When Laura Dearing didn’t arrive at the Hestling House sewing bee for the third Saturday night that January, the women knew it must be true. Laura had fallen for Nash Gallant, the husband of Loretta Gallant. It surprised none of them that Nash would cheat on Loretta, but astounded them all that Laura Dearing would ever take up with a man like Nash.

Every week the women took charge of the Hestling House on Union Street, which had been bequeathed to the town of Wentworth by Irma Hestling for social functions, and made it their own. It became their sanctuary, their private parlor of wingbacked chairs and bookcases lined with gilt-spined books, of twilight-tinted windowpanes and a yellow-keyed piano none of them could play. A perpetual odor of mildew hung over the parlor, thick as the motheaten velvet curtains. Still, they occupied it every Saturday night, knitting sweaters, cross-stitching quilts, sipping coffee under the apricot-hued halos of lampshades.

“I suppose we’ll have to freeze tonight,” Margaret Donohue said. She pulled her sweater close around her neck and snuggled against the back of her rocking chair.

“I don’t want to fool with that fireplace,” Marie Pendleton said. “It’s a wonder the place hasn’t burned down so far. Laura’s the only one I’d trust to light it.”

Harriet Hilliard dropped her darning needles in her lap, and puckered her lips with exasperation.

“Really, now,” she said. “I do think Laura could have called. It would have been the polite thing to do. But I suppose we’re just a bunch of old ladies to her since—”

“For God’s sake, Harriet,” Sara Dobson spoke up. “Why do you have to be so disagreeable? Maybe Laura had other plans.”

“I’m certain she did,” Harriet sniffed.

“I can feel that draft from the window clear over here,” Margaret said. She spread the folds of the afghan she was knitting over her lap, and huffed on the knuckles of her left hand.

“How did we ever stand it before Laura came and lit the fire?” Marie asked.

“Oh, Laura this and Laura that,” said Harriet.

“Harriet,” Sara said, “It’s perfectly hateful to think about Laura like that. It’s not Christian to—”

“Oh, spare me the sermon, Sara,” Harriet said. “You know as well as we all do what Nash Gallant is—a Don Juan. It’s disgraceful, no matter if Loretta drinks the way she does. He’s still a married man. Laura’s quite aware of that.”

“Loretta never was cut out to be an undertaker’s wife,” said Margaret. “Of course, I can see how she fell for him with his three piece suits and those blue eyes. You can see how he walks around town—like a king. But he knows enough to joke with the men, chat with women, or tickle a baby’s chin.”

“More than that, Margaret,” said Marie. “Nash knows how to listen to people. I’m not sure how to explain it. He knows how to wait until their talking satisfies something inside them, something they don’t even know needs satisfying until they speak to him. Dear Lord, he did as much for me before my Herbert passed away.”

“He’s seen enough lives come and go,” Margaret said. “I think it’s something in his blood. Ain’t natural to live so high on others’ grief.”

“Missy Fournier, the nurse, tells me he keeps tabs on people’s health from Dr. Hartnet,” Harriet said. “Those all-night poker games above the funeral parlor aren’t just fun and games.”

“I don’t know how Loretta stands it,” Marie said.

“She doesn’t stand it,” Harriet said, unspooling a ball of yarn. “She cringes at the very sight of a casket, and you’ve seen her yourself bawling through Father Lessard’s graveside commitals with pink eyes, shuddering like a leaf in the wind. She was a lovely girl before she married Nash. Now she’s filled out like a sack of potatoes, her face blotched and puffy, her hair like straw. That glow on her cheeks isn’t just rouge, either.”

“Please, Harriet,” Sara said. “That’s enough.” She swept aside the quilt she had been embroidering, and lurched out of her Morris chair. “I’ll put on another pot of coffee. But I hope we can elevate this conversation before I come back.”

“Maybe coffee will warm our bones,” Harriet said. “If you find a bottle of brandy, we might live it up half as much as Nash Gallant.”

Sara clasped her shawl around her neck, and marched across the parlor’s frayed Oriental rug for the kitchen. Harriet kicked the ball of yarn with her round-toed shoe a few feet away.

“It’s the gin, isn’t it?” asked Marie. “Poor Loretta. You know how she shuts herself upstairs above the funeral parlor for days on end. I think the organ music and the smell of all those flowers drives her up there. She only comes out for errands in a fur coat, a smear of lipstick, and those high heels, looking for all the world like a wakened owl. I’ve talked to her myself about everything from weather to the town council, but she doesn’t say say much.”

