In the background the television showed mangled corpses from an unexplained explosion in a midwestern granary.
“Hunter, turn off the news. I can’t face that stuff tonight.”
He clicked off the set just as Grace came through the back door. Woodrow and Peachpaws rushed to greet her. The cat hopped up on his hind legs and then rubbed against her leg. She bent down to scratch him behind the ears. Peachpaws wanted to shake hands.
“Just in time for supper.”
“What are you having?” Grace walked over to inspect Laura’s salad. “Umm.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Cig replied.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Grace agreed, and joined Cig at the stove. “I’ll do the veggies, if you do the pork chops. You’re better at meat than I am.” Grace tossed her luxurious vicuña shawl on the church pew along the wall.
“How come you don’t have some ball or ameliorative social function to attend?”
Grace slit open a pouch of baby limas and grabbed a microwave-proof dish out of the cupboard. “Will’s staying late at the hospital, and there aren’t any balls tonight. If there were I’d make you go with me so I could relish your misery.”
Cig stabbed at the pork chops in the big iron skillet. “I’d sooner bleed from the throat than go to one of those balls.”
“I’ll go.” Laura spoke up. “I need experience.”
“Are you sure this isn’t your child?” Cig pretended to stab at Laura with the meat fork.
“We look alike,” Grace said.
“Think alike,” Laura chimed in.
“You think?” Hunter appeared surprised.
“Ha, ha.” Laura ignored him.
“What’s the scoop, Grace? Harleyetta West had lunch with Andy Trowbridge and you saw them. So who were you having lunch with—hmmm?”
Grace opened the microwave to pull out the lima beans and remembered she’d forgotten a hotpad, which Hunter threw at her. “Thanks.” She caught it and fetched the lima beans. “Cig, how far along are you with the pork chops?”
“Far enough. You can put those in a bowl while you tell me about your lunch. I’m more interested in that than in Harleyetta and Andy Trowbridge, although I’d never blame her if she had an affair.”
“Imagine being married to Binky West.” Laura shuddered.
“He looks like a manatee in drag.” Cig laughed.
“He wouldn’t be so bad if you could get the shot glass out of his mouth.” Hunter put ice cubes in each of the glasses, poured water, and surveyed his handiwork. He decided something was missing and disappeared from the kitchen.
“Hunter, we’re about to eat,” Cig called after him.
“I know.” The voice receded.
“Who were you having lunch with?” Cig’s voice became more insistent.
“What are you, my keeper?”
“I am my sister’s keeper.”’
“Yeah, well—” Grace pinched Laura as she carried the big salad bowl to the table. “Walt Manceron. He’s on the committee for the Cancer Ball.”
“He’s also drop-dead gorgeous.” Cig commented on the owner of the BMW dealership.
“That fact has not escaped me.” Grace smiled, revealing perfect teeth. “Nor the fact that maybe he’ll even give me a discount on that 7 series BMW I’m lusting after.”
“Lust for more than a 750i and he’ll give you the car,” Cig said wryly.
“Aunt Grace, all you have to do is wink at them. Men fall at your feet.” Laura stood behind her chair as the adults put the rest of the food on the table.
Hunter reappeared with a handful of golden mums. He plopped them in a low crystal vase and put them on the table.
“A centerpiece.” Grace beamed.
“We needed something.” He held the chair for his aunt as she sat down and then did the same for his mother. “I took them out of the back garden.”
“Good idea. The season will soon be over and we should enjoy them.” Cig was happy to get off her feet. She felt suddenly exhausted.
“What about me?” Laura, hands on hips, stood before her chair.
“What if I pull it out from under you?” He nonetheless seated his sister.
“Let’s say grace.” Cig reached for her sister’s hand, and they all held hands around the table.
“Heavenly Father, thank you for the food we are about to receive into our bodies and the love which we receive into our souls. Amen.”
“Amen,” they said in unison, each squeezing hands.
Hunter filled his plate, while the women watched in awe. Conversation could wait a moment. He was starved.
“Laura, what do you have to tell me?”
“Nothing, Aunt Grace.”
“Donny Forbush asked her to the Harvest Dance.” Hunter filled in the blanks. “She spurned him,” he continued in mock horror.
Laura glared at her brother. “So what!”
Grace cut into her pork chop. “Let’s not tell my husband, shall we?”
“Uncle Will will find out sooner or later,” Laura said.
