Already Miss Posey noticed the exhausted mother with two young children and no husband to speak of. Typical, she thought to herself.
“Where’s Alonzo Sr.?” Sam asked.
“Working a double shift. They’re shorthanded and needed extra officers to direct traffic for the Steelers game.”
“Your husband is a police officer?” Miss Posey asked with surprise at not only the fact that Bernadette was married, but that her husband was a man of the law. The neighborhood gossip gang couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s been serving and protecting this city for almost a decade now.”
“Oh my dear.” Miss Posey cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of pink. “Did you say his name was Alonzo Breedlove?”
“That’s him. Why? Have you met him?”
“Well, yes, he saved my life.” Miss Posey recalled the incident play by play, from Betty’s wine stain on her fur coat to the deer dashing out in traffic, and the rumble of the car onto the berm, and the moment her skull smacked the window. She praised Bernadette’s husband for his God-ordained appearance at just the right time and just the right place to come to her rescue. “I’d like to bake your family an apple pie to thank him for his life-saving efforts. It’s a family recipe.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary—”
“I insist, Mrs. Breedlove.”
“You can call me Bernadette. And you are—”
“Everyone knows me as Miss Posey, but you can call me Hannah.”
Sam grinned, as to date she had never gotten Miss Posey’s first name.
“And who is the little bundle of joy?” Miss Posey leaned toward the baby, offering an index finger for her to wrap her tiny hands around.
“Kristin Eleanor, a bundle of joy? No one has accused her of that since she was twelve weeks old. You must not hear her screaming her lungs out at two in the morning, then four, then six…”
“Oh, colic, is it?” Miss Posey asked, as if she, too, had an infant with a similar predicament. “My son went through the same thing until he was almost two years old.”
“God help me, it better not end up lasting that long!”
“I had a trick that seemed to help. I’ll show you,” Miss Posey paused, glancing at Bernadette hopefully, wanting any sign of forgiveness for her ignorance, “if you don’t mind?”
“I’d love to try anything. Thank you.”
“If you want to come over right now, I just baked some cookies. Do you like cookies, Alonzo Jr.?”
At the word cookies, Alonzo Jr. hopped off Fido’s back and came sprinting. While Miss Posey showed Alonzo Jr. to the gate, then led him by the hand to her back porch, Sam stopped Bernadette.
“How can you do that so easily?” Sam asked.
“Do what?”
“Forgive her for all the hurt she’s caused you, trying to push your family out of the neighborhood?”
Bernadette thought for a moment then said, “If Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm could visit her segregationist and Jim Crow-supporting rival George Wallace in the hospital after his shooting last year, I can visit an old lady in her home who genuinely is trying to do better. Both love and hate can’t abide in the same small space, honey. So I guess I’m gonna choose love.”
And just like that Bernadette and Miss Posey had mended a fence that Sam thought was beyond repair.
Chapter 41
“Last mail call!” Mel shouted as he dropped the final bag of Women’s House Magazine reader mail for Samantha Says on her desk empty of all personal possessions, and where only her green typewriter and matching telephone remained.
Mel had called Sam back to the office to collect the last batch of mail, only because he didn’t feel like dealing with it himself. The bonus was that it completely inconvenienced her.
Most of the typists had already cleared out their things, and personnel had processed half of the company’s termination paperwork. One half of the bullpen was full of bare desks where a few lingering employees mulled around trying to look busy for the last issue they would be publishing. Across the other half was a scuffed linoleum floor full of endless brown cardboard boxes ready to transfer to the New York City headquarters.
“May you drown in your letters,” Mel added with a growl.