“She didn’t have much to say the day of Charlie Pendleton’s funeral,” Harriet said. “You saw yourselves. After all her crying and carrying on, she nearly tumbled into the grave. If Father Lessard hadn’t caught hold of her, they’d have had to fish her out of it, so help me.”

Sara entered the parlor, skipping past the ball of yarn on the Oriental carpet, and sat down in the Morris chair. Bridging her hands across her cheeks, she leaned back with a sigh.

“Think how hard it must be on Laura, a widow at twenty-eight,” Sara said. “Losing her husband in a lumbering accident only two years after they were married. I know they were planning to have children. But Laura had the good sense to use the insurance money to pay off the mortgage. Now it’s just an empty house for her. I’ve seen the poor thing staring from her porch window at the hopscotch games of girls, or the boys swaggering along Greenborough Avenue with their bats and baseball gloves. It breaks my heart. In the winter a few husbands take turns shoveling her driveway after supper, and send their sons to fetch fire wood to her back porch.”

“Oh, Sara,” Margaret said, “there’s nobody harder-working than Laura. The nights she works at Hennessy’s Nursing Home can’t be easy. You should see the way those old folks light up when she arrives. She plays the piano for them and always knows what to say. My great Aunt Jeannine held on for weeks, waiting for Laura to sit with her each night. She’s an angel, no doubt.”

“Well, even angels stumble,” said Harriet. Her darning needles clicked.

“Harriet!” Sara said. “You can’t say that about Laura. You don’t know anything more than the rest of us. Just because she’s not sitting here with us in the dead of winter, knitting like an old woman, you think the worst of her. Maybe you forget that she’s still got a long life ahead of her. She’s always been good to us. All of us.”

“I showed her how to cross-stitch,” Marie said. “She took to it like she’d been doing it all her life.”

“And she plays the piano so beautifully,” said Margaret. “I miss hearing her play.”

“Yes, yes, music to my ears,” Harriet said. “Too bad she decided on playing duets with Nash Gallant.”

She lifted the ball of yarn onto the stuffed arm of her chair and stood up. Striding across the carpet, she disappeared into the kitchen and could be heard thumping about in the pantry doorway.

“What are you doing, Harriet?” Marie called. “It sounds like you’re building a house of your own in there.”

A moment later Harriet appeared with three split logs, some kindling, and a piece of birch bark. She kneeled at the fireplace, swept aside the brass curtain, and assembled the wood on the fire irons. She frowned during the task, black lines converging toward her brow, an expression of distaste spreading like mold across her peach-like complexion.

“Harriet, I didn’t mean to say that we should build a fire,” Marie said.

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” said Harriet. She struck a wooden kitchen match.

The women peered over their knitting at the small orange flame that took hold of the birch bark; it sparked and flared through the network of kindling, and then around the edges of the logs. The firelight flickered against Harriet’s face and her bronze bun of hair.

“Don’t forget to open the flue,” Margaret said. “The last time you tried this we nearly had to call the fire department.”

“Oh, that smoke was terrible,” Marie said. “It took a week just to air out the smell.”

“Don’t think your precious Laura is the only one who can look after herself,” Harriet said. “I’ve got three sets of booties to knit for my grandchildren before the night’s done, and I don’t propose to catch my death of cold.”

“I don’t think Laura owes any of us an explanation,” said Sara.

“Maybe not,” Harriet said, closing the brass-mesh curtain across the fireplace and taking her seat again. “But Loretta Gallant probably couldn’t stand any explanation she might offer to her.”

“Harriet, I won’t listen to this talk another minute,” Sara said. “It’s simply none of our business what Laura is doing.”

“See no evil, hear no evil . . .” Harriet hummed.

“She seemed like such a nice girl,” said Marie. She patted a silvery strand of hair into place.

“It’ll be the ruin of her,” whispered Margaret. “A married man.”

“You’re all being ridiculous,” Sara said. “Nash Gallant gives the poor girl a ride through town a few times, and you assume the worst. Have you stopped to consider that maybe Nash Gallant offered her a ride out of simple kindness?”

“Oh, we know his kind,” Harriet said. She took up her darning needles, ticking out a rhythm.

“He has got quite a reputation as a ladies’ man, Sara,” said Marie. “You heard about him and that bank teller.”

“Emily Hutchinson,” Margaret said.

“And that Wilson girl who used to run the horse stables out past Bryant Acres,” said Marie. “Her folks sent her away to college to get her away from him.”

“Those are just the few we know,” Harriet said. “It’s no secret that Nash Gallant’s got an eye for young women. Why, we haven’t even mentioned Gail Sumner. You remember, Paul Sumner’s daughter? Brazen little thing she was! Used to show up in her pretty dresses for the funerals of people she didn’t even know. Got so bad that Paul sent her out to Montana or some such place to live with her aunt.”

