“You, too,” Anna said, pleased by the woman’s friendliness. Anna had met no one so close to her age in Edenton, and she felt an instant bond with the young woman whose room she was inhabiting.

“This is my husband, Karl,” Pauline said.

Karl, his arms weighed down with bags and a large rectangular wrapped gift, only nodded with a smile. He looked quite a bit older than Pauline. A few gray strands silvered his brown hair.

“So happy to meet you,” Anna said, taking one of the bags from his arms. “Miss Myrtle is in the kitchen.”

Miss Myrtle had given Freda the day off to be with her own family for the holiday, so the three women set about cooking. They made a turkey, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, and butter beans, which Anna had never heard of but which were the same as the lima beans she’d grown up with in New Jersey. Karl donned an apron and made some of the best biscuits Anna had ever tasted. She’d never known a man to willingly cook.

“I only like baking,” Karl said with a wink. Anna liked him right away. He was so easygoing and friendly and it was clear that he adored Pauline. She remembered Miss Myrtle telling her that he was a policeman and so he’d been able to keep a good steady job all through the Depression when so many men went without work. He was also undeniably handsome, with blue eyes and that silver-laced hair that kept falling across his forehead in a way that Anna found winsome. She imagined he would look like heaven in his police uniform and she thought he and Pauline made a striking couple, despite the age difference.

Pauline exuded warmth. Anna remembered that she worked part-time as a nurse in a doctor’s office. Her patients probably adored her. Anna could see Pauline’s resemblance to Miss Myrtle in her full lips, large bosom, and dark blue eyes, but Pauline was probably half her mother’s weight and the hair that spilled in waves around her shoulders was light brown instead of Miss Myrtle’s dull gray. Watching mother and daughter work together and chat together and laugh together set up a dull ache in Anna’s chest that she was determined to keep at bay for the afternoon. This was her first Christmas without her mother. If she thought about it, she would break down in tears, and she didn’t want to put her hosts—or herself—through that. She focused on her tasks and the conversation and the Christmas carols spilling from the radio on the counter. She would get through this day, one way or another.