The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society by Darien Gee Page A

even when Brady whines and insists that she carry him the rest of the way, which she does. By the time they reach the car, both the bags and Brady are heavy and Frances is covered in sweat, but she’s too happy to care. Talking to Hannah about Mei Ling has made it all the more real. They’ve been approved, they have their referral, they have Mei Ling. Frances is going to have to practice saying that she has fourchildren now, because Mei Ling is going to be Frances’s daughter, and, like Hannah said, it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be coming home to Avalon.
    Isabel stares at the envelope, postmarked Barrett. It’s addressed to her, the handwriting unfamiliar, but in the upper left-hand corner, Isabel sees the return address, the name.
    A. Catalina
.
    “Whatcha got there?” Bettie Shelton calls from next door. She’s also checking her mail, and Isabel can see Bettie’s mailbox is stuffed with catalogs and magazines. “Pen pal?”
    Isabel doesn’t respond, just closes the mailbox door with a slam.
    She’s climbing the steps to her porch when suddenly a worn board gives. Isabel grabs the handrail and struggles to keep her balance.
    “I told you so!” Bettie tells her. “Good thing it didn’t happen during the meeting, otherwise you’d have a lawsuit on your hands!”
    Isabel shoots Bettie an annoyed look before putting her mail down to inspect the board. It’s rotted through, the board soggy and weak. As Isabel glances around her porch, she sees the spot where Bettie stepped through last week, and a couple more soft spots, too. Bill used to take care of all this, pressure washing the porch annually, the weatherproofing, the staining. Suddenly, Isabel can see the sum of her neglect. The entire porch looks like a danger zone.
    “I have two copies of
Crafters Today
,” Bettie calls to Isabel. “Want one?” She waves the magazine in the air like a flag.
    If Bettie thinks Isabel is going to forget about what happened the other night, she’s sorely mistaken. Isabel’s still finding miscellaneous ribbon and eyelets everywhere. She goes into her house and closes the door, feeling the house sigh along with her.
    It’s so quiet. That was the first thing Isabel had noticed after Bill left—how quiet the house suddenly was. Even if she and Bill were in separate parts of the house, doing their own thing, there were always footsteps, the sounds of shuffling paper, of running water. Simple reminders that you were not alone.
    She walks into the kitchen, looking through her mail when her hand rests on the envelope, her name and address written in small, careful script. Isabel feels her heart clench.
    It’s the third one she’s received since Bill’s death. Whatever that woman has to say, Isabel isn’t interested in hearing it.
    She throws the letter into the trash and heads out the back door to the shed where she finds the crowbar. She marches to the front of the house and straight to the porch. A few minutes later, the rotten board is gone.
    An hour later, Isabel’s torn up her entire front porch without a clue as to what to do next. She steps back to survey her work, a bit appalled at the mess she’s made, then tosses the crowbar onto the grass in defeat. It started with that single rotten board on the steps and then Isabel had gotten carried away, enjoying the satisfaction that comes with tearing something up, the creak of old nails reluctantly being pulled from the wooden framing, the boards cracking and breaking, brittle. At first she thought fresh planks of wood were in order, and she liked the idea of everything being new, not only the one busted spot. Except now she sees she’s gotten in over her head and it’s going to cost her double to find someone to finish the job.
    A truck pulls up in front of her house. What now? Isabel watches as the woman she met at the scrapbooking meeting climbs out and heads up her walk, waving as she does so. Evelyn something. No, Yvonne. The in-house