“That’s about the time when Loretta started drinking,” said Marie, affirming the memory with rapid nods of her head and downturned lips. “I think it was too much for her to have it out with him.”

“A terrible thing,” Margaret muttered.

Sara tossed the warm lump of yarn from her lap onto the coffee table. She stood up, pressing her cool fingertips to her forehead. The parlor swam before her in a blur of faded flower-print wallpaper and orange pools of lamplight. She noticed the glint of the fire against snow-webbed windowpanes, and then the transparent reflection of the room.

“Have you got another migraine, dear?” asked Marie. “I always get them during storms.”

“Just tired, I guess,” Sara answered, smoothing her skirt. “The water ought to be about boiled for coffee. Anyone else?”

“Not for me,” replied Margaret. “It’ll keep me up half the night.”

“I’ll take mine black, thanks,” Marie said.

“I’d love a cup, dear,” Harriet said, her voice loosening. “Three sugars.”

“You like it sweet, don’t you, Harriet?” Sara said. “That’s good. Maybe it’ll turn all that bitterness inside you sweet.”

Her words floated after her into the kitchen. The almond-like aroma of coffee drifted through the kitchen, steaming the darkening windowpanes. Harriet unraveled the ball of yarn, and clicked her darning needles, humming.

In the kitchen, Sara sipped her coffee over the sink, hoping its warmth would soothe her. But she knew it was true. Laura was seeing Nash Gallant. She had seen them herself, riding in his Cadillac toward the backroads one afternoon only last week, an observation she didn’t care to share with Harriet, Marie, or Margaret. Where on earth could they have been going? What was the sense of denying it?

“Sara, you didn’t get lost in there, did you?” cried Harriet, a note of triumph in her voice. “Come and join us, and we’ll not say another word about our wayward companion. We promise!”

“Coming,” Sara called back.

The fireplace blazed, illuminating the gloomy contours of the parlor with amber warmth, vanquishing the mildewed odor of its ancient furnishings. Brass candlestick holders sparkled on the mantle, and the face of a broken grandfather clock gleamed with the illusion of new life. Sara carried the cups and saucers on a tray to Harriet and Marie, placing them on the coffeetable.

“Why, thank you, dear,” Harriet said. “No hard feelings, then?”

“This old house is so drafty,” Margaret said. “That fire makes all the difference, don’t you think?”

“It does take the chill off,” Sara said, smiling weakly.

“We’d better remember to douse the embers when we leave so we don’t start a chimney fire,” Marie said. “There’s a bucket under the sink that Laura—”

“Didn’t we promise not to mention certain names, Marie?” asked Harriet.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I guess we did.”

“And I didn’t mean to upset you, Sara,” Harriet said. “After all, you brought Laura into our little group.”

Sara sipped her coffee. The words tapped in the back of her mind. Yes, she had brought Laura into the group, gone out of her way to extend the hand of friendship. If only she had called to say she couldn’t come to the sewing bee . . .

“My fingers ache, tonight,” said Margaret. “I’d bring that fire home with me if I could. Makes me shiver to think of going outside again. I don’t know when it’s ever been so cold.”

“You can catch your death of cold out there,” Marie said.

Harriet nodded, humming softly to herself. “I do miss hearing the piano, though,” she said.

Sara retrieved the lump of yarn from the coffeetable and waded through it to find her place. She picked and plucked at it, untangling the threads as best she could. But she found it difficult to find the stitch where she had stopped. One of her darning needles rolled behind the seat cushion.

“Damn it, anyway!” she exclaimed, fishing after it.

The expletive crashed through the stillness of the parlor, carrying with it the weight of something more than frustration. The women gazed at Sara with curiously bovine expressions, bobbing their heads in unison.

“Oh, it just makes me sick to think of it,” Sara admitted. “I can’t fathom why Laura would make such a mistake. And she certainly knows Nash Gallant. Why, he made the arrangements at Scott’s own funeral.”

“You might have something there,” Harriet said.

“What do you mean?” Sara said.

“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” said Harriet, “but didn’t Nash spring for the memorial service? Chet Benedict, the hearse driver, mentioned it to Gail Abernathy, who told me that Nash cut her quite a deal.”

“I suppose Nash has his charitable side,” said Marie.

“But what’s that got to do with Laura now?” asked Sara.

“Laura’s comfortable around Nash, don’t you see?” Harriet said. “She probably doesn’t know what Nash is really like. Maybe she hasn’t figured out that he’s not escorting her around town for some other reason outside of kindness.”

“She always was a trifle naive,” Marie said.

