Mrs. Nilsson served a grudging late lunch of dried-out turkey breast and canned mashed potatoes and packaged rolls to Pete, Lina, and whoever among the boarders wasn’t visiting relatives, before going out for her usual Thursday evening bridge game. Grace had wondered, her first year at Briarwood House, what kind of bridge club met on Thanksgiving, and then she actually met the harridans: the meanest cluster of tightfisted crones imaginable, far more interested in making a few dollars at the card table than throwing a turkey in the oven for whatever family they hadn’t managed to alienate.
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