One Year Read Online Free Page A

was a senior agent at Wharton Insurance on Main Street—and spent a good deal of time with her parents.
    â€œIt was a wonderful meal, Mary,” Jeannette said, folding her napkin next to her empty plate. “Your pot roast is always a treat.”
    Jeanette was a pretty woman, with eyes that were remarkably green. She was almost as tall as Mary Bernadette, but a case of scoliosis that hadn’t been diagnosed until she was fifty had left her slightly hunched and crooked. Though Jeannette never complained, Mary Bernadette knew her friend well enough to know that she was in constant pain. You could see the evidence in the lines of tension in her face, particularly when she had been sitting or standing for any length of time. Although in some ways the women were quite different, in this way they were alike. Each suffered quietly and with dignity.
    â€œExcellent whiskey, Paddy,” Danny said, after a first appreciative sip. “It almost makes a man feel young again.” Years of physical labor in the contracting business in all sorts of weather conditions had finally caught up with Danny. He had lost weight over the past year, and his walk was missing some of its usual bounce. Mary Bernadette didn’t like to notice signs of aging in her friends; they reminded her of her own process of decline, a process she was determined to ignore.
    â€œI see, Mary, that there’s a new Lenox curio box on the coffee table,” Jeannette said, as she helped bring the dinner plates to the sink for rinsing.
    â€œYes, I found it at the thrift shop when I was dropping off a few of Paddy’s old shirts. It’s a fine piece, isn’t it? I can’t imagine why anyone would have let it go.”
    In spite of her frugality, Mary Bernadette was not a believer in the “less is more” aesthetic, and the thought of downsizing appalled her. She owned a complete set of Waterford crystal glasses in a pattern long since discontinued. There wasn’t so much as a chip in one of them. Her Belleek tea set had pride of place on the credenza in the dining room. She had amassed no fewer than thirty-three Byers’ collectibles figurines, which she kept entirely dust free, no easy task what with the intricate folds of cloth and the finely spun hair. Antique embroidered samplers, some stitched by her mother and her mother before her. Lacy doilies and fine linen table runners. Capodimonte porcelain flowers. There seemed no end to Mary Bernadette’s “items of interest.”
    She was most proud, however, of the large collection of family photographs taken over the long years of her marriage. The entire Fitzgibbon family was represented, with the notable exception of William Patrick Fitzgibbon. Mary Bernadette and Paddy’s first child had died at the tender age of eighteen months. Photographs of the little boy did exist, but Mary Bernadette kept them in a locked box to which she had the only key. Paddy had never protested this. He had never dared to interfere with his wife’s mourning.
    It would be difficult for a visitor to miss the fact that every photograph had been taken on an official occasion—at a wedding, a christening, on Christmas or Thanksgiving—so that every family member was in his or her Sunday best. This, too, was Mary Bernadette’s doing. She was not the sort of woman to commemorate or celebrate sloppiness. She never left the house without applying powder and lipstick. She saw the habit of people wearing shorts or flip-flops to church as a sign of a larger breakdown of society. What had become of the virtues of modesty and propriety? If it wouldn’t be calling too much attention to herself—and it would be—she would still wear white gloves and a veil to church, as she had been taught to do by her mother.
    â€œShall we begin?” Mary Bernadette said, taking her seat again at the table.
    Paddy had set up the board, stacked the Chance and the Community Chest