The Ring Chapter 3

 

MARGO LOUD STEINER

HELPING TO CLEAR out her mother’s home, where Medora Young Loud had lived for five-plus decades, was easier than having Heather hem, haw and moan that she, Heather, had to do it all herself. Margo thought if martyrdom was on the Nobel Prize list, her sister would qualify. Margo still preferred to take her car to her mother’s rather than be trapped with Heather as she had yesterday.

The estate sale was scheduled for a week from Saturday. The agent was coming the following Tuesday to go through the sales process of all Medora’s things. Afterward they needed to prepare the house for sale.

“We still have to do an inventory of mother’s things,” Heather said as they walked in the back door. They still used the back door as they had when they were children coming home from school. The difference was that then there were smells of whatever Medora had been baking.

As much as Margo didn’t agree with much of what her mother did, after raising Bethany herself, she admitted Medora had tried, just as she still did. Often both failed.

At this point in her life, she accepted that she and her mother had only a birth canal in common.

“Then make sure they are clean and appealingly displayed. And . . .” Heather nattered on.

“I know all that.” Margo failed to not sound annoyed. Older sister nags were no more pleasant in their forties than in their teens.

“You don’t have to snap at me. It’s in your interest too. And Bethany’s.”

The sisters would, according to their mother’s will, divide half the proceeds from the sale of everything, and half would go into a trust fund for Bethany and Heather’s daughter Grace. When the girls were 29, they could tap into it.

A house that Margo’s parents had paid $48,000 for in 1976 was estimated to be worth at least around one million, even with the dated kitchen and bathrooms.

When they had been told this by the lawyer who read the will to them, Heather had said to Margo, “Now you can move into a real house, one with more space.

“Why would I want to do that?” Margo asked, causing the lawyer to smile. He had known the family from before forever and, unbeknownst to both girls, had often counseled Medora to accept both her daughters as they were, fine women with a totally different approach to life. He did that more as a friend than a lawyer.

Mixed feelings were how Margo would describe her emotions at that moment had Heather asked, but she didn’t. There were some happy memories in this house, but more unhappy ones, not the kind abused children have, but the kind misunderstood children have

Even if she were the baby sister, her mother preferred Heather. Her older sister wanted the same things her mother did: a husband, children, a nice home, a social life with people of their own kind.

Margo wanted to be an artist, travel the world. Although she never went goth or hippie, her favorite clothes were jeans and a paint-spattered shirt. Instead of wanting to go to the proms and dances at her school, she wanted art lessons. When a potter moved into town, Margo offered to do any chores possible in exchange for lessons.

The same woman had found the scholarship program that Margo won to study in a ceramics company in Stuttgart. That had left Medora sputtering that her daughter should go to college, find a husband and settle down near her family.

While Margo was overseas, she found not only the husband, but a German university professor, a foreigner, an ex-Nazi according to Medora.

Heather’s husband was far more acceptable to Medora. He worked in their town for an educational publisher as their Chief Financial Officer. For stability, Medora was willing to overlook how old Grayson was. What was twenty years difference in a couple?

That Heather worked at the local library was acceptable to Medora, although she thought her daughter would be better at home with Grace.

Both sisters agreed that the Feminist Movement had flown over their mother’s head. They did agree that maybe, just maybe, their mother might feel that she had missed out on doing something more interesting than catering to her family.

“I’ll make a pot of tea,” Heather said. “I’ve boxes and boxes. They are labelled with my name, your name, Bethany’s and Grace’s. What we don’t want will go to the Estate Sale . . . after we price them.” She held up a package of stickers with the Johnson Estate Sales logo preprinted.

Margo could have guessed whom each box was for. Bethany had given her a list of what she might want, mostly books by Judy Blume. There was a set of Thorton W. Burgess books with animal characters that not only had been read to Heather and Margo, but they had also belonged to Medora’s mother and grandmother. Those were already in Grace’s box.

Stuffed animals Grace had played with when she visited Grammy filled other boxes marked Grace, and still another box had who-knows-whats.

Margo didn’t care about the who-knows-whats, but she needed to take a stand for the books. One-by-one she transferred them to Bethany’s single box when Heather disappeared behind the swinging kitchen door to make a second pot of tea. After finding duct tape, Margo sealed her daughter’s box and carried it to her car. Fait accompli or something like that.

When Heather came back from the kitchen with the newly filled tea pot, Margo was just coming back into the house. Heather’s eyes swept the boxes. “I did check if these old books were worth much. I think the most was $40.” She went out to Margo’s car and brought the box back in. She unsealed it and started removing the books.

