Wanda Pedersen > Recent Status Updates

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things--enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.

Nicholas accepted his two eggs and bacon and the implication that his needs were more important than his wife's with a certain amount of complacency, Jane thought.

"That was more than thirty years ago," Annette argued. "People change. They grow up and get jobs and have midlife crises and sprout tentacles."

"What you've described so far could be anything from a zombie uprising to an outbreak of Unseelie herpes to--"
"Psychosis spreading through the ley lines," suggested Annette.
"Or even a nonmagical threat," I said. "Nuclear war. Pandemic."
"Worldwide riots over the price of Taylor Swift tickets," added Temple.

"I can't believe you're doing this."
"At my age, it's important to keep active."
"By investigating a murder?"
"It beats bingo," Mrs. B said, and opened the car door.

I'd lived at the Marigold Cottages for a year and I'd only talked to Nicholas twice. He was like the Loch Ness monster, but less friendly.

Journalists take to gossip like hippos to mud baths.

At tea they were all very gay, in the way that happy, unmarried ladies of middle age often are.

And finally, who would change a comfortable life of spinsterhood in a country parish, which always had its pale curate to be cherished, for the unknown trials of matrimony?