“Yes, I’d like to be connected with Barrett’s Flower Shop.” She reached for her notepad and pencil. “Hello?”

Silence at the other end of the line.

“Hello?”

Betty reached over and tapped aggressively on the telephone cradle.

“HELLO!”

Oh, honestly, these things are supposed to make life easier, she grumbled as she reached to dial the operator again.

Betty had Dolly hand-deliver the invitations to her afternoon tea, while she handled the flower, food, and drink arrangements, but she wondered if she shouldn’t have done it the other way around. The arrangements took about three times as long as they should have, since the telephone line kept getting disconnected nearly every time she tried to make a call.

When Betty Miller extended a written invitation, women of Wooster clamored to respond in the affirmative. This had been a slightly unusual invitation, seemingly without occasion. It wasn’t to honor someone’s birthday, engagement, marriage, or baby, and it wasn’t a fund-raiser. Betty Miller was big on fund-raisers. The month of January was supposed to be reserved for recovering from the chaos of the holidays. To catch the collective breath, the ladies would all agree. But there it was on the invitation: January 17, a Saturday afternoon tea, with watercress sandwiches and polite conversation. What on earth was that about?

Clara Weaver had been irritated with the invitation, not only because it interrupted what was supposed to be a relaxing January, but also because it meant donning an afternoon dress. She was still holding on to the extra seven (or ten) pounds of holiday weight she had accumulated (all Christmas cookies and fudge), and the most appropriate dress she could fit into was one left over from her last pregnancy. But she knew if you turned down a Betty Miller invitation, you would not receive another until she felt you had served your time in Wooster’s social purgatory.

Clara had strapped a belt, loosely, over the dress and gone to the tea, as had everyone else on the invitation list. And they had talked about their respective Christmases, and they had eaten the tea sandwiches and cookies, and sipped the tea and fruit punch. And they had learned all about Vivian Dalton and her husband. There had been more breathless pearl-clutching and tsk-tsking that afternoon in Betty Miller’s living room than last summer at the Wayne County Fair, when it was discovered that Lucy Kratz had stolen Ethel Armstrong’s cherry pie recipe and passed it off as her own. Ann Metcalf had been so surprised by the Dalton news, she’d spilled Shrimp Louie down the front of the new orange silk shantung Beulah Bechtel dress she’d purchased just for the tea.

All the women at the afternoon tea were well versed in the art of displaying false concern. They continued to clutch their pearls and tsk-tsk as they wondered how on earth poor, poor Vivian was going to deal with this when it got out to the rest of Wooster. Edward Dalton had a second wife.