CHAPTER ONE
“All right, folks, that’s our tour,” Winnie Burnett said, clapping her hands together cheerfully as she addressed the group who had turned up for today’s historical society tour. “Let me know if you have any questions. Otherwise, feel free to explore the exhibit and take a second look at whatever calls to you.”
“Hey, Winnie.” Delia Irving, a middle-aged local who had brought all four of her visiting sisters to take the tour, spoke up. The Irving sisters were in their fifties, and they were all proud that they were each still “Miss Irving,” despite their “advanced ages.”
These were their words, of course.
They’d proven to be a surprisingly raucous group of attendees. Eager and engaged, but raucous.
A few months ago, this would have annoyed Winnie so much that she would have been pulling out her hair by the roots. Recently though, she’d shaken things up a little, both in her tour repartee and in her personal life.
The new-and-improved Winnie, as she sometimes privately thought of herself, was cool to hang with the Misses Irving.
Okay… maybe she wasn’t hip with the ‘cool kid’ lingo, but that was fine. She was a woman in her thirties. One who, aftermany years of being a loner, had actual, honest to goodness, bona fidefriends.
No rambunctious tourgoers could dim that light.
“What’s up, Delia?” Winnie asked.
“I just wanted to say that you have really pepped up this tour recently,” Delia praised, giving an approving little shimmy to punctuate this statement. “Ilikeit.”
“Oh moveover,Delia,” the eldest sister, Amelia, interjected. “I have some actual historical questions!”
“Don’trush me, Amy!” Delia protested.
“Winnie,” Amelia said, speaking over Delia, “tell me about how they excavated those train track parts. Did they use TNT?”
“Um, no,” Winnie said, surprised. “They were actually uncovered when a resident nearby was renovating their yard.”
“Oh.” Amelia was visibly disappointed. “Did they use TNT when they put the railroad in?”
Winnie scrunched up her face. “Also no. Sorry.”
“Doesn’t anybody explode anything anymore?” Amelia muttered.
“I think they used dynamite on Mount Rushmore?” Winnie supplied. Mount Rushmore was about two thousand miles from Magnolia Shore, so it really stretched anyone’s definition of what counted as “local history” but Winnie didn’t think any explosive of any kind had been used in constructing the town.
And, well, Amelia seemed satisfied enough.
“Ooh, yes,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “They did explode that.”
She looked so delighted that Winnie had to chuckle. “Indeed, they did. Any other questions, ladies?”
Delia raised her hand. “I have a question. How are you still single, Winnie?” She had the sly, eager look of a matchmaker.
Winnie held up her hands as if to show that she was innocent. “I’m not saying that the questions have to bestrictlyhistorical, but let’s leave my personal life out of it.”
Delia looked chagrined, so Winnie gave her a smile to show that she wasn’t really upset. And, indeed, she wasn’t. That recognition was a surprise to her. She would have been pained by the admission just a few months prior. It would have reminded her that she was not just alone romantically, but that she was friendless, had always been friendless.
She wasn’t anymore, though. She had made some friends at the ripe old age of thirty-three. No, she wasn’t entirely confident in those friendships yet. She’d felt like an outsider for twenty-five years at least. It wasn’t as though those wounds healed overnight.
But it was more progress than she’d ever made before. Even with the doubt, it felt good.
And that good feeling had filtered out into other aspects of her life, Winnie was overjoyed to find.
“I appreciate the vote of confidence though, Delia,” she said warmly.
Delia gave her a wink.
