“Hello, ladies,” she said, pasting on the smile she normally reserved for the elderly people in her tours that just wouldn’t stop asking questions, even though they’d been scheduled to be done twenty minutes prior. “You’re still in town, I see. Did you end up loving it so much here that you decided to stay?”
Even as she spoke, she was surprised by her audacity. She wasn’t being particularly unkind, but she’d never dared to stand up to either of her former bullies before.
They looked surprised too. But Whit got an especially mean look in her eye, and Winnie knew she was really in for it, now.
“Oh my goodness, Britt,” Whit said in that super sweet, simpering voice that made everything in Winnie tense up. “Look at this. What could Winniepossiblybe shopping for? Because it sure looks like she’s having a party, but that just couldn’t be,could it? The Winnie we know never was one for parties, was she?”
It was mean. It was undeniably mean.
And yet, for some reason, Winnie didn’t feel small when she heard it. This time, when they were horrible, horrible jerks, it was easy to see that this was entirely about them.
It wasn’t about Winnie at all. How could it be? They hadn’t really seen one another, aside from a few random encounters this summer, in over twenty years.
If these two women had stayed mean, which they obviouslyhad…
That was about them. Entirely.
She smiled at the two women.
“You know,” she said. “It actuallyisn’tfor a party.” Whit started to look smug and satisfied, so Winnie kept going. “It’s for a book club meeting!”
Whit’s smile dropped.
Winnie’s smile grew.
“I recently joined the book club full of thenicestwomen,” she said. It was easy to gush, because it was all true.
“How didthathappen?” Britt asked snidely.
Winnie gave a careless shrug. “Oh, you know how it is in small towns. People know one another. They cordially invited me, which was lovely, and then the event was even better. It’s just so much fun to spend time with women who aren’t so trapped in the past that they still act like they’re in middle school. It really makes you realize howsadit is when people don’t grow past the immature versions of themselves that they were before they were even teenagers. Don’t you agree?”
Britt’s mouth actually dropped open. Winnie wasn’t sure she’d ever felt so powerful in her life.
“It really makes me so grateful for this little town and its community… but I guess you don’t get that in the big bad city.Anyway!” She sidestepped them and they just let her! “Have a great time walking down memory lane. Bye now!”
And then she sauntered to the cashier, made her purchases, and waltzed out the door.
It wasn’t until she got to her car that she paused to even think about what she’d done. She put her purchases on the passenger seat, then stared out the front windshield for a moment.
And then she started to laugh.
There were a lot of emotions in that laugh. Some of it was relief that she’d finally stood up to those awful, awful women. Part of it was astonishment. Just think of it! She, Winnie Burnett, had been so gutsy! She had totally turned the table on people whose mean comments had been hanging over her head for years.
But beneath that, there was a little bit of fear too. What if she’d spoken too soon? What if her new friendships weren’t built to last? What if she drove her new friends away?
No,she decided. She wasn’t going to let anyone take this moment from her, not even her own self and her own doubts.
Instead, she was going to go make a charcuterie board. And then she was going to go to book club. And she was going to have a good time.
She was the new and improved Winnie. Now, it was time to show the world.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Anthony finished typing out the post-meeting notes from one of his clients, a nice older lady named Mrs. O’Malley who ran a bakery out of her home. Apparently, she was in such high demand that her stock sold out within an hour of her opening her doors, which she only did once a week. After Anthony had tried some of the homemade bagels that she’d brought for him to sample, he could believe it. The woman wastalented.
“Okay,” he said to himself, saving and closing the file, then shaking out his wrists, which had grown slightly cramped from typing. “What’s next?”
That day, he wasn’t feeling the mid-afternoon slump that so often hit him. He liked the energized feeling he had; it tied into his sense that things were starting to finally settle down into his new life in Magnolia Shore. Eloise was happy… aside from when she was sobbing her eyes out over a development in the book that Diana had loaned her. He had been briefly alarmed, had tried to take the book out of her hands to offer her some comfort, but she’d snatched it back.
