by Nancy Warren
She’d considered throwing a hissy fit and marching into the managing editor’s office to demand the story be stopped, but she didn’t. She had a fatalistic attitude that this final blow would give her the guts to leave her aunts and shake the dust of Pasqualie off her feet.
She didn’t know how to warn Lavinia and Elspeth. What could she say? For all she knew they might think it was exciting to look at old pictures of Harriet as the dorky geek she’d been in high school. Steve certainly did.
In fact, she realized, as she dragged herself out of bed Sunday and forced herself to the barre for her morning exercises, they’d be as tearfully proud of her as they’d always been. The fact of their uncritical love and devotion had her eyes misting.
But she still planned to leave town.
There must be copy editor jobs all over the place. She was certainly good at her job and it was time to accept that she had to go elsewhere for people to see her as she really was.
Maybe, when you’d always been the odd one, the strange-looking girl with the old-fashioned upbringing, you had to leave your home and go to a big anonymous city before people would accept you.
She sighed as she leaned into a stretch.
But then, who was she really?
Her gaze found the framed Bravehearts glam shot on her dresser. Was she the woman with the curled hair and heavily made-up face smiling at the camera from inside her teensy, sexy blue and spangly costume?
Her inner cheerleader shouted, Yes!
Harriet had to agree that surprisingly attractive woman in the glam shot was a part of her. A part no one but Harriet had known existed until recently.
Finishing her stretches, she went to the closet to pull out her clothes for the day and was confronted by acres of tweed and plaid and demure woolen sweaters for fall and winter, dainty cotton and lace sweaters for summer. There were her Laura Ashley print summer dresses and her neatly arranged flat-heeled schoolgirl shoes.
But the woman who wore those comfortable old friends was also part of Harriet. The oldest and most secure part.
And the impatient woman whose beauty regimen took less than five minutes was delighted.
She hadn’t taken Caro up on her offer to go clothes shopping. Why?
Why wouldn’t she seek the advice of a former model, a woman who always dressed in the height of fashion? Why wasn’t she running out and choosing clothes for the woman in the glam photo?
She slumped to her bed as the truth hit her.
Harriet Adelaide MacPherson liked the person who lived inside the fusty twinsets and the Mary Janes.
She liked the comfy way her clothes felt, like a warm hug from a loved friend. And she loved spending more time living than she did in the bathroom fussing with her hair and makeup.
In fact, she liked who she was.
For all the years she’d spent looking up to the pretty girls, the popular girls, the cheerleaders, Harriet had overlooked something important.
She was just as special in her own way.
As epiphanies went, it wasn’t going to make the evening news. Although, with a chuckle, she realized her “transformation” had made the sports section of the Pasqualie Standard. Oh, well. The joke would be on Steve Ackerman when the woman whose transformation he’d so painstakingly documented didn’t change at all, but discovered how much she liked herself as she was.
Perhaps she should demand a retraction. She could almost see the story now.
The Pasqualie Standard made an error in its Sunday edition. Miss Harriet MacPherson was incorrectly identified as having made over herself from mousy nerd to glamorous cheerleader. In fact, Ms. MacPherson has decided to remain a mousy nerd, and will put on the glamorous cheerleader uniform only to fulfill the terms of her contract with the Pasqualie Braves.
Ms. MacPherson is still a nerd. The Standard apologizes for suggesting she be anything else.
And so it was with a lighter heart that she prepared to face the daily paper and whatever furor it would cause.
Today, Steve was coming for tea. He might as well witness firsthand the true Harriet. Not so old, not so weird Harriet. And if he wanted a cheerleader who was glamorous all the time, she could give him some phone numbers.
She came down the stairs in a long print skirt, white blouse and black loafers. Her hair was neatly brushed and held back by a black hair band.
“Good morning, dear,” Elspeth said brightly, putting a plate of French toast in front of her, cooked to golden-brown perfection with a light dusting of icing sugar. A jug of real Vermont maple syrup and a bowl of multicolored fruit salad stood in the middle of the table. Harriet accepted her tea with thanks.
