Thirty“What was my father like? You never talk about him.” Isabella looked up from the lemon meringue pie on her dessert plate and her rosebud mouth twisted into a questioning curve. “Am I like him? Because you’d have to agree, you and I aren’t very alike, are we — in looks or interests.”
Huldah Wilmington was momentarily blindsided by the hint of challenge that underlay the query, and the implied criticism it carried. For a moment her tongue knotted. Isabella was right. Even as a young girl she had been thick-set with stumpy legs, a female with a biggish nose and broad jaw who regarded the world with suspicion. Nothing like Isabella, with her tall, slender grace and captivating gaiety.
Isabella had never asked about the family before, and without warning she fell into the yawning thirty
