
“Well, that’s your sour grapes,” Grace said and touched a hand to her head, poking at the clips. “You’ve no say in the matter. It’s all said and done, and perfectly legal.”
“You’re evil, Grace Simpson. Pure evil!” one of the women called out. “You’re the devil himself!”
Helen glanced around and realized more townsfolk had gathered. It looked like the diner had emptied out. Bodies jostled her on either side, and she noticed Nancy had been pushed forward, closer to where Bertha stood.
“Take this, you witch!” a voice bellowed from down the sidewalk, and a pair of tomatoes zipped through the air toward an unsuspecting Grace. One missed its mark and splattered harmlessly against the plate glass. The other struck Grace full in the chest, splashing red down the lavender bib and leaving a bloody stain.
“Damn you crazy bumpkins!” Grace wailed. “Look what you’ve done!” Her cheeks flushed. Eyes wild, she scanned the vociferous crowd. “You’ll be sorry for this, all of you will! You can’t treat me this way after all I’ve done—”
Abruptly, she stopped.
Helen followed the direction of her stare, which seemed to fix directly upon Nancy.
“You,” Grace said, pointing her finger and shaking it. “You’re responsible for this! You left my notes lying around for anyone to see!”
“I-I didn’t m-mean to,” Nancy stammered as Helen tried to wiggle her way forward. “You didn’t give me time to shred everything! You had me running your errands and waiting on repairmen instead of doing my job.”
“Doing your job?” Grace let out a sour laugh. “As of this moment, you don’t have a job, my dear. You’re fired!” Then Grace turned on her heel with a flap of lavender cape, disappearing into the shop.
Helen got to her granddaughter and grabbed her hand. It felt ice-cold. Nancy trembled, tears in her eyes, humiliation written all over her face.
“What in tarnation is going on here?” Sheriff Biddle said, wading into the throng.
Helen wondered what the heck had taken him so long.
“Why, Frankie, we were just expressing our First Amendment right to free speech,” Sarah Biddle piped up as Helen tugged Nancy away by the hand.
The crowd grumbled and flung several last epithets after Grace’s departed figure before the contingent began to slowly disperse.
“I didn’t mean to lose those pages,” Nancy was saying. “She didn’t even listen.”
“I know,” Helen told her as they stopped walking. She set her hands on Nancy’s shoulders. “Grace should have understood that it was a mistake.”
“It’s so unfair,” Nancy muttered. “After all I’ve done for her. I’ve worked day and night to make her happy, and it was never enough.” A shudder passed through her slim frame. “I hate her, Grandma, I do,” she said, sniffling and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m so mad, I could choke her.”
“Get in line,” a familiar voice said, and, as she walked passed them, Bertha Beaner added, “you’re hardly the only one who’d like nothing better than to see that woman dead.”