Margo remembered picking up Bethany one day when her mother had babysat. Her daughter had been curled up next to her grandmother entranced by the adventures of Sammy Jay and Old Grandfather Frog on his lily pad.

“I don’t think so. It’s not the money. It’s the memories.” Margo started to take the books back to the car. “Bethany wanted these. That’s all either of us wanted.”

“So does Grace. She’s getting married and they’ll want kids right away. Bethany? Well by the time she settles down, she might be too old.”

So, this is how it was going to be. Never mind Bethany, there was little that Margo wanted. Her home had everything she desired or needed. Well not everything. There was a ring, that was a memory too.

It was one of the nights when Margo had dropped off a coat she had borrowed from her mother when they went out to dinner, a rare occasion. A sudden rainstorm had come up. Her mother had insisted Margo take it to not catch cold. Catching cold was something Medora always worried about. Drafts were especially dangerous.

Medora had been dressed to go eat at the Silver Spoon, a place she often went with Henry Willis, a widower neighbor whom she kinda dated. The restaurant was upscale.

“What a beautiful, beautiful ring,” Margo said.

“Isn’t it? No, don’t look like that. It’s not an engagement ring.”

“It’s a beautiful non-engagement ring. My mother passed it down to me as the baby of the family. She was the youngest too, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll leave it to you when I die.” Medora was fond of saying “Maybe I’ll leave it to you” about this or that to either girl.

One of a pair of purple Sandwich glass vases were on a pile of newspapers. The mantle of the fireplace looked empty without them. Maybe its mate was already wrapped and in Heather’s box.

Margo thought she’d heard her mother say they’d be her sister’s after she was gone. Maybe not. “Take the matching vase,” Margo said to Heather.

While Heather poured tea, Margo glanced at Heather’s notebook. Her sister was listing house prices in their town, probably from the internet.

Should she give her the benefit of the doubt that Heather wanted to price the sales items between a good buy and getting their full value?

“Nah,” she whispered to herself as Heather reentered the room with a tray which had an empty tea pot and Medora’s china cups and saucers. Margo recognized the English pattern of red roses, common enough. One thing about being a ceramic artist, she could always duplicate whatever she wanted.

Margo knew she had to decide between making a scene as Heather scooped up what she wanted. But no way, no how, was she going to give in on Bethany’s books.

Looking at her watch, she said, “I’ve gotta get going. My agent is going to call.” Without unsealing Bethany’s box, she picked it up and balanced it against her hip as she opened the door and left.

The Ring Chapter 2

 

HEATHER LOUD POWERS

WHEN HEATHER PULLED up in front of her sister’s cabin, which she refused to call a home, she noticed her sister’s car, such as it was, wasn’t there. However, the lights were on. Heather knew Margo would never go out leaving the lights on, costing her money.

How her sister managed, she would never understand. Such a tiny place which she combined living space with making those dishes – ridiculous. It was even more amazing to her that people wanted them, but it worked for Margo, so who was she to criticize.

She didn’t count her mental disapproval as criticism as long as she didn’t voice it to anyone but Grayson. Her husband’s response was most often a “hmm” although there were rare times when he said things about how it worked for Margo, often with a sense of admiration, which annoyed Heather.

Inside Heather found Margo painting a cup. A cup? Well better to get to the point. The last thing she wanted to do was to have to continuing going through their mother’s things alone

Grace was in New York City. She was trying to get a job working for a fashion house after her degree from RISD. So far, she had found work as a waitress. Grayson had said basically that was to be expected. She should have studied accounting.

Grace’s suggestions to her parents that they give her enough money to start her own shop with her own clothing line had fallen on deaf ears. Citing how Aunt Margo created her business with her ceramics didn’t help.

Grayson felt he couldn’t leave work to help her with the estate sale. With a new CEO replacing the founder and CEO who dropped dead at 87 while still working every day, Grayson felt insecure professionally for the first time. The company had gone from being a team, a family, to one employee pitted against the other now that the owner’s son had taken over. And big publishers were sniffing around. Although the company was small it was profitable.

“Technize everything – if technize is a word – get rid of all that paper,” Grayson would complain. That’s what this son wants. What happens when the system goes down, the electricity goes off?”

