In Greta’s view, Mrs. Hunt was clearly a witch, and completely irredeemable. But she spoke of Adam, “Mr. Hunt,” with an eager lilt in her voice. Annie heard it and took note as well of the girl’s bright eyes and ardent, even smitten expression, and she knew she had stumbled on a painful truth. Poor Greta was in love with her employer. Two or three months before, she might have smiled at the idea. Now, she couldn’t. She knew what it was like to love someone she could never have. She knew how much it hurt.
Annie hadn’t seen Adam—except for too-brief glimpses of him on his way out to the stable or on the street, walking to work or coming home. She hadn’t heard from him, either, not even a note asking how she was or saying that he was thinking of her, or perhaps suggesting a time and place that they might meet, if he thought it was too dangerous to slip through the hedge.
But then she had to ask herself what she had expected. Adam said he loved her, and she believed he did. The passion they felt together, the meeting of minds and bodies in such a compelling union, could not be pretended—which made their separation all the more unendurable. If being together had been heaven, being separated was hell. Now that she was sleeping alone again, without the comfort of his body next to hers, she wasn’t sleeping well. She wasn’t eating well, either, and when she looked in the mirror over her dressing table, she saw a woman with a pale face, a taut mouth, and dark circles under her eyes—the face of a woman who had committed adultery with her neighbor’s husband and was being punished for it.
But she would not, could not blame Adam. She had welcomed him eagerly, with her whole heart, without asking for any word of promise. If they had been characters in one of the dime novels that were so popular nowadays, he might have proposed that they run away to Mexico or to the South Seas and build a new life there, together. But that was not Adam’s way. He was honorable. He took his obligations seriously. He had never said he intended to leave his wife or suggested that they might have a future together. And as for the possibility that Delia might leave him, Annie knew that would never happen. Adam’s wife might love him or she might not, but love was simply irrelevant. Delia needed the marriage, and the house, and Adam’s financial support. She would never give it up or allow it to be taken from her.
And now that she and Adam had been apart for a while, Annie had decided that even if he asked her to begin meeting him secretly, she could not do that. Their time together had been incomparably sweet, but it had been only an interlude. It would be foolish to think that they could resume their relationship where they’d left off, or that it could go on in some other form.
So Annie reached down deep inside herself and found a new resolve. She would simply ignore the pain and get on with her life. For her, Annie’s Laces was a salvation. Now that she had located three San Antonio shops that were eager to buy her lace, there was plenty of demand to be met, and she worked every day with the girls and every evening by herself, often until late at night. She ordered more finely spun linen and cotton thread from the Corticelli Mills in Massachusetts. She advertised in the Pecan Springs Weekly Enterprise for another lacemaker and found two, one of whom had three children and could only work at home. There was no reason not to allow that, Annie decided, as long as the woman’s lacework was acceptable.
And thus was born a new idea: women could choose to come to her workroom or work at home. When she offered the choice to her workers, two accepted immediately: old Mrs. Hathaway, who lived across town and had to walk quite a distance; and Miss Windsor, whose ill and elderly mother had just moved in with her and needed care and attention. They would work at home and deliver their work once a week. To Annie’s surprise, that resulted in even more and better work and certainly more contented workers.
But there were still those who chose to spend their days in Annie’s workroom, where their labor was lightened by laughter, camaraderie, and books. They finished Huckleberry Finn and began a detective novel by a new British writer named Arthur Conan Doyle. First published as a magazine serial in England the year before, the book was called A Study in Scarlet and featured a “consulting detective” named Sherlock Holmes and his friend and roommate, Dr. Watson. Annie and the girls agreed that it was an interesting and most unusual story, and very different from Little Women and Huckleberry Finn.
Annie had just finished reading aloud the last page of Mr. Doyle’s book when she happened to glance out the window. That’s when she saw him: a good-looking man with a dark pencil-thin mustache, springing almost eagerly up the steps of the Hunts’ house next door. He was wearing a brown frock coat and a brown bowler hat, and he carried a gold-headed cane. Annie didn’t recognize him as anyone she knew, and she knew almost everyone in Pecan Springs. He stood for a moment, knocking, and then the door opened. He took off his hat, bowed, and went inside.
It would be another day before she would learn the man’s name. And it would be Delia who would tell her.
But Adam would learn it first.
That
