That was the thing about small towns. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Vivian certainly knew everyone else’s business, but more important, she knew people. Vivian Dalton knew people, that was for certain, and she’d be the first to tell you that. She’d say it was more from intuition than from eavesdropping on people’s telephone calls, but her daughter, Charlotte, would say, “No, it’s from the eavesdropping.”

Charlotte joked with her friends, putting on airs for amusement, saying her mother was privy to myriad conversations among the good people of Wooster. Now, “privy” and “myriad” were two words Vivian would’ve used if she’d known what they meant. She wasn’t stupid, but her schooling hadn’t gone any further than grade eight at Bowman Street School. Vivian never would’ve seen “privy” and “myriad” printed next to the splashy photos in her fashion and movie magazines. Charlotte had to roll her eyes and sigh as she explained to her friends, “My mother doesn’t trust people who read books.”

It was a shame Vivian didn’t know words like “privy” and “myriad,” because she would’ve loved them. They sounded fancy and expensive. They sounded like words the four-flushers on the north side of Wooster probably used all the time, even at Buehler’s when they were buying whatever it was they bought there. Their prime rib and lobster claws and bushels of caviar or whatnot. Vivian eavesdropped, and also did her share of peering into people’s shopping carts at the grocery store. Yes, people like the Millers probably used words like “privy” and “myriad” at Buehler’s. All four of their rich kids probably privyed and myriaded all over the place. Little Bitty and Charles Junior probably used those words when they were talking to Sober Santa at Freedlander’s.

Vivian wasn’t thinking about the words she didn’t know as she crunched along on her way to work, blowing out little frozen clouds as she exhaled. She was thinking about how glad she was that Betty Miller had seen her wearing her new hat. There’d only been one left at Beulah Bechtel’s that afternoon, and Vivian had set it on the counter next to the cash register with shaky guilty fingers that really should’ve been pushing the hat money across the counter to the bank teller to put into her savings account instead. She’d seen Betty hovering near the fur coats, eyeing the hat hungrily. Looking at it like she’d almost eat it for lunch if she could, with her pointy little white teeth. Betty Miller’s teeth weren’t really pointy, that’s just how Vivian imagined them. Pointy teeth in a vicious mouth that seemed just as likely to tear the very flesh from your bones as it was to smile and comment on the weather.

Vivian had saved for months to buy that hat. Just that one hat. The beautiful hat that she knew hadn’t really been made for someone like her, but maybe, if she bought that hat for herself, she’d feel a little bit of what the four-flushers felt. Worthy of something nice. Boy, if she’d told Edward how much it cost, he would have put her in the lunatic asylum. Betty Miller probably could’ve bought four or five of those hats that day, right there. If they’d had any more, that is. “You’re lucky,” the salesgirl (Doris, maybe?) had said to Vivian as she wrapped the hat in lavender tissue paper. “This is our last one.”