Free One Year by Mary McDonough Page B

acceptable to bite the ears off chocolate rabbits. For Mary Bernadette, and to a lesser extent her husband, Lent was a time of quiet introspection, self-denial, and repentance, and Easter a day of thankfulness.
    The light turned green and Mary Bernadette continued on her way, eventually turning onto Haven Street and pulling into her usual spot outside the Wilson House, where the OWHA was headquartered. The building had once been owned by the descendants of one of the original settlers of Oliver’s Well, a Richard Wilson, a woodworker, farmer, and mariner. It was one of the oldest surviving wood-framed houses in the region, built by Wilson himself. Originally, the house had sat on a twenty-five-acre plot; today, only five acres remained attached to the house. The structure resembled contemporary English precedents but was notably American in its extravagant use of wood. The original part of the house was a two-story structure, sided in rough clapboard, with a steeply sloped roof and a center brick chimney. Over the years, primarily in the eighteenth century, several additions had been made, and when the OWHA had acquired the house, there were some who wanted to remove them. In the end it was decided that the additions were part of the character of the building, so they remained.
    The board regularly met in what had once been the dining room. The members of the board were responsible for hiring the CEO—currently, Leonard DeWitt—who served at their pleasure. He ran the operation—negotiating contracts, hiring and firing services—and made a report to the board at each meeting. The board itself was also in charge of setting broad policy, raising money, and approving major financial decisions and commitments. Mary Bernadette, seated at the chairman’s customary place at one end of the long oval table, now surveyed her colleagues.
    There was Jeannette, of course, seated just to her right. She had been a member of the board for almost as long as Mary Bernadette, currently the longest standing member. Though Jeannette was always ready and willing to volunteer her time and energy for tasks as small as stapling together sheets of paper to be distributed during tours, she had never aspired to hold a position of major responsibility, and generally kept a low profile among her colleagues.
    To Jeannette’s right sat Wallace Chadbourne, a small, spare man with a neat little mustache. He had been the principal of the local public high school for close to twenty years before retiring. He made it no secret that he would like to be the chairman in Mary Bernadette’s place—“when she is ready to step down, of course, and not a moment sooner!”—but he didn’t seem to realize that he didn’t have the support of the other board members. Wallace was a smart-enough man, but he lacked the personality to inspire devotion in the way Mary Bernadette could. Even those members who occasionally chafed against her high-handed methods had no doubt of her abilities and kept their complaints to themselves. And of course there was Mary Bernadette’s charm, which could, as her husband was fond of saying, “soothe the most savage beast you could drag in from the jungle.”
    Seated next to Wallace was Richard Armstrong, owner of The Angry Squire, congenial and very good at soothing irate tempers. He was taller than six feet and very thin. He had been happily married for almost thirty years before his wife had died of cancer. Since then, Richard had been on his own, though there were several single women in Oliver’s Well who would very much like to walk down the aisle on his arm.
    Next was Joyce Miller. She taught history at the private academy. Her husband was the pastor at the local Methodist church. Mary Bernadette had only met Martin Miller a few times, and she found him a genuinely unassuming, honestly kind, and somewhat baffled person. How he had come to marry Joyce was anyone’s