Absence and emptiness. Unfilled spaces. Unfulfilled dreams.
• • •
WHEN most of a year had gone since Douglas’ death, Annie had recovered enough to acknowledge that if she didn’t take responsibility for putting her life in order, nobody else would. Empty and bleak as the future seemed, she had to face it, alone.
Annie was fortunate that the house Douglas built for her had no mortgage. But there was not a penny coming in and after some months her small savings were depleted. She let her maid go and began doing the housework and cooking—what little there was of it—herself. She got three leghorn hens and a rooster from a neighbor across the street and began her own flock of chickens, so she would have fresh eggs every day. She planted a vegetable garden outside the back door, where greens and peas and carrots and onions would be handy for the pot. And Tobias Sharp, one of Douglas’ helpers, took over the blacksmith business, paying a small rent for the smithy and a commission on its earnings.
But it was her next-door neighbor, Adam, who did the most to help her get through the year after Douglas died. Adam owned the tack and feed store between Purley’s General Store and the railroad tracks. He leased Douglas’ stable for his horses and generously offered to do the little household repairs Annie would otherwise have had to pay for—over (she was sure) the objections of his wife, Delia.
Ah, Adam. After half a year or so, Annie understood that her feelings about him had changed. When Douglas was alive, he had been her husband’s friend and a frequent visitor, and she had smiled at the sounds of men’s voices and laughter in her kitchen. Now, despite her best intentions, she had fallen into the habit of listening eagerly for Adam’s step outside the kitchen door. His presence seemed to fill the room, his voice made her shiver, and she was all too deeply aware of the male scent of sweat and tobacco. She tried to discipline herself against her heightened anticipation of his coming, but it wasn’t easy.
“Please let me know if there’s anything more I can do to help,” he would say when he had finished the little chores she thought up for him. He didn’t add, Douglas would want me to do this, but she knew that was why he came so often. She felt deeply grateful, but soon, she felt more, and she had to acknowledge the unsettling truth: she wished that Adam’s visits were something more than ordinary kindness toward the widow of his best friend. This was not a truth she welcomed, for with it came an uneasy guilt.
Still, those moments were among the brightest in her week, and as she fell asleep at night, Annie often found herself thinking of the hint of laughter hiding in the corners of Adam’s mouth, the gentle regard in his brown eyes, the attentive way he watched her, listening as she talked about her plans. Annie knew how dangerous it was to indulge in these imaginings, and often chided herself. Adam was a married man with a wife and a dear little girl and—while she might wish to read something different into his glances or his tone of voice—his attentions toward her were always entirely proper. Her feelings (she told herself) were simply the natural result of her loss and her desperate loneliness. As long as she kept them to herself, kept herself under control, and behaved as properly as he, there could be no harm.
When Annie recovered enough to make plans for her future, she turned to the lace that had once been a pleasing way to spend her idle hours. Now, it became something more important: a way to earn her livelihood. Her financial situation was still precarious, but with the income from the stable and the smithy and what she might earn from the lace, there could be just enough.
Before Douglas died, Annie had sold her best lacework only to friends. Now, as soon as she felt well enough, she put on her best dress and jacket, boarded the train to Austin, and—carrying samples of her work—visited Austin’s two women’s shops: Madame LaMode’s Millinery on Pecan Street and Mrs. Turner’s Ladies’ Exclusive Dress Shoppe on Congress Avenue, just two blocks south of the new capitol building. She was surprised and delighted when both Mrs. Turner and Madame LaMode (whose real name was Gertrude Winkle) approved of her work and told her they would sell everything she could produce, at prices that surprised her. Lace, it seemed, was all the rage these days. Ladies were mad for lace parasols, lace-trimmed camisoles and chemises and negligees, lace gloves, veils, handkerchiefs, collars, lace on bodices and blouses, lace lavished on beautiful hats. Cheap lace was manufactured by machines so every woman could have a bit of lace at her throat and wrists, but the discriminating eye could easily see the difference between machine-made and handcrafted lace. The fashionable women of Austin were discriminating—and wealthy enough to pay the prices the shops thought fair.
When Annie realized that her lace business might actually turn into a paying enterprise, she gave it a name—Annie’s Laces—and had some calling cards printed up. The cards had scalloped, lacelike edges, her name and address, and a pastel drawing of Gramma Anne’s favorite flower, Queen Anne’s lace. Within the month, she had more work than she could manage alone, so she hired a helper. When she needed more, an advertisement in the Pecan Springs Weekly Enterprise brought her girls who were already skilled with a needle and were glad to earn some extra money without going out to work as domestics. Soon she was employing half a dozen, all working on a generous commission.
Annie’s girls worked in the large sitting room at the front of the house, in comfortable chairs arranged where the sunlight