“Later.” Grace’s voice had an edge to it. “Listen, he’s so busy at the hospital he probably won’t hear about it until after the dance so let’s not push it.”
“He’s in tight with the Forbushes. He will notice,” Laura declared.
Cig shot her a reproving look, although she agreed with her. Laura ducked her head and concentrated on her food.
Grace said, “Dr. William Von Hugel saves lives, he genuinely helps people, but let’s just say that he has his peculiarities, as do we all. He feels there are right people and ‘unright’ people.”
Hunter and Laura looked quickly at one another and then back at Grace, whom they loved and adored. But then everyone adored Grace.
“Will’s not the only one.” Cig sighed. “Laura, your salad is very good. Tossing in the sunflower seeds was inspired.”
The phone rang. Cig groaned.
Laura jumped out of her chair. “I’ll get it!”
They heard a polite murmur, signifying that the call must not be for Laura. “For you, Mom.”
Cig, her mouth full of delicious pork chop, wiped her lips with her napkin and excused herself from the table. While answering the phone during supper was uncivilized she couldn’t afford to lose business. The battery acid churned in her stomach.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” Lizbeth said. “Listen, we’ve decided to fly out tomorrow. Troy wants to look for property around Bozeman, Montana. We’ll compare and then let you know if we’ll be coming back.”
Cig’s stomach knotted. “It’s supposed to be unbelievably beautiful out there in Montana. I hope you find what you’re looking for there—or here.”
“Thanks. Ciao.” Lizbeth hung up the phone.
Cig returned to the table and sat down heavily.
The kids said nothing.
“More Looky Lous?” That’s what Grace called people who ran a realtor’s legs off then decided they weren’t ready to buy, didn’t have the money, or didn’t like the area. Realtors, unofficial tour guides, got the shaft more often than they got the sale.
“Yep.”
Hunter and Laura finished eating, then patiently waited for the adults to finish. Cig noticed.
“Go on. I’ll do the dishes.”
“Thanks, Mom.” They both scooted from the table.
Grace and Cig cleared the table. While Grace stacked the dishwasher, Cig built a fire in the big living room fireplace. She poured out two glasses of vintage port.
Grace joined her, kicked off her shoes and flopped on the comfortable old sofa. Woodrow stretched out on the back of it, while Peachpaws collapsed in front of the fire screen.
“Sorry about the buyers, Cig. Jane told me they’d been looking at really expensive stuff. That commission would have been a godsend.”
“If I really thought about it I could be incontinent in my hostility.” Cig felt morose.
A loud blare from upstairs could have shattered the windows. Cig lurched up and trotted upstairs. What good would it do to yell? They couldn’t hear her.
“They’ll all be deaf by the time they’re thirty.” Cig reached for her glass again as soon as she returned, the music turned down. “I’m beat, and tomorrow is a five thirty wake-up.”
“I still operate on the three-alarm system. One by the bed, one halfway to the bathroom, and one in the bathroom. Will sleeps in the other room on hunting nights.”
Cig’s mind switched back to business. “I’ll probably never see the Benedicts again, and much as I need the commission, I’m relieved. The wife comes out with the damnedest things. The first day I became well-acquainted with her physical person. Most especially her high-fiber, no-fat diet. But each day she yakked more and more about how she felt when she turned thirty. She hasn’t admitted to turning forty yet and my guess is she’s on the near side of fifty. Jesus, but it was one thing after another. By the third day she was discussing the relative strength of orgasms according to the position.”
Grace laughed. “I’d have paid good money for that one.”
“And the husband would occasionally open his mouth to insert some important fact into the conversation, well, monologue was closer to it, and she’d shut up and look at him as though he were Albert Einstein. Believe me, that’s a woman who’s earned every Cartier bauble dangling from her starved body.”
“Was he smart?”
“Hell no. Dumb as a sack of hammers. He didn’t even know that sandy loam perks differently than clay, nor did he care.”
“He has to be smart about something if he’s looking at properties going for a million dollars.”
Cig thought about that. “I guess in his business he is, but haven’t you ever noticed how a man or a woman can be just terrific at one thing and completely oblivious to everything else—and they expect to have their asses kissed at regular intervals anyway?”
“I’m married to one.” Grace held out her glass for more port.
“Will isn’t that bad.” Cig poured.
“He’s not that good.”
They sat in one another’s company, staring into the fire.
