One Year Read Online Free Page B

cards, and distributed the game tokens. Mary Bernadette was always the thimble. Jeannette was always the top hat. Danny was the old boot, and Paddy the Scottie. This evening, it was Danny’s turn to be the bank. With a roll of the pair of dice, the game began.
    â€œI ran into Leonard at the grocery store today,” Jeannette said as she waited her turn. “He said he was passing the Kennington House early this morning and thought he saw a tramp asleep on the front steps.”
    â€œNonsense,” Mary Bernadette said, taking a small sip of her sherry. “We don’t have tramps in Oliver’s Well.”
    Jeannette laughed. “You’re right, we don’t. Leonard got out of his car to investigate and found that what he thought was a pile of clothing with a human being inside it was just a big, black garbage bag escaped from someone’s lawn, no doubt in that windstorm we had the other night.”
    â€œOnce an officer of the law, always an officer of the law. I’ve always said that attention to detail and an eye for trouble is what makes Leonard a fine CEO.”
    Leonard DeWitt was the Chief Operating Officer of the Oliver’s Well Historical Association, of which both Mary Bernadette and Jeannette were long-standing members. Over the years Mary Bernadette had advanced to the position of chairman, an honorary post with the exception of the job of official spokesperson. And no one on the board would debate the fact that she was also the heart and soul of the organization. The latest successful project the OWHA had undertaken, under Mary Bernadette’s guidance, was the salvation of the Joseph J. Stoker House. The house, barn, and what few outhouses remained intact had been privately held for generations until the OWHA had been able to buy the property three years earlier. The structures were in a sorry state and had required complete renovation including urgent structural repair. The most important parts of the work were done, though there were still a few interior finishes Mary Bernadette hoped to make in the years to come. Now the OWHA was ready to award the job for restoration of the twelve acres on which the structures stood, including a kitchen garden, flower garden, and small apple orchard. Five landscaping design firms, including Fitzgibbon Landscaping, had submitted bids and were scheduled to give presentations in the following weeks.
    â€œCome to think of it,” Jeannette said, “I haven’t gotten an e-mail from Neal about the next meeting. He’s never late sending it out.”
    Mary Bernadette frowned. “Machines. There’s probably something wrong with his computer. In the old days we sent a notice through the mail.”
    â€œWhich cost more of the board’s money and took more of the secretary’s time.”
    â€œStill,” Mary Bernadette said. “Things got done.”
    â€œSpeaking of things getting done, I do wish we had the money to buy the Branley Estate. I drove past earlier today and the main house has lost another window frame. The place will decay entirely if we don’t get busy saving it.”
    â€œWe’ll find the money in time,” Mary Bernadette said. “God willing.”
    Indeed, the Branley Estate represented the last major pie-in-the-sky piece of business for the OWHA to take on. The property had once belonged to a powerful robber baron of the late nineteenth century, a man named Septimus Hastings, who, unlike the majority of his class, had lived in relative simplicity in the original house that had been built in 1743 by one George Branley. Instead, he had used his vast wealth to purchase other buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, move them fully intact from their original sites to his land, and fill them with furnishings and art from the period. In short, he had built a museum complex of no less than three houses, several barns (stocked with old farm implements and machines), a