Aunt Lavinia had her nose in the paper, as always in the morning, no matter how Elspeth nagged that it was bad manners.
A quick glance allowed Harriet to gauge her slow but steady progress through the paper. She was almost through the international news section. After that there were four pages of local news, then sports.
Harriet said nothing, merely ate her breakfast and chatted with her aunt Elspeth. Harriet was resigned to the newspaper article, but she hoped it wouldn’t hurt her aunts’ feelings on her behalf.
The paper rustled as Lavinia turned each page, reading each and every article and most of the ads before turning to the next. She threw out the odd comment which didn’t make much sense without the context.
“Ridiculous man. What was he thinking?” she asked at one point.
A minute later she snorted softly. “Oh, yes. Blame it on the feds. Always a convenient target, aren’t they?”
At this she glared at Harriet over her glasses, and, used to her aunt’s idiosyncrasies, Harriet nodded, blaming the feds for she knew not what.
“This mayor and council get sillier every week.”
Okay. Local news. Soon she’d get to the article about Harriet.
A page turned without comment.
Then another page. Harriet could barely eat her breakfast. It wasn’t nerves exactly cramping her stomach. She simply didn’t want the two women who’d raised her to be upset by the feature, or to see how much it had hurt their great-niece.
The page rustled as it turned, and Aunt Lavinia uttered a small cry. It could be delight or distress, Harriet wasn’t sure which. She glanced up, worried, but it was delight creasing her aunt’s face in a broad smile.
“Why look at this, Elspeth. Two whole pages about our Harriet.”
Elspeth jumped up, leaving her half-eaten French toast cooling on her plate. “Oh, let me see, let me see.”
Harriet didn’t bother joining it. She knew exactly what they were looking at and the less she saw of those awful pictures the better. But, if the aunts weren’t upset, she decided she’d live down the stupid article as best she could while searching for a job in another town.
Living down Steve’s betrayal—he who of all people should have understood how she felt—would be more difficult. Oh, well, she reasoned, he was coming to tea today. That should be ample punishment for his crimes.
15
THE DOORBELL RANG and Harriet tried to control the fluttery feeling in her stomach. It was merely annoyance about the article, she told herself, and disappointment that a man she’d liked could do such a rotten thing to her.
Well, that and the horrible feeling that history was about to repeat itself. Afternoon tea had been bad enough last week with Rock, but she didn’t think she could survive a second ordeal of that magnitude such a short time later.
When she opened the door, Steve was looking nicer than she’d ever seen him. He wore dress pants, a crisp white shirt and a sports jacket. A dazzle of light caught her eye and she dropped her gaze to find he’d polished his shoes.
He sent her a charming smile that made her wonder if he’d forgotten everything she’d said to him about the feature, and she tried with all her heart to remember how mad at him she was.
“Come in,” she said stiffly, trying not to notice the flowers.
Were they an apology?
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br /> Would she accept them?
But no, the flowers weren’t even for her. With a “Thank you for inviting me,” which sounded so sincere you’d think he’d been pining for years for the chance to have afternoon tea with a couple of batty old ladies and their spinster niece, he stepped into the house and offered Aunt Elspeth the bouquet.
“Oh, how lovely,” she said, pinkening to almost the same shade as the roses. “How kind of you.”
She was so delighted Harriet felt one part of her anger with Steve thaw.
One tiny part.
Then he held out a bag to Aunt Lavinia and Harriet held her breath thinking of the Nerf balls of last week.
Lavinia sent her a glance that suggested she was thinking of Nerf balls, too, but as her hand closed around the bag, the shape of a bottle became clear, and she, too, cried out with delight as she pulled out a bottle of her favorite sherry.
“How did you know?” Lavinia stared at Harriet who shook her head and they all turned to stare at Steve.