Heather didn’t understand what the problem was. The publishing house seemed like it belonged in the last century, even the last two centuries. She found the various computer programs a great help to her work. Oh, she missed the old card catalogues in their oak cases that had been hand-crafted by Thomas J. Chess back before World War II. The library was that old but it had such a comfortable feeling. Computers didn’t have that cozy smell of wood and old paper. However, if she had to decide between the nice smells and word processing or a filing system at her fingertips, bye-bye comforting smells.

The age difference didn’t seem too much when she and Grayson married 25 years before. It was a new century, a new life. For him, it was not so much a new year, new decade but too many changes were getting to him.

Heather would try and explain bar codes to him, but he didn’t want to hear. She was stuck with two people in her life, her husband and her sister, that did not live in the worlds that mattered to most of the world.

Still, they had a lovely house just outside the town center, unlike this claustrophobic hodge podge of her sister’s.

“Hi Auntie. I’m going to make tea. Want some?”

“Yes, Sweetie!"

BETHANY STEINER

“ICH LIBE DICH, Papa!” Bethany’s father pulled his backpack from the back of the car. He blew her a kiss before walking through the international departure door at Logan Airport.

Bethany sat a few minutes until a policeman told her she had to move. She then headed out of the airport toward her mother’s home.

Although she’d lived alternate years with her mother in the tiny house and studio after her parents’ divorce, it was homey, but not her home. Nor was her father’s home in Stuttgart. Home was her own flat near Tübingen University. Having obtained her degree there her work with plants continued in the same lab for her post doc.

For years she had felt her childhood was weird and hated it. Now she just thought it was weird, but she saw the advantages.

Bethany had been born in Germany. Her father spoke to her only in German and her mother only in English. She had a slight accent in both languages and in her third year of elementary school had been bullied about it. Now her bilingualism was an advantage.

Her discomfort with living with her mother in a small New England town made her parents decide to let her live with her father. Her wanting to change back to the U.S. and then back to Germany every other year because no matter where she was, she felt like an outsider was accepted by both parents. Together they made sure the rules were the same in both places, adjusted for age. Bethany quickly realized playing one parent off the other would not work.

Now at 28, her post doc grad work involved research on plants. There was no way she could explain what she was doing to those that asked her. Manipulating vegetables for greater benefit was the simplest way to say it. Lately she just said, “agricultural research.” If they pressed her, she gave them a batch of made-up formulas and data which made their eyes glaze over within minutes.

Her father had started as a history professor. He then became an author and documentary presenter by accident, as he liked to say. He hadn’t pushed her into his field. She found it herself when she took a course with Dr. Gunter Finder, a name that she felt was a perfect pun. He was now her boss, more or less, because he claimed that their work was a partnership. There was even a paper where they both took credit at his insistence.

She stopped thinking about her past and pulled into her mom’s driveway.

*****

“Tea, Auntie Heather?” Bethany asked after hanging up her coat. What she wanted to say, “Please leave before you and Mom get into another fight.”

Bethany reached for the tea pot, one of her mother’s creations. When she was a kid, she was ashamed of their tiny house. Her friends had normal homes, but now she appreciated how her mother had made sure they had everything they needed. If only mutti hadn’t done all those long and boring lectures against consumerism.

Then she had an idea to go to the Stuttgart International School, every other year. She learned her sales skills, convincing her parents and the school administration she wasn’t flitting in and out of countries. It was the school’s summer program that defined her passion.

In the States she still felt like an outsider, although English was the only language. Her mother talked to her in German to make sure that next year when she was back in Germany, her German wasn’t too rusty.

Once she was at ISS more lessons were in English, but German was also taught. She spoke German with her father.

In any case her childhood, although different from anyone she knew, now felt good, although she wasn’t ready to admit it to either parent. Let them feel a little guilty but not too much, she thought.

The tea kettle whistled on the stove, so American. Her electric kettles in her Tübingen lab and her flat where she now lived just shut off.

Now if she could get mutti and Auntie Heather to drink the tea and leave before they started fighting, it would be a good day.

She and her Papa had had a great talk on the ride to Logan Airport. She would see him again in a couple of weeks.

Both her parents claimed that she was like the other one. Her mother thought her interest in science came from her father. Her father thought her interest in art came from her mother. Bethany thought she was herself.

She did look like her father, blond hair, blue eyes, tall. Her mother’s was short, dark curly hair. She also looked like Heather. Instead of WASPs, they looked Italian.

She spooned leaves into the tea pot, her favorite. Although it was her mother’s design, it was like nothing else she did. No little girls on swings, no flowers, and no strange lines and color combinations. “So, I can get away from my work when I drink my tea,” Margo had explained.

