Free Summer Friends by Holly Chamberlin

be sure.
    The second room, the smaller one, faced the front of the house. It had no closet. The walls were painted white and the floor was painted robin’s egg blue. This was where Delphine stored her many skeins of wool and knitting cotton, fleecy wools, and Shetland wool, and cotton wool blends; her various kinds of needles, wood and metal, circular and double pointed; and her collection of patterns, both new and vintage, that she found from all sorts of sources, from the Internet, to the Central Yarn Shop in Portland, to yard sales.
    Against one entire wall stood a simple wooden bookcase, built by her brother. It was packed with books, some from her childhood, others from college, others she had bought at yard sales and secondhand bookstores over the years. Mostly there were the classics of the Western canon. With a few exceptions, Delphine was a traditionalist in her reading. There was an old, water-damaged copy of Jane Eyre. There was a paperback collection of Jane Austen’s novels, none of which had cost more than two dollars. The showpiece of her collection was a complete set of the work of Charles Dickens. Published in the late nineteenth century, the books were tall and heavy and bound in dark green leather with tooled gilt writing. The works were printed in four columns per page, the print minuscule. She had found the set in an antique shop, at the bottom of a box of old, musty clothing. The set had cost six dollars. Sometimes she thought it was the best six dollars she had ever spent.
    The bathroom was fairly small and dominated by an old claw-footed tub. Delphine had installed a shower, with Dave Sr.’s help, when she first moved in. Wood paneling, painted white, reached up the walls about a third of the way. Above the paneling, Delphine had painted the walls a pale mint green. The white towels were fairly worn, though the bath mat was new, a bargain Jemima had picked up for her at Marden’s.
    Delphine checked her watch. Almost nine o’clock.
    â€œReady for guests?” she asked Melchior.
    He didn’t reply. He was sitting on the back of the couch. It was one of his favorite perches because it gave him an unobstructed view of the front porch and, more important, of the hummingbirds fluttering madly at the feeder. Hummingbirds were okay—to Melchior, they looked like tasty snacks—but he didn’t care for the crows that occasionally gathered out front. Some of them were almost as big as he was. When they began their awful screeching and cawing he retreated to the interior of the house. And if Melchior happened to witness a male wild turkey or, worse, a mother with her brood, strutting out of the woods behind the house, he charged under the living room couch. Maine coon cats were known as great mousers. Not Melchior.
    Delphine straightened a large stack of library books. They were due back that day. Nancy, the town’s librarian, did an excellent job of seeking out the books Delphine wanted to read, but the library’s resources were limited. Delphine made a mental note to stop at the recently renovated library in Portland the next time she had reason to head north on a weekday. Jackie usually drove the produce to Portland for the summer farmers’ markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Maybe one Wednesday she would join her.
    Jemima arrived at five minutes to nine. She was wearing an oversized flowered shirt over a pair of baggy striped shorts. If Delphine’s wardrobe was less than fashionable, Jemima’s was a travesty of style. In fact, clothes seemed almost an afterthought to her. The only jewelry she wore was a slim gold wedding band, now embedded into the flesh of her ring finger, and a tiny silver-toned watch that had once belonged to an aunt.
    â€œI made corn muffins,” she said, holding up a plate loosely covered in tinfoil. “They’re still warm.” Of course, Jemima had made them from scratch; she was an excellent cook and baker.
    Jemima