It was Lindsey’s turn to make the food for crafternoon Thursday. She’d wanted something festive but healthy, so she’d gone with avocado and goat cheese grilled sandwiches, pear salad, and flourless chocolate cake with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar for dessert. The group was discussing My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem, a nonfiction book for a change of pace, and they were finishing the string bracelets Paula had been trying to teach them to make for a while. No one seemed to be able to manage the square-knot closure. In fact, Lindsey’s looked more like a web of knots than a bracelet, but Paula assured her that she could fix it.
The first to arrive was Beth. She was wearing striped overalls, an engineer’s cap and a red bandana around her neck. No one could carry off the train look like Beth.
“All aboard for crafternoon,” Lindsey said.
Beth pulled a large wooden whistle out of her pocket and blew into it, imitating a train’s whistle perfectly. Then she laughed. “I love my job.”
“Come on and eat. You must be starving after story time,” Lindsey said.
“I am! Reading Virginia Lee Burton’s Choo Choo always makes me hungry, or maybe it’s the pretending to be a huge train with thirty three-year-olds hanging off me that does it—hard to say.”
Beth hurried to take the plate Lindsey offered her just as Paula, Violet and Nancy entered the room. Lindsey handed Beth a glass of lemonade, but when Beth reached out to take it, she gasped.
“Oh my God, is that . . . are you . . . it is! You and Sully are getting married, aren’t you?” she cried.
“Huh?” Lindsey followed the line of Beth’s gaze to her hand. Oh yeah, her ring. The one Sully had put on her finger a few days ago, the same one she’d caught herself staring at repeatedly as the sunlight made the diamonds sparkle and shine. “Oh, that.”
“That?” Nancy came hustling up to the table. She grabbed Lindsey’s hand and turned the ring in the light. Like a chorus, all of the women oohed and aahed. “That is stunning.”
“Dazzling,” Violet agreed.
“Gorgeous,” Paula breathed.
“How could you not have texted me the minute it happened?” Beth cried. “Oh, the betrayal. How long have you been engaged exactly?”
“Well, he proposed the night we chased Sarah Milstein in her red sports car into the woods,” Lindsey said.
“Ah.” Beth gasped. “But that was days ago.”
“Well, things were crazy, and I wasn’t sure, but then he asked again and—”
“He put a ring on it,” Paula said.
“Yes, he did,” Violet said.
“Does this mean what I think it means?” Beth put her cup and plate on the table and started to bounce on her feet as if she couldn’t contain her excitement. Up and down, up and down, like a super-bouncy ball.
The smile that parted Lindsey’s lips was impossible to hold back. “Yes, there’s going to be a wedding, and yes, you’re my matron of honor.”
“Woo-hoo!” Beth cried. Then she let out a girly “Squeeee!” and ran around the table and grabbed Lindsey in a hug that strangled. The brim of her engineer’s cap clipped Lindsey in the temple, but she didn’t mind. She knew Beth’s exuberance was just a part of who she was.
Charlene La Rue and Ms. Cole joined the crafternooners. Charlene congratulated Lindsey with a warm hug and complimented her ring, and then, to Lindsey’s surprise, Ms. Cole gave her a bracing hug as well and said, “Well, it’s about time.”
All the crafternooners paused to stare at her, and Ms. Cole waved a hand and said, “Oh, please, I knew the first time they laid eyes on each other that they were made for each other. I just didn’t think it would take them this long to figure it out.”
Nancy choked out a laugh and gave Ms. Cole a hug. Violet did the same, and Lindsey grinned. She loved the camaraderie in this group.
“So, have you set a day for the wedding?” Charlene asked. “You’ll have to send out save-the-date notices, because I am not going to miss the wedding of the year in Briar Creek.”
“Agreed,” Beth said. Then she frowned. “Wait, I thought my wedding was the wedding of the year.”
Sensing disaster, Lindsey said, “It was, and since we won’t get married for at least a year, ours will be the wedding of the year next year, if not the year after that.”
“Oh, well, all right then,” Beth said. She picked up her plate, bit into her grilled cheese, and smiled. Then she looked worried. “But you shouldn’t wait too long to get married. We’re getting up there, and if you’re going to start a family, you need to get on that.”
“So to speak,” Paula said.
Violet snorted, and Charlene rolled her eyes at her mother. Lindsey tried to smile, but it felt like a grimace, especially when she felt all eyes turn her way.