“Investigative reporting,” was all he’d say. There was only one liquor store in a town where most everybody knew everybody, it couldn’t have been that hard to discover what Lavinia liked to drink, but it was still thoughtful. Harriet only wished he’d been as interested in her wishes when he’d created that awful feature. She’d still refused to glance at it, and tried to forget it. The aunts had taken several calls from their various friends congratulating Harriet on her success.
She couldn’t get out of town fast enough.
“Well, you turned out to be good at something then,” Aunt Lavinia said in a tart tone, as if to make it clear she couldn’t be buttered up so easily.
Still, Harriet had to give Steve top marks for effort.
They adjourned to the living room and, though Harriet hovered anxiously, ready to rescue breakables or to guide Steve through the obstacle course, he managed with grace and finesse to navigate the room and then sank gracefully into the chair Elspeth indicated, the one Rock had occupied the week before.
“Do you prefer a dry sherry yourself?” Lavinia asked him, waving her hand at the bottle he’d brought.
“Thank you. Yes.”
Harriet took her first comfortable breath since he’d arrived, and soon the three sipped from the crystal sherry glasses while Harriet tried not to twist her hands in her lap.
There was a pause, and Steve asked Elspeth about her garden. Score another one for Steve. Harriet stood quietly to put the flowers in water, confident the subject of Elspeth’s garden would keep the conversation going for at least a quarter of an hour. Well, it would go on forever, but Lavinia tended to snip gardening conversation in the bud. Harriet groaned softly at her own bad pun while she cut the ends of the flowers and arranged them in a vase.
She couldn’t have been five minutes, but it turned out she’d wasted too much time. She returned to the living room with the flowers and almost dropped the vase on the floor when she heard Steve say to Elspeth, “I loved the gardens when I was in Virginia last year on vacation.”
Harriet tried to make a frantic shushing movement with her hands, but only succeeded in slopping water over the edge of the Waterford vase.
She and Elspeth exchanged helpless glances.
He had to mention Virginia!
Lavinia, who’d been tapping her toe, straightened and brightened immediately.
“Were you anywhere near the Shenandoah Valley?” she asked.
Harriet shook her head, trying to send Steve a message that he should on all accounts say no. He either didn’t see her or ignored her.
“Yes,” he said. “I passed right through it.”
Elspeth made a small sound but Harriet was silent, waiting for a repeat of the last time she had a male guest for tea.
She might as well leave town, and the sooner the better if she ever had a hope of having a serious relationship with a man.
Even moving out and getting her own place wouldn’t be drastic enough. So long as tea could be bought in Pasqualie and so long as Elspeth could still see to make scones, Harriet’s future as a spinster was assured. Unless she started dating an expert in Civil War history.
Ha, she thought. As if.
“It’s an area I’m quite familiar with myself,” said her aunt. The woman had a Ph.D. in Civil War history and if Steve didn’t know it after having her for a teacher he was a bigger dolt than anyone had given him credit for.
Harriet was beyond trying to save the day. Now that the magic word Shenandoah had been uttered, nothing would stop Aunt Lavinia.
Nothing.
“I’ll put the tea on,” said Elspeth in a faint voice.
“I also visited the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville battlefields,” Steve announced cheerfully, blundering into disaster like General Lee on his way to Appomattox.
Aunt Lavinia’s eyes began to twinkle and Harriet suddenly felt as though she had missed some crucial exchange between her guest and her aunt.
“They’re quite a sight, aren’t they, the battlefields?” her aunt said in a friendlier tone.
Steve glanced at Harriet almost in apology and she realized he’d deliberately ignored her when she’d tried to help him.
“Yes. I found the trip…emotionally moving. Richmond, Petersburg, Manassas, somehow standing there brought the history to life. I haven’t forgotten the lessons you taught us, and I kept reading and studying after high school. It was great to finally see the area.”
