Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
It was a rough ride. Felt like a nightmare rollercoaster I couldn’t get off for a few years there in the beginning, but it’s all worked out for Cross and me.
It truly has.
After changing into my McBooms clothes—vintage bell bottoms, halter top, and clogs, which is my most favorite shoe ever—I walk a few blocks over to the printers just outside the historical district and get my copies of the Busybody all printed on pretty vintage-like paper. Then I come back to my cottage and sit at the vanity so I can fold and stuff this week’s edition of the Busybody into vintage-looking envelopes.
After that, I affix the meticulously designed address labels and stack them up all neat so I can get a good look at them. Seventy-three subscribers. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m proud of that number. It averages out to a little bit less than twenty new ones per year, but still—it feels like a win.
I gather them up in my giant purse and head on out the door.
Outside it’s hot and sticky, though that is just getting started because it’s only June. By July we’ll all be melting. But I love summers in Bishop. Everyone’s outside working on something. All the downtown ladies are in their backyards gardening, or feeding chickens, or chasing baby pigs. And all the men are doing manly things like making horseshoes and milling grain, or whatever it is these Bishop men do.
There’s a lot of activity, but it’s not chaos like a big city might be. It’s easy, and relaxed, and comfortable.
I love being in Bishop, though I don’t mind leaving, to be honest. Disciple is the same way, but on a less rustic spectrum. But before I return, I have two more things to attend to. First, I stop at the post office and hand my envelopes over to Betty Watson so she can run them through the postage machine that will stamp each one with the Bishop postmark. Details matter, after all.
When that’s done, I head on over to the Bishop Inn to help out for the lunch rush. I don’t have a regular job there, I just fill in on the days I’m in town. And they might have me washing dishes, or bussing tables, or serving. It all depends. But I don’t mind it. You don’t have to dress traditional at the Bishop Inn because it’s right on the edge of downtown and not technically part of the historical district.
When I walk in, Jessica, part-owner and front-desk manager, greets me with a smile. “It’s the kitchen today, Rosie. Bryn will fill you in.”
I smile and wave as I make my way through the crowd of people waiting for a table or to check in. Bryn McBride is her usual self, mumbling under her breath as she works the grill and the stove at the same time. Mostly she’s cursing. But this is what I like about Bryn. She is all drama all the time. When we’re together there isn’t a moment when she’s not complaining, or gossiping, or telling some kind of puffed-up story.
It’s off-putting to some people, but not to me. I like it because Bryn is the kind of person who fills in empty spaces. When she’s nearby there is no room for loneliness, or silence, or regrets because she is bigger than all of that. She’s loud, and aggressive, and I just laugh when she complains about not being able to find a decent man because it’s got nothing to do with her looks—she’s beautiful, just like her big sister Lowyn. And it’s got nothing to do with her ambition—she’s successful too. On a smaller scale than Lowyn, but flourishing, nonetheless.
The reason she can’t find a man is because she’s so damn disagreeable, most people just get tired of it. But I can’t tell her this because her confrontational personality is my most favorite thing about Bryn McBride and I never want her to change.
“Oh, good! You’re here!” Bryn exclaims this when she finally breaks off from her rant and notices me putting on a plastic apron. “I’ve got dishes piling up and I need those pots and pans, Rosie!”
“I’m on it,” I tell her. I start doing dishes, every once in a while looking over my shoulder as Bryn makes room for me in her private tirade—which is only private in the Bryn sense of the word, in that she’s mostly talking to herself, but these external monologues just happen to occur out loud.
But Bryn fills up the space. The emptiness recedes. Silence hasn’t got a prayer.
And I like it this way.
After my little shift at the Bishop Inn is over, I head back to Disciple. But it’s only two o’clock, so I don’t go home. Instead, I stop off at McBooms to check in and see how things are going. Lowyn made me the manager so she wouldn’t have to come into Disciple every day. She’s keeping her distance from the town right now on account of all that mess up in Blackberry Hill and Jim Bob Baptist’s part in it. Which was tangential, at best, but I can see her point.