O Little Town of Bethlehem by Elizabeth Boyle

Author:Elizabeth Boyle [Boyle, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elizabeth Boyle

Chapter 24

Tuesday, December 10

* * *

Ninny stood on the front steps of Mrs. Jonas’s house and wished herself anywhere but here. But it was Tuesday and time for the weekly Ladies Aid Meeting.

She glanced over her shoulder at the high mountains surrounding Bethlehem and envied Badger’s freedom. However do you plan on finding a forthright life here in Bethlehem? he’d asked.

She let out a puff of breath. She didn’t know, and there was hardly time to figure it all out what with Mrs. Smith hurrying up the path behind her.

Beryl heaved a breathless sigh. “Dear me, I’m terribly late—but I see you are as well, Miss Minch. Shall we can go in together and say we just lost track of time?”

Why not? It was only a tiny white lie.

Then on a wisp of wind came a whisper of words, as honest as they were cold.

A forthright life . . . Tell them the truth.

Ninny’s heart hammered away at the very idea. A forthright life.

They went inside without knocking and found the tallboy in the hallway crowded with coats and scarves.

“I might just leave my coat on, and you’ll want to keep those mittens handy,” Mrs. Smith whispered, adding a conspiratorial wink. “Mrs. Jonas’s parlor is always colder than an outhouse in February. Why that woman doesn’t put more coal in her stove, I don’t know.”

Ninny glanced down at her hands and realized that in her distracted state, she’d put on her old red mittens, the ones her mother had knit.

They were hardly becoming, patched and old as they were, but the cheery color lent some of its vibrancy to her growing resolve.

She’d almost laid bare her soul the previous night. Confessed everything to Badger. But the words had stuck in her throat. For telling the truth meant losing everything she’d found of late.

Friends. Admiration. Purpose.

Which, she reminded herself, was all built atop a colossal lie.

To achieve a forthright life, one needed an honest foundation. But, oh, the price.

Beryl had already hurried in—so much for the solidarity of being late together—but Ninny soon saw, or rather heard, why the woman wanted to distance herself.

As Ninny came to the parlor’s wide double doors, Mrs. Jonas’s voice rose above the hum of chatter. “It is unbecoming,” she was saying. While she hadn’t Mrs. George L.’s domineering tones, Drucilla Jonas did have a way about her. “For a woman of her age to blatantly vie for the attentions of men . . . well, it is unbecoming.”

“Very unbecoming,” Mrs. Hoback parroted, nodding her emphasis at the younger ladies in the room as if to remind them to get married now.

“If I might—” Beryl Smith began.

“I hardly think Parathinia Minch is capable of being so deliberate,” said Mrs. Bohlen.

One might have mistaken the woman’s statement as a defense of the postmistress, but only someone who didn’t know Mrs. Bohlen. What the mayor’s wife really meant was that Miss Minch wasn’t capable of wiles.

“Not deliberate, Mrs. Bohlen? I disagree. I disagree most heartily.” Mrs. George L. glared at her audience as if expecting someone to disagree with her.

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