Vivian remembered how her mother always said she’d never have to worry about Vera. Except for when she took up with that boarder the Brinkerhoffs were putting up in their house after the stock market crashed. Vivian heard her mother say she wished Vera had some better options for a beau. “But she’s got my stout figure and sloping shoulders, and with that smart mouth she’ll just have to settle for whoever settles for her.” And Vivian had smirked and silently agreed.

Chapter 23

Betty Miller settled herself into the first pew at Forest Chapel Methodist and rubbed her gloved hands together, waiting for the Daltons to show up. She would have liked to draw attention to the Dalton scandal at proper social gatherings, where she could outdress, outclass, and generally outdo Vivian in every single way, but they did not run in the same circles, so it had to be at church. She was going to make Vivian into a glorious pariah, because her comeuppance was long overdue.

When Reverend Alsop read from James 5:19–20, Betty made loud murmurs of agreement and looked, pointedly, in the direction of the Daltons.

If anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

“Wanders from the truth,” Betty repeated in a low voice, but not so low most of the people around her didn’t hear.

When Reverend Alsop read from Ephesians 5:15–20, Betty nodded her head and looked, pointedly, in the direction of the Daltons’ pew.

Be careful how you live.

“Amen,” Betty said, while still looking at the Daltons.

If Vivian noticed Betty’s decidedly un-Christian behavior, she didn’t let on. It drifted up and over her like Reverend Alsop’s sermon. Something had shifted inside Vivian. Almost overnight. Was it the wedding yesterday? The conversation with Vera? She couldn’t say. She just knew something felt different today, and she wasn’t noticing the things she usually noticed. Like Betty Miller.

From her place in the first pew, Betty Miller was doing so much turning and murmuring that a few of the congregation’s members were wondering if she might be possessed. She’d murmur and amen, and seek Vivian out with her angry stare, shooting visual daggers in her direction.

But Vivian paid no attention to Betty, the murmurs, the amens, or even the sermon, and, instead, was suddenly far more curious about minutiae she’d never bothered with before.

Minutia:

plural minutiae play

: a minute or minor detail—usually used in plural <He was bewildered by the contract’s minutiae>

For example, the plaque outside the church, telling everyone when it was founded (1887), or the hymnbook she held during services, turning it over to see the gold stamp that would tell her where it was printed (Plattsburgh, N.Y.). Names, dates, places.

“I don’t have any exact dates, just now,” Betty Miller was saying from the podium.