With this in mind, she grabbed her lightweight trench coat, a garment she loved and which she had, quite honestly, spent far too much money on, given how short a period she got to useit each year. It was a gorgeous camel brown though, and when Winnie wore it, she felt like the heroine in a Nora Ephron movie, even if she had only been to New York City a handful of times in her life. She paired it with her red plaid scarf and began the short walk over to Anchor Bistro, not bothering to hurry. She sucked in a lungful of the crisp autumn air.
This was the best part of living in New England, in Winnie’s opinion. She hadn’t lived anywhere else, but she’d visited other places in the fall, and they had always made her glad she made her home in Massachusetts.
She opted to take the long route. She was still thinking about the fundraising conundrum, so this technically still counted as working.
This route took her through a residential neighborhood, and as she strolled along the sidewalk, leaves dancing around her feet as the wind carried them, she noticed a large flatbed truck that was half filled with…
Well, it didn’t seem nice to call what was clearly someone’s possessionsjunk, but yeah. It was junk.
As she got a little closer, she realized that she recognized the guy loading things into the truck. Garrett, Eleanor’s boyfriend, from the hardware store. A few paces closer and she noticed that she knew the homeowner too.
“Miriam, hi,” she called out to Miriam Landers, the oldest member of the book club, who was standing on her porch, looking conflicted.
When Winnie had first joined the book club, Miriam had been the person who had intimidated Winnie the most. Miriam suffered no fools and she spoke her mind. But that same quality reassured Winnie now, because she knew that whenever Miriam was friendly, it was because the older woman wanted to be, not because she was trying to be polite or because she felt obligated.
Winnie wouldn’t have said that they were close, not necessarily, but she felt as though she understood the woman’s motives. Miriam did what she wanted. That was a huge relief to Winnie.
All of this made Winnie feel brave enough, when Miriam offered her a small smile and a wave, to approach the porch.
“Everything okay, Miriam?” she asked when the older woman’s face immediately fell back into something that held a hint of sadness to it. It felt a little scary, even reaching out so minorly like this, but Winnie reminded herself that fortune favored the bold. And besides, she couldn’t expect to build a community for herself if she didn’t make overtures, right?
“Oh, yes, everythingisfine,” Miriam said, flapping a hand. “I’m just… having a little feelings moment, I suppose.”
Winnie looked over at the truck as Garrett loaded in what seemed to be a broken easel.
“Having to do with spring cleaning?” she asked. “Or, autumn cleaning, I guess?”
Miriam’s expression grew a little lighter at Winnie’s quip, and Winnie felt very proud of herself, indeed.
“Yeah, exactly,” Miriam said. “I was just going through my attic, and you would notbelievethe kind of nonsense that accumulates in a place when you’ve lived there for thirty years.”
Winnie grimaced playfully. “I’m a historian, which is sometimes just a fancy term for pack rat,” she confessed. “I canabsolutelybelieve that you could accumulate a lot of nonsense in a few decades. I’ve only been in my house maybe four years now and I need to spring clean every year, or else it gets chaotic in there. It’s what I get for getting a little crazy at estate sales.”
Miriam arched an eyebrow at Winnie. “Okay, we will be revisiting that, because I too, love an estate sale,” she said. “But I’m going to pretend that I’m not going to get new stuff while I’m literally still in the process of getting rid of the old.”
Winnie felt a spark of excitement at discovering that her bravery was being rewarded with the suggestion that she and Miriam might go to estate sales together sometime. This encouraged her to probe, very gently, a little further.
“Well, it does look as though you got rid of quite a lot,” she said. “That’s something to be proud of.”
Miriam sighed. “Yes, I suppose so. I just… well, you’re young, so it’s hard to explain that it feels rather tragic when I do things and find that they take me so much longer than they used to. And I’m still cross at myself for needing to call Garrett to haul it all away, although goodness knows he was a dear about it.”
“As if Eleanor would ever allow him to be anything but,” Winnie quipped. Then she laid a hand gently on Miriam’s arm. “And you’re right that I don’t know what it’s like to be your age, but I will say, youth or no, I wouldn’t have been able to haul this all away by myself. It’s way too much for one person… unless that one person is a burly hardware store owner, I guess,” she added as she watched Garrett haul a pile of… something that looked heavy. Old paint tarps, maybe?
“And worse,” Winnie went on, “is that I would have totally dragged my feet about calling someone to help, which meant that I probably would have just stuck it in a pile in my attic for ages before swallowing my pride and giving in.”
Miriam cut her a sidelong glance. “Oh, youknowthat’s exactly what I did, you little pest,” she said, but the insult was so full of teasing affection that Winnie found that it felt a great deal more like a compliment.
She laughed.
“Fine, fine. That still means we’re birds of a feather, though. It’s not age that makes the difference,” she pointed out.
“You’re a good egg, Winnie Burnett,” Miriam said warmly, placing her hand atop Winnie’s for a moment.
Winnie paused. “I’m sorry, was that a pun onbirds of a feather?” she asked as Miriam chortled with delight. “That wasterrible.”
“I couldn’t resist,” Miriam admitted.
They stepped to the side of the porch as Garrett, who gave them both a quick nod of recognition but said nothing more, came through with another load of stuff piled onto a handcart. Winnie gave it an absentminded glance, then did a double take.
