She kept her eyes on the knot in the wood of the altar rail. If she looked up, she’d see the town. If she saw the town, she’d see what they always saw: the girl who was too big, too plain, too much of everything a woman wasn’t allowed to be.
Behind her, the pews rustled with quiet, eager cruelty.
“Poor Clara,” someone whispered, not kindly.
“She should be grateful anyone would take her.”
The whispers weren’t new. They were the soundtrack of her life, played softly in the general store when she squeezed past barrels of flour, played louder when her brother’s wife laughed at the way Clara’s hips filled a doorway. Beauty was currency in Hawthorne Hollow, and Clara had grown up bankrupt.
Her father stood beside her like a fencepost: tall, rigid, unyielding. Solomon Hale wore his Sunday suit and a face carved from granite. No tears. No apology. Just a man settling accounts.
