The Dress in the Window by Sofia Grant

Author:Sofia Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

September 1949

Jeanne

Jeanne scrubbed her skin so hard in the bath that it had turned red. She was done resting—she was as healed as she would ever be. The thing she had unwisely done had been undone, and if she’d had to suffer for it, at least she had been lucky enough to be pulled back from the brink of death.

All that fuss, all that blood, for a few minutes of grunting and sweating and discomfort. Now she couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important to experience the act. She certainly hadn’t cared for Ralph, beyond a vague affection. She had been curious, and she had ceased believing the church’s insistence that lying with a man outside of marriage was a sin . . . and that was really all there was to it.

Except: seeing Anthony outside the house—when she’d walked Gladys to the door, limping for effect, there had been a moment when he’d looked up and their eyes met. And there had been a sensation of heat that rocketed through her, a yearning that was indifferent to her ruined womb, to her shame. She wanted him in a way that she’d never wanted another man—and she didn’t even know him.

She scrubbed harder.

When she emerged from the bath, her skin was raw and pink and smelled of Peggy’s French-milled lavender soap. Peggy would be miffed later, but in this peculiar moment, Jeanne didn’t care. She pulled her slip up over her hips, noticing how it stayed up on its own, rather than sliding down to her hipbones. She’d gained a little weight lying in Thelma’s bed, eating the rich meals she made. She rummaged through the clothes hanging from the pipe in the attic, past the suits and dresses she had sewn and altered, and chose an old shirtwaist that fit loosely.

Downstairs, Thelma had put away the coffee things and laid the table for lunch, setting out cold sliced chicken, canned peaches, and the thickly sliced rye bread she had been buying every day.

“Your friend seems nice,” Thelma said.

“She is.” Jeanne tried to find something to add, and came up short.

“You’ll have to tell them you’re quitting, you know.”

“I know.” Jeanne had said nothing to disabuse Gladys of the belief that Jeanne would be back at her desk on Monday. “I’m trying to figure out . . . how to say it.”

“Sit,” Thelma ordered her. “Eat something, and I’ll tell you what I think.”

Dutifully, Jeanne served each of them. The food tasted good, better than she could remember chicken tasting, the bread dense and flavorful. After she’d eaten everything on her plate, she dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “You were going to tell me what you think?”

“Well.” Thelma sighed and pushed her own plate away. “What I think is that working at the mill is going to do you good, more good than wasting your talents at that company. You can always stay friends with the girls you met there outside of work. But at the mill, you’ll learn things—everything I can teach you, and more.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.