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thing, missy, don’t say you didn’t. I saw it in your eyes.”
    Reflexively I blinked. Erase. Delete. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just taking it all in.”
    She smiled. “And speaking of taking things in, I have lost four pounds and hope to lose at least another couple before the wedding.” She was not a thin woman and I admired her for allowing herself the accomplishment of losing four or five pounds instead of starving herself into a wedding dress she’d spend the rest of her life flogging herself for being too big for, like most of my clients. “But this is the dress I have in mind.” She reached into her purse and produced a cutting from a magazine. It was an old magazine. I remembered piles of old Good Housekeeping magazines in the back room of the farmhouse. I pictured her there, leafing through them, looking for a picture of the perfect dress to start her new life.
    There was something cool about that.
    She handed me the picture and I smiled when I saw it. It was very her. Ivory satin, drop-waisted, modestly hanging down to mid-calf, with a square neckline. The only thing that kept it from being completely conservative was the fact that it was positively festooned with small pink fabric roses. Little pinwheels of color that twisted around the dress in a way not unlike the little curls of her hair.
    “It’s perfect !” I breathed.
    “Can you do it?”
    “Absolutely!”
    “By June twenty-fifth?”
    “You will be my highest priority.”
    She beamed. “You always were such a doll to me. You’re family to me, Quinn.” She took my hand in hers. Her fingers were cold and dry, but the gesture still warmed me.
    “So I’ll leave the picture with you, shall I?” She closed her purse.
    “Please. Now, if we can just get a few measurements, I can be off to the races before you know it.”
    “Virginia Gold Cup!” The annual early May race was her favorite because until about ten years ago she had always hosted a grand party in the field, her way of heralding spring.
    “Virginia Gold Cup,” I agreed, and got out my tape measure.
    “By the way,” she said, lifting her arms for me to measure her bust, “do you know of a good local mover?”
    I jotted the measurement on my pad. “Mover?”
    “You know, one of those big trucks to move furniture from one house to another.”
    I wrapped the tape around her waist. “Not that I can think of off the top of my head.” I wrote the measurement. “But I could ask around. Why?”
    “Well, the boys are going to do the packing, of course.” She shook her head and looked heavenward. “They are thrilled about that, let me tell you.”
    I ran the tape down her arm. “What packing? I’m lost. Who’s moving?”
    “Honey, I am! Haven’t you heard our conversation? Lyle and I are getting married”—she gestured at the tape measure, as if to point out the obvious fact that I was making her dress—“and, of course, we’re going to move out, get a place together.”
    I paused, midmotion. Of course. I mean, that did make sense, most people got married and started a new life together. It just hadn’t occurred to me, not even for a moment, that she might have been planning to leave the farm. She was part of the place, and together the Morrison family were a big part of the town, and the town’s history. The idea of her not being there was just … it was unthinkable.
    And I could well imagine that Burke and Frank felt the same way.
    There was no way not to.
    That place without Dottie, without all her stuff … Wait a minute. “Who’s going to stay at the farm?”
    She made a dismissive gesture. “Selling it.”
    “Oh, my god.”
    “Time to move on!”
    Suddenly I hated Lyle. I hated his smirky, smug face and his stupid “artist” act when he was really a salesman, and I was pretty sure his Bob Barker sounded just like Lyle using a funny voice, and not like Bob Barker at all. I’d never met the man, of course, but I hated him