“Tea is ready.” Bethany put the pot, mugs with the cookies Auntie Heather must have brought on the table, being careful not to mess up the paints her mother was using.

“Over by the couch,” Heather said. “I can’t stand the smell of paint.”

 

Village in the Early Morning

 

16°C Glory Hallelujah!!! 

Rick normally takes Sherlock on his early morning walk alone. Instead of snuggling in bed with my book, I decided to go with them making it a complete pack event much to the dog's delight. 

For the first time since May I put on jeans not light slacks. And socks, SOCKS, SOCKS! 

Blessed cool. The air is fresh. There's the usual smell of bread baking from the boulangeries. There's no roasting chicken smell. That's for the days of the marché, Wednesdays and Saturdays when stands selling everything imaginable line the village streets.

The streets are almost empty. Only one person sits at Cedric's drinking his coffee. I wave to Cedric. We haven't seen his puppy for a while. He's probably grown over the summer. I'll ask next time.

Maureen is putting out the fresh, fresh produce, much of it local. I thank her for the broccoli yesterday. She was out in the morning, but was sure she had it in the afternoon. I added it to the Indian veggie dish I made for supper. It would have been okay without it, but was better with it.  

Her assistant comes on duty and we talk about the word biological in English and French and its meaning. 

Maureen is more than a merchant. We've followed her progress as she studied at the conservatory. She has continued with her music often playing gigs in the area. We were happy when she added an adorable baby boy to her family which now includes her daughter and partner. There's something soul healing in these turbulent times watching happiness in others.

We peek at Bomb which is being converted into an Epicerie Fine by the owners of the soap/perfume two shops. They also have a café selling luxury teas, coffees and fruit juices. They too have a dog, a chihuahua, that doesn't like men, just women. 

The musée devoted to the Retirada will not open for another two hours. It is a reminder of the influx of Spanish refugees fleeing Franco. The village wasn't peaceful in January 1939. Thousands and thousands of Catalans were put in a hastily built concentration camp on the beach despite the freezing weather. 

There's a novel in there somewhere: two points of views, a refugee and a villager. 

Sherlock wants to go through Place Gambetta, which has fountains, chairs and planted areas. It has a trash can that says "thank you" in English when you drop something in it. It's a place for kids to play and is also the site of the Christmas Market, concerts and special outdoor events.

The fake wall is still three-stories high at the end of Place Gambetta. It's left over from the three-day Medieval festival that converted the village to the middle ages with people dressed from that time, games, acts, crafts. Temporary fake walls like those that surrounded the village in the middle ages were erected around the village. 

For the first time I get to see the new building paintings. Every few years artists are invited to decorated building. I love the women knitting. I love the yarn ball rolling on the floor. Maybe it could be one of our Free Write prompts. 

This weekend there will be another fête.The Geants Saint Come and Saint Damien, who had something to do with medicine, will be walking the streets and end up at the XIV century church. Perhaps other giants will come dancing through the village as they have in other years. 

However, this morning the village is still quiet. It is still too early for the flock of school children to head to the primary school, the point that Sherlock decides to turn back. Some times parents are with them. Many walk alone. It's safe.

A group of women friends on bikes call out to us. They are on the way to the beach for their morning swim. brrrrr.

We walk to the boulangerie for fresh baked bread, for chocolatine (local for pain au chocolate). We stop at Mille et Une, a favorite tea room, for tea and hot chocolate. Khira, the owner, is still setting up. We tell her, "Nous ne sommes pas pressés."

While she finishes setting up, we people watch.   

We see Mattieu and Madame Auer walk past. Matt owns l'Hostalet, a hotel up the street. He's carrying a tray of croissants for the petit dej for his guests. His petit dej is anything but petit.

Madame Auer owned the local pressing (dry cleaners) before her retirement. We haven't found a satisfactory replacement. One of the reasons I chose this village is that I could walk to everything, including the movie theater 76 steps from my front door. I wouldn't need a car. I did finally get one.

Over the years they've created an industrial zone outside the village, but it is still possible to go months and months on a single tank of gas. 

As we head home, we pass a few other people out to buy their morning baguettes. Some we know for just a bonjour. 

Once home, we start our writing days. 

It's a good life in a turbulent world. 

 

  

 

The Ring ChapterOne

A novella about two very different adult sisters and one ring which had belonged to their late mother. A chapter will be published here every day.

