The Briar Club

by Kate Quinn

Interstitial Thanksgiving 1954 Washington, D.C. Briarwood House remembers the moment Grace March dabbed that first painted flower on the green wall of Apartment 4B. There now, she’d asked, don’t you feel pretty? No one had asked the house a question in such a long time. It had taken a rusty moment to shake off the decades of inattention, stretch a bit through long-settled foundations, squint at that attic wall which had been bilious green since 1900 when those same foundations had been poured, but which no one—not one person in all the decades since—had ever tried to decorate. Yes, the house had thought in some wonder, examining the wall vine. Yes, I do feel pretty. And had made a point of paying attention ever since, whenever it felt the friendly tickle of that paintbrush in Grace’s hand. That was the moment at which, you might say, the house began to wake up. Just like people, houses go to sleep if bored, and things had been boring at Briarwood House for so long—nothing for the last decade but bleach and the stale smell of Campbell’s soup and the trudge of dispirited feet, and what house worth its baseboards and chimney bricks is going to stay invested in that? But things had started getting interesting again, sounding interesting, smelling interesting. The house hadn’t realized how much it missed smells, proper smells like Swedish meatballs and peanut butter cookies. You can’t call yourself a proper home without the regular smell of good food . . .