She opened her eyes to see one of the few neighbors that she did know charging across the dusty street toward them. It was Cecilia Fryt, trailing in her wake her brown-bearded husband, Amos, who owned the hardware store. Cecilia was a tall woman, and, though Amos was taller, he always appeared stooped, compared to his wife. Cecilia wore a hat with a great plume of peacock feathers; the bellow-like sleeves on her dress made her shoulders look broad as a man’s.

“Amos Fryt!” boomed John.

The man nodded in response, only the twitch of his beard betraying a smile.

“So this is the blessed mystery child,” sniffed Cecilia, feathers teetering as she examined the baby in his carriage. “I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever see him.”

“Well,” John said, reaching up to rest his hand on Wilma’s shoulder, “here he is now. Wilma hasn’t been feeling too well.”

Cecilia’s eyes bore into Wilma’s. Wilma, feeling light-headed, recalled dimly that, just before Jack was born, someone at the Lutheran church had whispered that Cecilia had recently lost a baby some three months into a pregnancy. “But you know Cecilia,” the churchgoer had said, with a note of admiration in her voice. “She was right back out shoveling her walk the next day. In spite of what Dr. Seguin might have told her. She doesn’t believe in pain, that one.”

Wilma put out her chin. “I’m fine now.”

“Yes, she’s very well now,” John said. “And have you ever seen a more handsome child?”

Cecilia looked down at the baby. “He certainly is large, for his age,” she said. “Hopefully he won’t turn out to be heavy.” This with a glance at John’s waistline, which had unquestionably widened, this past year.

Wilma sensed John step back, speechless.

“We’d best go, Cici, so you’ll be on time,” Amos said.

“Oh, yes,” said Cecilia, with a pointed look at Wilma. “I’m carrying the banner for the Beautification Committee.”

Wilma knotted her hands. She knew the things people said about her: that she was “too high on her horse” to notice the needs of the “common folk” and actually do something for Pine Rapids. Certain things were presumed of the wives of the town’s businessmen, particularly of a woman like Wilma who had household help, and Wilma had not conformed. But she had been indisposed since the day she’d arrived, with the business of having a child!

Wilma looked up and saw the peacock feathers moving away through the crowd. Of course! Cecilia Fryt always had to have the last word.