 The Ring

HEATHER LOUD POWERS

WHEN HEATHER LOUD POWERS stepped into her late mother’s bedroom, sadness swept over her. Although it was perfectly neat, the way her mother left it each morning, it looked disused. For the last two months it had been.

        There were the six weeks Medora Loud had been in the hospital, conscious some days, out of it others. Heather and her sister Margo Loud Steiner had signed the Do Not Resuscitate Order which their mother had told them to do many times over the years, always adding, “But wait until I’m close to dying. Not now.”

Heather threw the window open, letting in the chill October air and the smell of fallen leaves. After a few minutes, she lowered it to a crack.

Covering the bed was the quilt her mother had cross-stitched, before turning it over to a professional quilter for the backing.

Heather remembered how as a teenager she had watched her mother create the red and pink rose design on rainy or snowy Sundays as they watched episodes of Murder She Wrote on cable TV.

Her father would be working in his office, the third bedroom, which meant that she and her sister Margo had to share the second bedroom. To keep them from killing each other over everything, Medora had turned the part of the basement with a large window facing the backyard flower garden into a studio where Margo spent most of her time. Medora removed enough of Margo’s mess to keep Heather almost happy.

Checking her watch, Heather realized she had better start work if she and Margo were going to decide what the estate sales office would sell and its price range.

Jonathan Wilson had explained what they needed to do to make the sale of her mother’s things a success. Too bad that neither Margo’s daughter Bethany nor her Grace wanted the items that had meant so much to her mother, Heather thought. Although she wanted some of them, her husband Grayson did not want to add to the “clutter” of their home.

Her mother had been a confirmed WASP, a New England Yankee with a relative going back to the Revolutionary War. Her mother’s Daughters of the American Revolution’s membership was a badge. She ranked her friends in two groups, DAR. members and others.

Heather liked most of the DAR members. Margo called them B2, Bigoted Bitches.

There was one thing she wanted from her mother’s things, not even the quilt, which was so New England Yankeeish as the rest of the house.

A ring.

That she really, really wanted even though her mother seldom wore it. She couldn’t explain why she wanted it so badly, but she did. Picturing it on Margo’s clay-covered, paint-covered hand instead of hers annoyed her.

A gold leaf had tiny diamonds in its center rib. Not that her mother wore it often, but Heather had seen Medora Young Loud showing it to her boyfriend once, if you could call a man in his sixties a boyfriend.

At first Heather thought that it was an engagement ring despite Medora making it clear she had no intention of marrying after Heather’s father died seven years before. Medora said that she enjoyed going out to dinner or a show with him.

Henry Willis was a widower. Medora told her daughters that he was a neighbor, a good friend and if they didn’t like it, they knew what they could do and where they could go.

Their family had been friends with Henry and his late wife. The couple had been a bit like a good aunt and uncle to the girls as they were growing up. Mostly with Henry keeping Medora busy, it took a lot of mother-watching responsibility from them.

So much for thinking. She was on a mission, to find a ring, one shaped like a gold leaf with a diamond spine. That should be hers. It wasn’t mentioned in the will.

Unlike Margo’s clay-covered hand, Heather’s own part-time job as an assistant librarian at the town library would make the ring safe from art materials. She opened her mother’s jewelry box.

Inside were some antique pins that she should have evaluated before the sale: likewise, her grandfather’s pocket watch. Probably belonged to her great-great grandfather. Might as well put that in the sale. Today everything was digital with time being told on phones.

There was her mother’s pearl necklace. Medora had given both daughters anniversary pearl necklaces, starting with five tiny pearls when they were born and five added for each birthday. Heather wore hers regularly. What did Margo do with hers? Her sister didn’t even like jewelry.

Heather looked at the time. She needed to pick up Margo so the two of them could go through Medora’s house together. Heather didn’t mind doing some of the work, but enough was enough. 

MARGO LOUD STEINER

“SHIT! HER OLDER sister’s car pulled up in front of the house. From where she sat at her worktable, she could see through the window next to the front door to her sister’s car, followed by her sister striding to the house.

Heather did not bother to knock, just opened the door. “Margo? Margo? Anyone home? We need to go to Mother’s.”

Margo dropped her brush into the turpentine. Her mother’s final illness and funeral had delayed her completion of the commission, which would earn her enough for six months expenses and some savings.

It was a tea set for some rich bitch in New York: four cups and saucers, sugar bowl, pitcher, and tea pot. Each one had a short quote from a Shakespeare play along with a painting. One cup had Juliette on a balcony. Romeo was on the sugar and creamer looking up. Naturally, the saying was “Romeo, Romeo blah, blah, blah on Juliette’s.”