“But it’s been three weeks now since Laura’s joined us,” Sara said. “You can’t tell me Nash Gallant hasn’t shown his true colors by now.”

“He can hold his horses, I’ll bet,” Margaret said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “It goes with the job.”

“Laura wasn’t very educated in the ways of the world, which can be a blessing at times, I suppose,” said Harriet. “I don’t think she saw many other men before she married Scott.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that Laura hasn’t figured out what Nash Gallant is really after, do you?” asked Sara.

“Take it easy, dear,” said Harriet. “Laura may come running back to us once she finds out what everyone else in town already knows. You learn these things when you get to be our age.”

The thump of boots on the outside porch startled them into stunned silence. The dim shape of an overcoat appeared behind the warped glass of the door. The doorknob rattled.

“Don’t breathe a word,” Sara said in a quick whisper.

Laura Dearing stepped inside the foyer, removing her kerchief and dusting the snow from her shoulders.

“Nice of you to join us, Laura,” said Harriet. “We’ve missed you.”

“Oh, thank you, Harriet,” Laura said. “I’ve missed you all, too.”

She stepped into the parlor, unbuttoning her coat, and sat down on the sofa. Her face was thin and drawn, the skin stretched tightly across her cheekbones with the cold. Her damp honeyed hair fell limply about her shoulders.

“Take your coat off and stay a while,” Sara said. “Harriet got the fire going herself.”

“I’m so cold,” Laura said.

“It’s no night be out of doors,” Margaret said.

“There’s some coffee in the kitchen if you’d like,” Marie said.

“No . . . thank you,” Laura replied. “I just had a cup.”

Harriet smiled at Marie. Her darning needles flashed in the firelight.

“Where’s your afghan, Laura?” asked Sara. “Did you forget it?”

“No, I didn’t bring it tonight,” she said. “I can’t stay but a minute because Nash Gallant’s waiting outside. He’s dropping me off at home. I . . .wanted to talk to all of you together.”

“You mean he’s outside right now ?” Marie asked.

“Yes,” Laura said. “He’s been so kind to me over the last three weeks. He thought I should talk to all of you tonight.”

Harriet recovered from her dour amusement and forced a thin-lipped smile.

“Oh, he did, did he?” said Harriet. “Dear, there may be a thing or two you don’t know about Nash Gallant.”

Sara dropped her knitting on the coffeetable and stood up, bracing for the confrontation, praying it wouldn’t come.

“He’s helped me to understand things I never thought about, and I trust him,” Laura said.

Laura’s eyes blurred with tears, and she hid her face behind her hands. Sara hurried over to her and touched her shoulder. Laura gazed up at her, and Sara noticed the ashen-colored rings beneath her eyes. She was so much thinner than when she’d seen her last. Crossing her arms across her breast, Laura gripped the lapels of her coat, shuddering with sudden, inescapable fear.

“What’s wrong, Laura?” Sara asked. “You can tell us.”

The fire popped and sputtered. Erect in their armchairs, the other women leaned their heads toward Laura on the sofa. Her eyes stared back at them with cold, unblinking horror, the parchment-thin skin of her face crinkling into despair.

“Laura, please, tell us,” Sara implored.

“Has he done something to you?” Harriet asked.

“He hasn’t done anything,” Laura cried. With twitching fingers she buttoned her coat again. “Or I guess he’s done everything he can. Anything that can be done.”

“Oh, I know Nash Gallant,” Harriet said. “And let me tell you, young lady, that man may be married, but—”

“No, Harriet!” Sara shouted. “Not another word!”

Harriet threw the ball of yarn aside, her lips pursed with an imperious crease. Laura stood up and backed out of the parlor, Sara still clutching her arm. Margaret and Marie sank back in their armchairs, their faces frozen with speechless curiosity.

“Married?” Laura repeated. She stopped at the foyer in trancelike afterthought of the word. “Of course, he’s married. What’s that got to do—”

“Well, what have you got to do with Nash Gallant, then?” Harriet said.

The young woman burst into tears and ran from the house out into the winter night. Sara ran after her to the opened door, grasping the oak frame for balance as Laura pushed past her.

“Laura, come back!” she called. “Please!”

The crisp slam of Nash Gallant’s Cadillac door echoed through the night air. Sara stared after the car as it rounded the bend of Union Street, snowflakes whirling in the funnel of its headlights. With her back against the doorframe, Sara turned back to face the women in the parlor, but they stared into their laps.

The flames in the fireplace wavered with the draft of cold night air to a voracious, brittle roar. The broken grandfather clock’s stilled brass pendulum gleamed. The darning needles ticked.

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com