Free Embroidered Truths by Monica Ferris Page B

what was going on. Jill Cross Larson, who rarely laughed, stood in the midst of outrageous abundance, every flat surface in the apartment covered with ceramic and glass bowls full of a wide assortment of meats (or tuna), vegetables, and cream of mushroom soup, with yet another hot dish in her hand, laughing. “Coals to New-castle!” she crowed.
    Godwin, who had not so much as peeped out all day, looked around. Slowly a smile formed, and then he, too, began to laugh.
    Betsy rejoiced to see it, but said, “What on earth are we going to do with all this?”
    Godwin, leaning against the door frame, only shook his head and laughed some more.
    It was Jill who came up with a solution. She was herself a police officer—a sergeant—tall, very fair, with a beautiful Gibson-Girl face normally displaying only the Gibson Girl’s cool aloofness. Yet behind that stolid face was a keen intelligence and a gentle heart, the latter evidenced by the package in her hands. “You can send most of it to homeless shelters, churches that feed the homeless, and a shelter for abused women,” she said.
    Betsy asked Godwin, “What do you think? After all, this is yours.”
    Godwin shook his head, “Even if we gave up eating any other kind of food, we could never eat all this.” He looked at Jill. “I bet you have a list of phone numbers we could call about donating.”
    “I sure do. All police departments do. I’ll send you the list by e-mail tomorrow from work.” She handed her hot dish to Betsy, who found it warm to the touch through the layers of newspaper around it, and went to take Godwin by the shoulders in a firm grip. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he replied, nodding, looking around. “I think I will be. Thank you.”
    And the next morning he insisted on coming back to work.
    Word flashed around the town that Godwin was at work—e-mail and cell phones had made the gossip grapevine in Excelsior stunningly efficient—so at one in the afternoon there was a special session of the Monday Bunch. Its purpose was to lend aid and comfort.
    Godwin soaked it up in bucketfuls. The Monday Bunch was emphatic. “How dare they!” was the sum of opinion about the media, though they put it variously. Needles flashed, scissors snipped sharply, and hearty sniffs and the occasional “Hah!” underlined their remarks.
    “Don’t these reporters have anything better to do than harass our good citizens?” asked Alice, who a minute earlier had pinned verbal medals on Godwin and Betsy for taking the time to go see if something was wrong at John Nye’s house.
    “Those reporters are like vultures, only worse,” grumbled Bershada, clipping off a new length of DMC 457 and separating the strands before threading her needle with two of them. “Vultures can’t help doing what they were designed to do, while reporters actually go to college to learn how to circle in on trouble.”
    “What I don’t like,” said Alice, “is the way they ask a question they don’t expect an answer to, just to get themselves on the news. ‘Are you guilty of kidnapping that child?’ they shout at someone. What do they expect that person to do? Stop and give a long, complex defense? When the policemen are pulling him by the elbows?”
    “That’s the perp walk,” contributed Godwin, bringing a fresh cup of hot water and a tea bag to the table for Doris.
    “What’s a perp walk?” demanded Alice.
    “A ‘perp walk’ is when the police take someone in handcuffs on foot along a route lined with photographers. John told me about it. He said it’s kind of a humiliation for the prisoner and it gets the police some air time, showing them doing their job.”
    “Oh, I’ve seen their pictures in the paper,” nodded Martha, her crochet needle flying in and out as she built a brown and yellow afghan square. “They look funny trying to pretend they always carry their coats over their two wrists.”
    “Or over their heads,” said Bershada