Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)

Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)

Bette Lee Crosby




For Mom…

Who inspired my love of Southern Storytelling

and taught me how to look at life

with a sense of humor.





Olivia Westerly

I don’t suppose there’s a person walking the earth who doesn’t now and again think if I had the chance to live my life over, I’d sure as hell do it differently. When you get to a certain age and realize how much time you’ve wasted on pure foolishness, you’re bound to smack yourself in the head and ask, what in the world was I thinking? Everybody’s got regrets; myself included.

Some people go to their grave without ever getting a chance to climb out of that ditch they’ve dug for themselves, others get lucky. Of course, the thing about luck is that you’ve got to recognize it, when it walks up and says hello, the way Charlie Doyle did. But, that’s a long story and to understand it, you’ve got to start at the beginning.





Coming of Age

At an age when most of her friends had settled into routines of knitting sweaters and booties for grandchildren, Olivia Ann Westerly got married for the first time—and, to a man ten years her senior. “Are you out of your mind?” Maggie Spence shouted when she heard the news, “You’re fifty-eight years old!”

Of course, doing the unexpected was something which could be expected of Olivia. In 1923, when she was barely twenty-five years old, she went off on her own, even though her father insisted it was scandalous for a single woman to be living alone. “What will people think?” he’d moaned as she tossed her clothes into a cardboard suitcase; but that didn’t stop Olivia. She got herself a two-room flat in the heart of downtown Richmond and a job working at the switchboard of the Southern Atlantic Telephone Company. “That’s shift work!” her father said, “Some of those girls come and go in the dark of night!”

“So what,” Olivia answered, then she volunteered for the night shift because it paid an extra sixty-cents per day. Long after any respectable woman would have been snuggled beneath a down comforter, she’d paint her mouth with red lipstick, pull on a cloche hat and trot off to the Telephone Company.

“Have you never heard of Jack-the-Ripper?” her friend Francine Burnam asked. “Have you never heard stories of women alone being accosted?” Francine, a girl who married before her sixteenth birthday, already had three children who clung to her like bananas on a stalk and a husband insistent about supper being served at six-thirty on the dot.

“That girl will be the ruination of our family!” Mister Westerly told his wife; but Olivia still stuck her nose in the air and went about her business. One year later when she was given a three dollar raise and appointed Supervisor of the night shift, her father disowned her altogether. The last thing he said was, “I want nothing to do with a girl who carries on as you do; a respectable daughter would be settling down with a husband and babies!”

“I’ve plenty of time for that,” Olivia answered, but by then her father had turned away and refused to look back.

“How much time do you think you have, dear?” her mother asked. “You’re twenty-six years old. What man would want to marry a woman of such an age?”

Olivia knew better. With her green eyes and a swirl of honey blond hair curled around her face, she had no shortage of boyfriends. Herbert Flannery, District Manager for Southern Atlantic Telephone had on three different occasions proposed marriage; the last time being in the spring of 1929. That particular proposal followed on the heels of the worst winter Richmond had ever seen—months and months of ice crusted to windowpanes and milk frozen before you could fetch it from the doorstep. In late December, Olivia crocheted herself a wool scarf, so oversized she could circle it around her throat three times and tuck her nose inside. Although she’d bundle herself in layers of sweaters, boots and that scarf, she’d come in from the cold with her nose glowing like a stoplight and her feet near frozen. That winter there were few parties and people did very little socializing; so Olivia spent most of her evenings at home, swaddled in a chenille bathrobe as she tried to stay warm.

In March, a month when she expected the crocuses to pop up from the ground, there was a six inch snowfall and the wind rattled the windowpanes so loudly that sleep became impossible. When it seemed that spring would never arrive, Olivia began to question the emptiness of her life. Three weeks later Herbert went down on one knee and offered out a small velvet box, she nodded and allowed him to slip the diamond ring on her finger.

Olivia was genuinely fond of Herbert and when she promised to marry him it was with the utmost sincerity; but, that was before they started to discuss the aspects of their forthcoming life together. “Won’t it be wonderful,” she said, “we can walk to work together every day.”

Herbert circled his arm around her waist and pulled her to him in a way that tugged her blouse loose from the band of her skirt. “Umm,” he hummed in her ear, making the same sound as a bee when it drains the nectar from a flower. “We’ll do just that,” he cooed, “until you’ve a bun in the oven.”

“Bun in the oven?” she repeated.

Herbert grinned and affectionately patted her stomach. “A baby,” he said, giving her a sly wink, “you know, a little tyke, a Herbert Junior.”