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Chapter Two
Toweling drops of bath water from her skin, Bridget paused uncertainly, listening. Someone was moving around in the living room. Draping the towel over a hook, she reached for the cotton robe hanging on the bathroom door. The material clung to her damp skin, interfering with her efforts to pull it around her.
She ventured into the small hallway, tying the sash as she walked. The living room was empty when she peered around the corner, but she heard movement in the kitchen. Pushing the hair away from her forehead, she frowned.
“Who’s there?” she called, moving hesitantly toward the open archway to the kitchen.
A dark-haired woman moved into her view, smiling and waving to her from the area near the kitchen sink. “It’s just me.
“Mother!” Bridget sighed in exasperation. “What are you doing?”
“I brought over some scallions and lettuce from the garden. It really makes a difference to start the plants in the greenhouse first. Do you know we might have tomatoes ripe enough to eat in a couple of months? I do enjoy fresh vegetables and your father just loves working with plants.” She began opening cupboard doors. “I brought some tulips too.”
“I guess it really is spring.”
“Where do you keep your vases, Bridget? I think you should start locking your door. Living alone the way you do in the country and with new people moving in all the time, you just never know who might walk in.”
“That’s true,” Bridget said, stating the obvious. She walked to the cupboard above the stove to get the vase.
“Oh! You were taking a bath!” Margaret Harrison declared, only that moment noticing the robe her daughter wore and the damp tendrils of chestnut hair around her neck.
“Yes.” Bridget was accustomed to her mother’s lack of observation. “Long day at the shop. I just wanted to wash it all away.”
“Oh. Is running a business still what you want to do?”
Her mother could go from zero to sixty with a loaded question like that. Bridget knew she shouldn’t let it get to her, but it still did. “Of course. I have Mrs. Dutton to help and Dotty keeps me supplied with premium wool. The quilt-kit concept is taking off and the business is growing. Would you like to see a profit-and-loss statement?”
As she expected, her self-absorbed mother wasn’t interested in the facts. Margaret only sniffed. “Dotty Pomfret really is dotty. I can’t believe she still dresses like a hippie. Work boots and that weird cape.”
“It’s a coat. She wove the material herself.”
“Someone should tell her the Sixties are over.”
Bridget put her hands on her hips. “She manages to support herself and her sister Elizabeth. Anything wrong with that?”
“No. She’s just so—so eccentric.”
“That’s not a crime. And you know as well as I do that the Pomfrets have been in Vermont for generations. A lot longer than the Harrisons, come to think of it.”
“And they don’t have much to show for it,” her mother said smugly.
Nettled, Bridget decided to tell her mother something she’d been keeping to herself. “I don’t know about that. Good Living is featuring Dotty in a story on Vermont. Sheep and all.”
Margaret’s carefully groomed eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“Yes. It’s a Christmas crafts feature. They’re going to photograph the shop too.”
“Oh, my. Good Living … that’s better than Martha Stewart.” Instinctively, Margaret patted her hair, as if photographers were about to break down the door for a candid shot of her with a head of lettuce.
“It’s going to be good for business.”
“Of course it will. Just wait’ll I tell your dad. He’ll be thrilled for you,” she said. “When is that going to happen? What do you have to do to get ready?”
“In a month or two. And I don’t have to do a thing. They know what they need. A crew comes in and decorates the shop with a ton of Christmas stuff and we get photographed looking picturesque under the mistletoe and whatnot.”
Margaret stifled a cough. “Well, Dotty is certainly picturesque. But I don’t think any man wants to kiss her.”
“Be nice,” Bridget said in a level tone. “It won’t kill you.”
