Miss Dimple and the Slightly Bewildered Angel by Mignon F. Ballard

herself. “I found myself looking at the house plans in there,” she admitted. “All those pretty cottages, and … well … I was thinking how wonderful it would be when Frazier comes home, if maybe one day we might have a house like that—just a small one with a yard, and we would fence it in so our children could play there. I even planned what kind of flowers I’d plant. And then the horrible thought hit me: What if he never comes back?”
    â€œWe can’t let ourselves think like that, Annie,” Miss Dimple told her. “It won’t help Frazier and it won’t help you.” She remembered the agonizing weeks the past summer when Annie’s Frazier and another officer had become separated from their unit during the breakout at Normandy in Operation Cobra. For Annie, each day had begun with hope and ended in despair until she finally received word he was all right.
    Phoebe nodded in agreement. She had recently learned that her own grandson, Harrison, was now helping to build an air base in the Dutch East Indies after being a part of the Battle of Morotai in September. There were some things, she realized, she would rather not know. That was one of them.
    â€œPlease let me help with the dishes,” Annie insisted after supper, discouraging offers from others. She needed something to do with her hands—something useful.
    Later, alone in the kitchen with Augusta, she slowly dried each yellow-striped bowl and stacked them one by one while outside a stiff wind sent the last of the brown leaves scurrying from the apple tree by the back door.
    Standing at the sink, Augusta scrubbed the big stew pot, humming as she worked. Annie didn’t recognize the tune, if there was a tune, but the funny little air seemed to float about like dandelion fluff in a breeze, reminding her of a summer day when she was five or six. Her family had gone on a picnic on her grandfather’s farm, and while Joel and her cousins splashed in the creek, the grandfather they called “Papa Jake” taught her to make tiny houses from moss, sticks, and stones. As the other children played, the two of them created a small village with pebble-lined paths, giant daisy “trees,” and “gardens” of buttercups.
    Papa Jake had died when Annie was twelve, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had thought of the fairy-size village in the woods and the happiness she’d felt there. But tonight, in this soap-scented kitchen with Augusta, she experienced it once again.
    Annie Gardner took a deep breath, gave the dish towel a snap, and said, “Ahhh!”
    Augusta turned with a smile. “I hope that means you’re feeling better?”
    â€œI am, yes. Thank you. For some reason, I remembered a special day with my grandfather when it seemed the most important thing in the world to do was nothing. Maybe it was that song you were humming, but suddenly I felt like … well … I can face whatever comes along.”
    Why am I telling this to someone I hardly know? Annie wondered, but what did it matter if her heart felt ten pounds lighter?
    Augusta nodded. “When I want to go to a peaceful place, I think blue,” she said. “Tiny blue violets, calm blue waters, sky like a porcelain bowl. It calms me.”
    â€œI can’t imagine you being any other way,” Annie said. She watched Augusta stoop to store the large pot under the counter. She had never seen it so sparkling clean. “What did you use on that besides elbow grease?” she asked.
    Augusta winked. “That and a sprinkle of angel dust.”
    Annie yawned as she climbed the stairs for bed. It had been a very long day and she was ready to snuggle under her comfy quilt and let the wind lull her to sleep.
    The newcomer is an amazing cook, she thought, but sometimes she says the strangest things.
    *   *   *
    Miss Dimple had decided not to say anything to