The old woman might be cantankerous, but Harriet loved her and she wasn’t about to watch Steve make a fool of her by pretending to have knowledge he didn’t possess. What had he done? Clicked on Civil War Battlefields on the Internet?
Faking an interest in the Civil War to butter up Aunt Lavinia was as shameless as using loser photos of her in high school to sell newspapers. She decided it was time to put smarmy Steve Ackerman in his place.
“They call Virginia the Mother of Presidents, don’t they?” Harriet asked.
“That’s right,” said Lavinia in her schoolteacher tone. “Eight presidents were born there.”
She flicked her aunt a quelling glance and turned to their tea guest. “I can never remember them all. Can you, Steve?”
It seemed both her aunt and Steve had caught on to her, for they glanced at her with almost identical expressions of smug amusement. Ha, see how smug Steve felt when he made a fool of himself the same way he’d made a fool of her in the paper.
“You want me to name all eight?” he asked her with mild surprise, as though she were the dummy.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you know any of them?” She could have sworn he was laughing at her, but she refused to be drawn.
Of course she did. She’d lived with Lavinia MacPherson for twenty-three years, as he very well knew. “They’ve slipped my mind.”
“Miss MacPherson,” he said with an amused glance at her aunt. “This is like the cobbler’s niece having no shoes.”
“Never mind your jokes. Do you know them or don’t you?”
He sighed, almost as though he were in pain, and she felt momentarily abashed for exposing him in front of her aunt.
“Yes,” he said. “I know them.”
“Perhaps you’d be kind enough to share your knowledge?” She found herself mimicking her aunt’s teacher tone and hoped it scared him speechless.
Obviously he could tell at a glance she wasn’t letting him off easily so, with a sigh, he said, “Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, Taylor and Wilson.” He glanced at her and must have seen her shock. “That’s organized chronologically. I can do it alphabetically if you prefer. Harrison, Jefferson—”
“No. No. I believe you.”
Aunt Lavinia chuckled. “Did you major in history at university?”
“No. I majored in journalism but I have a minor in history.”
“Summa cum laude, I hope?”
Once more he looked sheepish. “Yeah.”
Her aunt roared with laughter
. “I used to get so cross with you pretending to be thick as a brick. I’m certain people in this town still see you that way.”
“Yes.” He glanced at Harriet. “I think you’re right.”
“Well, I think you’d have made a wonderful historian, but I suppose writing for newspapers is your passion.”
“No. Sports is my passion. Writing about it helps me stay in that world.”
“I have to say, you bring a certain elegance to the sports section that’s sadly lacking in most newspapers. Your piece on Harriet was very well written.”
“Aunt Lavinia, please,” Harriet protested, already blushing. Of course her aunt didn’t know she and Steve had fought over the spread, but it was the last thing she wanted to hear discussed. And she never, ever wanted to see the stupid thing in her life.
But Aunt Lavinia could never be stopped if she had something she wanted to say. “I thought the headline was most apt. ‘Dream Comes True For Standard Copy Editor.’”
Harriet’s eyes widened. That wasn’t the headline she’d pitched a fit over. What about Cinderella?
Steve turned and stared right into her eyes. “It was the headline that told the story best.”
“Excuse me,” she said, jumping to her feet. “I’ll help Aunt Elspeth with the tea.”
She raced to the kitchen and, ignoring Elspeth and the tea trolley, grabbed today’s copy of the Standard and fumbled through the pages searching for the sports section. She almost flipped past the feature because she was looking for those awful pictures of herself. She got to the end of sports and worked backward, a ray of hope illuminating her heart.
By the time she got to the headline Aunt Lavinia had referred to, the ray of hope became a beacon. There was no mention of Cinderella, the headline was exactly as her aunt had said.
There was her official glam shot, but he’d replaced the high school geek photos with pictures of her on the field with the rest of the cheerleaders. She’d become accustomed to seeing newspaper photographers on the field, so she hadn’t noticed that the Standard’s camera had focused on her. Steve must have given him specific instructions at the last game.