“Isn’t it queer to be alive today?” Grace broke the silence. “I feel like we’re living through the end of something but I’m not sure what it is. Oh, here I am getting morose, and the reason I stopped by was that I thought you might need cheering up tonight.”
“Me?”
Grace knew her sister too well to be surprised that Cig was slow to admit the significance of the day. “Tomorrow Blackie will have been dead a year.”
“He did fall off his perch on October twenty-second, didn’t he?” Cig tried to make light of the day that had changed her life forever, plunging her into grief and debt simultaneously.
“Cig, you don’t have to be tough for me.”
“I’m much more worried about money right now than my emotions. If I can keep my boarders and pick up some more lessons, I can make the mortgage, the electric bill, and food—barely. Some months I’m slow on paying—if only the Benedicts had bought something! And I can’t keep taking money from you.”
“You’re not taking money from me,” Grace said, smiling, “you’re taking it from Will.”
“Same difference, and I feel guilty as hell. Besides, Grace, I’ve got to make it on my own.”
Grace inhaled, her perfectly shaped nostrils flaring slightly. “It took almost a year just to untangle Blackie’s deals.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know it all. He kept a lot under his hat. And he was in so much debt. If only I’d taken an interest in the way things ran while he was alive… but you know me, I never cared. It took all my meager brain cells to learn the real estate business, and I’m no whiz at it even now. Crass as Max is, he doesn’t have the heart to throw out his best friend’s widow.”
“Max isn’t that generous. You’re a good agent.”
“Not recently. I feel like I can’t get arrested.” Cig put the glass of port against her cheek. “But I mean it. I can’t keep taking money from you.”
“I told you, it’s not my money—then again, I helped him earn it.”
“In your own way, Grace, you earn it as much as Will does.”
“Doesn’t every woman?” The startling blue eyes clouded over.
“I don’t know.” Cig placed the glass on the coffee table. Tonight she felt genuinely old and beat up. “I’ll take the kids out of private school during the semester break. Western Albemarle is a good school.”
“Cig, all their friends are—”
Cig held up her hand. “Hunter needs a paper route, they pay pretty good, and I don’t know what Laura can do; but the kids have to pitch in.”
“Let me get them through high school.”
“Grace, you are generous to a fault. But a year is long enough to get my feet under me. Now I’ve got to stand up, corny though it sounds.”
“I can’t let you do this to yourself. I know how you feel about the kids’ education.” The full lips became a compressed line.
“And I can’t live off your charity.”
“It’s not charity! Think of it as recompense. You’ve gotten me out of one jam after another.”
“Grace, we’re talking about money, not your little side trips.” It was what Cig called Grace’s affairs.
“Oh God, Cig, you’ve been rescuing me from the consequences of my rashness since grade school. I leap before I look. You’d think I’d learn, but I don’t.” She folded her hands in her lap, giving her a schoolgirl air.
“You’re talking about impetuousness, love, I’m talking about money.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re sisters. We stick together. The Deyhles always stick together.”
“Damn the Benedicts.” Tears filled Cig’s brown eyes, as soft as her sister’s were electrifyingly blue. “And damn Blackie. I thought only the good died young.” She smiled ruefully.
“M-m-m,” Grace murmured.
“I miss him. There were plenty of times while he was alive when I wished I’d never see him again, but now…”
“Things will work out, Ciggie, really they will.”
“I hope so. Sometimes I’m so scared I can’t sleep. Or I wake up in the middle of the night and my heart feels like a jackhammer. I can’t breathe and I think, how am I going to make it? How?”
“You will.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you.”
“You’d do the same for me.” Grace put her feet up on the coffee table. “Many’s the time I’ve wished it was Will who had died, not Blackie.”
“Grace!”
“Oh, it’s not like I wish him dead but he’s such a grind. Blackie was full of life.”
“He certainly shared himself.”
“He just liked women. Sleeping with them was how he paid the compliment.”
“Easy for you to say!”
“Yes, it is. Will is faithful, hardworking, and too dull to have been born. Be honest. Would you rather be married to an unfaithful Blackie or a faithful Will?”
“I don’t know.”
“The hell you don’t.”
“Life with Blackie could be very painful. I loved him but I learned not to trust him.” She paused. “I wonder if I should go up there and lash them on with their homework? The deal is, if they do all their homework Friday night then they can go out Saturday and Sunday. Remember how frantic we’d get Sunday night because we’d left it to the last minute?”
