Tea with Miss Em

摘要

Two women shared little in their lives except a passion for horses. But that was all they needed to find common ground. The photograph, buried in a jumble of papers on my client's desk, didn't seem noteworthy at first glance. But something about it caught my eye, and I paused to gaze at it for a moment. It showed a woman of about 90 sitting on a big gray horse, beaming at the camera. On the surface, she and I appeared to have little in common. Her dress, hair, makeup and posture suggested that she was a wealthy woman, born to the social graces of an old Southern family, who probably never had to work—while I, a displaced Californian, toiling away here in South Carolina as a freelance bookkeeper, was none of those things.