And she so desired.

Vera Bundle owned a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all twenty-five volumes. Vera’s encyclopedia covers were made of imitation leather with gold-flecked borders. The twenty-five volumes were housed in a special custom-made bookcase that came with the set. It had taken Vera three years of saving from her bimonthly teaching paychecks and some of the money her husband Norville left her to purchase the set of encyclopedias complete with its own bookcase. It was an extravagance, but so what? Vera considered the investment the best she’d ever made. She adored her Encyclopaedia Britannicas.

Vera Bundle had her own special routine prior to perusing a volume of the Britannicas. First she made herself a cup of tea. She would pour the hot water into her cup, dip her tea bag once or twice (she didn’t like her tea too strong), add quite a bit of milk and two heaping teaspoons of sugar, and stir. Every time Vera made a cup of tea—every single time—she thought of her late husband Norville. How he used to say, “I like my tea like I like my women, Vera, hot and sweet.”

“Now you stop that, Norville Bundle,” Vera would reply, pretending to be angry.

“Aw, I’m only teasing you, Vera baby,” Norville always said, tickling her ribs with his index fingers, Vera wiggling around, trying to dodge his fingers but not trying to dodge his fingers. “Vera, you know you’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”

They’d joke around talking silly like that for a spell and then they’d hug and kiss…and…

God, she missed him.

After Vera Bundle finished stirring her tea, she added a shot glass, filled to the top, of J&B scotch. Vera never stirred the tea once the scotch was in the cup.

When her tea was prepared, Vera took two vanilla sugar wafers from the cookie tin in the cupboard and carried the tea and wafers on a small tray to her favorite armchair in the living room. She placed the tray on a tea table that was her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s before that, going back maybe a hundred years or so. Once in the armchair, Vera pulled the chain that turned on the floor lamp with the imitation Tiffany shade. Vera used a hundred-watt bulb in the lamp. In the past she’d used lesser-watt bulbs, but in the last five years her eyes had become worse and worse. Now she was forced to wear store-bought glasses for reading, and her lightbulbs had increased from forty watts to sixty watts to the present hundred watts.