There were a few more lingering questions, most of which were requests for a little more detail on topics she’d already covered. Winnie answered them happily, then waited for the last few stragglers to wander out of the exhibit before heading toward her office to end the day.
She tended quickly to a few lingering tasks, shot off a few emails, then closed down her computer for the day. She checked to make sure that her copy of the latest book club read was inside her work bag before she headed home. She’d taken up reading a few chapters over her lunch break.
On her way out the door, she paused to chat with Cherry, the receptionist for the historical society. Cherry had worked atthe historical society longer than Winnie had been alive, and knew where to find every piece of paper in the building without consulting any sort of reference. Winnie hadn’t talked to her much in the time she’d worked at the historical society, but perhaps this was another way that her newfound relationships had spilled over.
“Hi Cher,” Winnie said brightly. “How was your weekend? You saw your grandkids, right?”
Cherry gave her a smile. “Ooh, Winnie, you know I love those kids, but I amtired. Did you know they wanted to play at the park for three hours? And, then, of course, they needed Grandma to be part of a game of Monkey in the Middle. I’m too old to be a monkey!”
Despite the language of complaint, Cherry looked positively thrilled to have spent her weekend playing the monkey.
“You’re as spry as a much younger ape,” Winnie teased.
Cherry waved a hand at her. “You’ve been too sweet lately, Winnie Burnett. Go home, okay? Have some fun. You’re young. Get out there and cause some chaos, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Winnie said, laughing. “That’s me. Chaotic to the bone.”
They shared a laugh as Winnie headed out, but Winnie couldn’t stifle the internal wince at Cherry’s allusion, however well-meaning, to how distant Winnie had been to her co-worker for years. The first time she’d asked Cherry a question about her personal life, Cherry had blinked at her in surprise.
“Oh,” she had said. “I didn’t realize you…”
She had trailed off, but the wordcaredhad hung in the air between them anyway.
It had made Winnie feel downright terrible. Not that she had blamed Cherry for being suspicious about her motives. It wasn’t as though Winnie had been the most open and welcoming colleague prior to that.
Winnie felt proud that she’d gotten close enough to Cherry to know all of her grandkids’ names and that Molly, the youngest, wasobsessedwith unicorns.
These past few months had felt… really good. Winnie hoped beyond hope that this trajectory was here to stay. She hoped beyond hope that she could start to believe that it would.
Winnie headed through the halls of City Hall, which housed the historical society as well as most of Magnolia Shore’s municipal works.
“Bye, Natalie,” she called out to an admin from the city treasury, waving at her down the hall. “See you tomorrow?”
“Bye Winnie!”
Even these little greetings felt good.
Whenever the urge to judge herself for her reticence reared its ugly head, Winnie remembered that this desire to protect herself hadn’t come out of nowhere. She had come to Magnolia Shore as a teenager, only to learn that the bullying she’d suffered in her previous school had left her uncertain how to navigate the perilous waters of adolescent friendship. She’d kept herself apart, but she’d done it from a place of pain. And blaming her childhood self for being scared of being hurt more would only bring that agony into the present.
She knew now that her love of history and books wasn’t something to be ashamed of. She knew now that it was something that could make her friends instead of lose them.
But that lesson had been hard won. She hadn’t learned it until she had struck up a friendship with the members of her book club, and she’d nearly torpedoed that friendship by badgering Eleanor Ridley when she’d first moved to town.
In Winnie’s defense, she hadn’t meant to alienate Eleanor. Winnie just got a little bit passionate about town regulations when she got into things. But she recognized that she’d gottenatadoverzealous when it came to things like fences and their proximities to sidewalks.
But that was behind them, or at least Winnie really hoped so. Eleanor assured her that it was, but there were those darn doubts that kept bobbing up in Winnie’s brain.
Those would fade in time, though. After all, Winnie’s interference hadn’t stopped Eleanor from opening her bookstore, which was now a few months into its successful tenure. And Winnie was a proud member of the book club that their eldest member, Miriam Landers, called the “friends of the bookstore club.”
Winnie loved being friends of something, even if it was just the bookstore. Though she hoped she wasn’t flattering herself to say that she was a friend to the book club members too.
Even if declaring that was the teeniest, tiniest bit terrifying.
Even if she was still alittlenervous whenever it was book club night.
Because… what if her friends still weren’t ready to trust her, given how she had been difficult and distant for so many years?
Winnie got into her car, then pressed her hands to her cheeks to banish these challenging thoughts. Just because people had let her down in the past didn’t mean that they would do so again in the future. The women who made up that book club seemed genuinely kind.