Over the years Margo had developed a reputation for producing individual ceramic work. Her success hadn’t changed her lifestyle.

The money from her share of the divorce from Hans-Peter Steiner had paid for this tiny house in the woods not far from a pond. An extension served as her studio, although she often chose to do some of the work on the kitchen table, especially like this cold October day, when she could light the wood-burning stove and put on music.

“Hello Heather.” Margo let her sister bustle in. Even if Heather was only four years older, she bustled like an old lady.

“Where’s Bethany?”

“She’s taken Hans-Peter to the airport. His flight to Stuttgart is tonight.”

“I don’t know why he bothered to come to mother’s memorial service.”

“For Bethany.” She didn’t say “and for me.” She added, “He and mother always got along.” He and Bethany had arrived late for late for the funeral service where it had only been the sisters, Grayson Powers, Henry Willis and the new minister. She’d forgotten his name. Her ex and daughter had stayed for the memorial service for Medora’s friends and neighbors four days later.

Nor did she need to say, although she wanted to, you got along better than mother and I did. Heather knew that.

Heather was the favored daughter. Margo was the outlaw of the family, the one who moved to Germany to intern with a ceramics company. Worse, she had left New England and worse still, America. As they say, the rest is history.

Despite the divorce, she and Hans-Peter had more or less stayed friends in raising their daughter. As for Bethany, she shuffled back and forth between Stuttgart and Massachusetts, somewhat uncomfortable in either culture, although she seemed almost to have grown out of the blaming her parents because she felt she didn’t belong anywhere. As a post doc student, she was on temporary leave from the University of Tübingen for her grandmother’s funeral and memorial services, although she done work on her laptop almost every day she had been at Margo’s.

Margo’s production of Bethany was the one thing Margo’s mother had approved of her daughter doing.

As if she could conjure up her daughter by thinking about her, Margo heard a second car, her car. The car door slammed and Bethany entered.

Her daughter was not beautiful and did little to enhance her good features. Clothes were never important to her. What was “in” never impressed her. She did what she wanted, which was something scientific that Margo never had and never would understand, although sharing the knowledge didn’t seem important to either of them. There were other things about where they could chat.

Mother and daughter may have had little in common when it came to the actual work that they did, but they were kindred spirits about what they felt for their different work.

Margo was passionate about her design work, even when clients sometimes annoyed her. Her exhibitions in New York, Paris and Berlin had given her a reputation where people sought to commission her ceramics.

Bethany’s work wasn’t work to her. It was food, air, water. She would forget to leave at the end of a day when something was right, and when something went wrong she would stay and stay until at least she was on track to a solution.

Margo has been surprised that Bethany had taken the time to come to Medora’s funeral and stay for the memorial, but as her daughter said, “There was a break in the project while more data was collected. That data made no sense to Margo even when Bethany explained or tried to. Instead, they made popcorn and binge-watched Midsomer Murders and other British mystery series as they had when Bethany was a teenager.

“Auntie Heather. What are you doing here?” Bethany asked.

“I’m picking up your mom to go to grandmother’s to get ready for the estate sale. I did call ahead, Margo, but you didn’t answer.”

“I don’t answer when I’m working,” Margo explained for the zillionth time.

Had Margo a chance to do it over, she would have bought different land and built her tiny home a greater distance from her mother and sister even if both women had come in handy when Bethany was younger.

“You should come too, Bethany. There might be things you want.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to take anything back to Germany with me. My flat makes Mutti’s house look palatial.”

Heather’s eye rolls showed how she felt about what she called Margo’s cabin. Her four-bedroom house wasn’t a McMansion exactly, but it would have qualified for a House and Garden spread as a successful reclamation of a Victorian house.

She and Grayson, her husband, were far from rich, but frugal New England DNA ran in both their veins. He was the chief financial officer at the educational publishing house in town. Heather worked part time at the local library once her daughter Grace started school.

Grace and Bethany were a year apart to the day, making joint birthday parties easy during years when Bethany was living in the States. In their early relationship, heir early relationship was hampered when Grace couldn’t understand Bethany’s German accent. Even when they shared a tongue, Bethany’s interest in math and science did not hold any interest in Grace’s love of the latest whatevers. As they grew older, they became closer, often expressing their confusion about their mothers’ disagreements.

The only thing the four women shared was a love of reading with all four loving mysteries.