New Girl in Little Cove by Damhnait Monaghan (fun books to read for adults .TXT) 📕

I admired the newly varnished hardwood floors. Besides the bay window, there was a smaller one near the kitchen. Ellen pointed out a tiny footpath beside the house that led down to the sea.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I thought about how much I liked Clayville. I thought about how Lucille sometimes came and stood in the hall when I was in the living room, talking to my mother or Sheila on the phone. I ran my hand over the smooth finish of the kitchen’s pine table. The four matching chairs had blue-striped seat cushions. In the living room, a wooden rocking chair sat in the corner, tucked away from two loveseat sofas and a coffee table.

“There’s not much room for anything else,” Ellen said as I gave the rocking chair a test run. “Do you have a lot of furniture?”

“None,” I said. “I’m staying in a boarding house.”

She took me up the narrow stairs. To the left, in the bathroom, was a claw-footed bathtub like Lucille’s, but smaller. To the right was the bedroom. I bounced on the bed and peeked in the closet. Then I looked out the window: less than ten feet away was a graveyard.

Ellen came over and adjusted the muslin curtains. We stood for a minute, looking down at the cemetery. Only a few orange leaves remained on the trees, the branches bowing down at the gates.

Back downstairs, I looked across the bay where the whitecaps rode to shore.

“I’ll be honest,” Ellen said. “There’s not many wants to live so close to the graveyard.”

I thought about all the high school bike rides with Sheila through leafy Mount Pleasant Cemetery. “I don’t think that would bother me. I’ll take it.”

“You never even asked about the rent!”

When she named the price, I tried to hide my shock. Sheila was paying three times as much for a pokey one-bedroom apartment in the Beaches back in Toronto.

We agreed to meet the next day to do the paperwork. Ellen said if I brought along postdated cheques, I could move in right away.

“So, I’ll see you here tomorrow morning after Mass,” she said.

Well, you won’t see me at Mass, I thought. Driving back to Little Cove, my stomach fizzed as I wondered how best to explain to Lucille that I was leaving and why so suddenly. Would she be annoyed? Or hurt? Then I thought about the loss of rent money, a month before Christmas. I took my foot off the gas, less keen all of a sudden to reach Lucille’s.

When I arrived, I heard voices in the kitchen as I shut the door. Biddy and the other hookers were sitting with Lucille around the table. Lucille was taking notes.

“Didn’t you do enough hooking last night?” I said.

“We’re having a meeting of the Holy Dusters,” Biddy said. “Father Frank has some special jobs he wants done before Christmas. The archbishop might come for a visit.”

“The archbishop is always coming for a visit,” said Lucille.

“Yis,” said Flossie, “he’s always coming, but he never comes.”

“Right,” said Biddy. “Are we done? Sure we all knows what to do over to the church anyway. Don’t we run it?”

“More or less,” said Lucille. “You’ll be saying Mass soon enough, Sister Biddy.”

The women chortled.

“Now, then,” said Flossie. “Georgie Corrigan is due before Christmas, so we needs to plan some gifts for her.”

“I’m after finishing a lovely rug with ducks all ’round it,” said Lucille. “The perfect size for a baby to roll ’round on.”

“What about a quilt, now?” said Flossie. “Can we put one together before Christmas?”

“You knows we can,” said Lucille. She retrieved a bag of rags and wool from under the daybed and began rummaging. “There’s your old tablecloth, Biddy, girl,” she said, pulling out a soft yellow fabric. “We could use that as a border.”

Flossie chuckled. “I minds the day you got blueberry jam all over it, Annie.”

Annie took the tablecloth from Lucille and turned it over, looking for the stain and displaying it triumphantly when she found it. “Yis, maid, I was that tired. Sure we was after staying up all night.”

“Hooking rugs?” I asked. “That’s dedication.”

“No, girl,” said Annie. “We was having a time.”

“A hard time?”

The women burst out laughing.

“A time,” said Lucille, “a do . . . a party,” she elaborated.

“A soir-ee,” trilled Biddy, getting up and twirling around the room.

My eyes widened. “And the four of you stayed up all night?”

“The four of us and half of Little Cove,” said Lucille. She clasped the bag of wool to her chest, as if lost in memories of their big night in. Then she said, “Listen now, me duckies, we could show Rachel a time this evening. Give her a proper send-off before she disappears off to Clayville.”

“Who told . . . how did you . . . ?” I spluttered.

“My cousin Val was into Clayville today to visit her husband in the hospital. She went into that coffee shop near the town hall to get him some baking. He loves their date squares, right? She said she heard you talking about a place to rent. And since you’ve been back, you’re twitchy as a cat, so I figured.”

“I was going to move out tomorrow,” I said softly. “If . . . if that was okay with you.”

“Not a bother,” said Lucille, batting her hand at me. “I had a call yesterday from the fisheries crowd in St. John’s. Some fella coming out to do some research needs a place for most of December. I’ll call them back and tell them yes.” She reached for a cigarette. “Now girl, you already paid me for the next month.”

“Lucille,” I said, “I’m giving you no notice at all, so I would expect you to keep that money.”

She clapped her hands and said, “Now that’s another reason for a kitchen party.”

“Don’t you need to plan a party?” I asked.

“Not really, girl,” said Biddy.

“This is me planning it,” said Lucille. She went to the living room, and I heard the clicks as the rotary dial circled again and again