She was certain they were looking for her to give a hint about whether she and Sully wanted to be parents. She had barely wrapped her head around planning a wedding, never mind sharing her more personal plans for the future, which presently did not include children.
“So, did you know that Gloria Steinem broke out as a reporter when she went undercover as a waitress at the Playboy Club?” Lindsey asked.
“And there she goes, changing the subject from her personal life,” Violet said with a laugh.
“Nice to know marriage isn’t going to change her,” Nancy said. She glanced at Lindsey and said, “And I did know about that. I remember my mother reading ‘A Bunny’s Tale’ in Show magazine and being scandalized. Well, she acted scandalized. It came out in the May and June issues in sixty-three, and my mother was chomping at the bit for the June issue.”
“That was the same year The Feminine Mystique and The Bell Jar were published,” Violet said. “Those were some wild times.”
Lindsey watched Nancy and Violet exchange a knowing look. She wondered whether the world was what they thought it would be on the other side of their youth—but then, did anyone’s life work out as they expected?
“Speaking of wild times, how are things working out for the Milsteins now that Sarah has been charged with the murder of Chad Bauman and the attempted murder of Theresa Huston?” Paula asked.
“They are moving ahead with the wedding,” Lindsey said. “And according to Theresa, they’ve decided to postpone their big honeymoon until they can take Liza with them.”
“I saw Liza the other day, and she looked, well, like someone who has just suffered a severely traumatic experience,” Paula said. “And having been the center of a homicide investigation myself, I could relate.”
“Poor kid,” Beth said. “She spent her whole life wondering what happened to her mother, and then out of the blue, her mother finds her and manipulates her with a pack of lies and makes her an accessory to murder.”
“I heard they are working with the district attorney,” Charlene said. She poured herself a glass of lemonade. “She’ll likely be cleared so long as she testifies against her mother.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” Violet said. She glanced at her daughter. “You’d never testify against me, would you?”
Charlene studied her mother over the rim of her cup. “Do you even have to ask?”
Violet grinned. “That’s my girl.”
“What’s truly tragic is that the whole thing could have been avoided. Chad Bauman would never have been swept into this by Sarah if Liza had known about her mother’s mental health. Larry should have told her the truth,” Nancy said. She shook her head. “Lies will always rise to the surface.”
“Like dead bodies,” Ms. Cole said. They all looked at her, and she shrugged. “What? It’s true.”
“Yeah, and really grisly,” Lindsey said. She held up a plate. “Grilled cheese?”
“I’ll take that!” Mary Murphy, the final member of their crafternoon group, came into the room. She had Josie strapped to her front and the baby bag slung across her back. She dropped the bag onto the floor and looked at the group. No one volunteered to take the baby, as they had all loaded up their plates with sandwiches.
This did not slow Mary down, not even a little. She approached the table, hefted baby Josie up and out of her sling, and thrust her at Lindsey.
“Here you go, Auntie Lindsey,” she said. She had heard about the engagement a few nights before, when Sully and Lindsey had called their families. “Have some quality time with your soon-to-be niece.”
“I . . . um . . . are you . . . is that . . .” Lindsey stammered, but it was no use. Mary plunked the baby into her empty hands, and Lindsey grabbed hold of Josie, pulling her in tight so as not to drop her.
Mary loaded up her plate and began to gab with the other ladies about Gloria Steinem and how fabulous it was to listen to an audiobook while she had Josie in the jogging stroller and was running along the beach, trying to shake the baby weight.
Lindsey stood paralyzed. The baby hadn’t made a peep. Surely she should be wailing in protest by now. Didn’t she have any survival instincts? She had to know Lindsey was the last person in this room—heck, in this whole town—who should be holding a baby.
She heard a little snuffle and tipped her head down so she could see the baby. Josie was blinking up at her with big bright blue eyes just like her Uncle Sully’s.
“Hey, there,” Lindsey said. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Josie’s eyes met hers, and her toothless mouth moved up into a wide smile. Lindsey let loose the breath she’d been holding and found herself smiling back at the baby. Josie blinked, and her smile got wider. Then she thrust a chubby fist into her mouth. It was the most ridiculously adorable thing Lindsey had ever seen, and she laughed.
“All right,” she whispered. She rested her cheek on the baby’s soft, downy head. “Maybe babies aren’t so bad after all. I’m not saying I want any, mind you, but you smell pretty good and you have your uncle’s eyes, so this is actually not . . . horrible.”
She lifted her head and glanced back down at the baby. Josie cooed and then grinned at her, and Lindsey smiled back. Well, okay then.