Rosalind Green's expression changed slightly. She forced a smile. "He… he's busy with something. He doesn't have time."
"Your husband is really something, getting rich wherever he goes! Oh my, is that a box of pastries from Crown Garden? You've really struck it rich!"
A sharp-eyed neighbor recognized the pastry box in Adrian Hawthorne's hand. It was from Crown Garden, a time-honored brand in Tristone. Their pastries weren't cheap, and ordinary families couldn't bear to buy them for themselves—at least, not these neighbors.
"Not at all, we're just living an ordinary life."
Rosalind Green exchanged a few polite words, but no one believed her. This wasn't what an "ordinary life" looked like. Their own lives were what you'd call ordinary—having to calculate every expense, stretching every penny as far as it would go. What Rosalind had was a *life*; what they had was merely survival.