“Don’t get up. We’re comfortable. They’re quiet enough.”
“Laura whispers on the phone. It makes whatever she’s saying sound more important. She got that from you. I don’t do it.”
“Works, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
“Mother used to say if you want someone to pay attention, whisper. Never shout.”
“G-mom used to say it, too. And I bet her mother said it and her mother before that.” Cig spoke of their Great-Aunt Pryor, called G-mom, who had died last year at ninety-nine. Cig was Pryor’s namesake, her maiden name being Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle.
“Sometimes I take out the old family Bibles and look at birth and death dates and all those names. Pryor, Charles, Margaret, Solon. I love the way they recur. It’s a way for the new generations to remember the old. Our family lived through hell and high water,” Grace said. “They’ve been around so long we’ve gone through four huge Bibles.”
“Why do you think Mother left me the papers after the War Between the States and you, the papers before? Why did she divide it that way? If she told me I forgot, but lately I’m forgetting lots of stuff.”
“Mom figured the seventeenth-century papers were safer in my library than yours because I don’t have children—and the reason you’re forgetful is because you do.”
“I miss Mom.” Cig turned away from Grace to stare into the fire.
“Me, too.”
“People say it’s better if someone dies fast, better than watching them linger, but at least if they take their time about dying you have the opportunity to make peace with them. Both Mom and Blackie died so suddenly. Sometimes I’m knocked flat by guilt. I don’t remember telling Mother that I loved her, but I sure couldn’t wait to tell her how much smarter I was than she was.”
Grace reached up and patted Cig’s shoulder. “She didn’t even think about it. Do you think about the crap your kids dump on you?”
“Not really. I count to ten.”
“Mom did the same thing.”
“She liked you better than me.”
“Cig, you make me so mad when you say that. She did not. I was a little more—tractable.”
“Devious. You told her what she wanted to hear.”
A silence followed. Grace finally said, “Most times I was diplomatic. I don’t care about being right. You have to be right. You always want to analyze everything, as if life were a big test we were all going to be graded on. I don’t care about intellectual arguments. I don’t see that they’ve advanced the human race one inch. So I just smile and roll on—wouldn’t hurt you to try it.”
Cig rested her chin on her hand. “I always intend to do that, then I forget.” She changed the subject. “See Dad today?”
“For a minute. He wants to go to Nag’s Head to hang glide.”
“Lord.” Cig shook her head. “Mamie is probably urging him to do it so she can collect the insurance once he crashes into the Atlantic.”
“She’s thirty years younger than he is! No, I don’t like her. She’s a black widow. All she’s missing is the red hourglass on her abdomen.”
“Men can’t live without women. We do fine without them.”
“He could have waited longer to remarry, you know.”
“Well, he didn’t. He’s our father. We’d better make the best of it—and his drinking has slowed down, so be grateful.”
“What is this, Grace? Wisdom 101?”
“No. I just think these are hard times for you. Grappling with emotional hot wires has always been hard for you, just like being sensible and thinking about the future is hard for me.”
“I certainly never expected Blackie to drop dead of a heart attack at fifty-four. I know he was fifteen years older than I am but he never seemed like it—because he never grew up, I guess.”
“Never looked old, either. I’m starting to believe that when your number’s up, it’s up.”
Cig squinted into the fire. “I’m sorry he died in your living room. If he hadn’t been dropping off those contracts for Will….”
Grace reached for Cig’s hand. “If Blackie didn’t teach me anything else he sure taught me to grab life while you can.”
“What shocks me is that I was twenty-two when I married him. What will I do if Hunter or Laura marry at twenty-two?”
“Celebrate!”
Cig blinked. “Celebrate? I ought to have them committed.”
“Oh, Cig, remember the feeling?”
Cig recalled the first time she saw Blackie. Maybe she had been enchanted, but the years, the infidelities, had burned away the sensation. “No, I don’t. Whatever I felt then I’ve forgotten, and I’ve lost the capacity to feel it, period.”
Grace’s luminous eyes clouded. “Don’t say that, Cig.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“If you feel that way, you’ve given up on life.”
“I’ve got Hunter and Laura. I’m not giving up on life.”
“Your life. Their lives are separate from yours.”
“Their lives are separate from mine once they’re out of college, earning their own keep.”
“Stop being obtuse,” Grace said sharply, her lips pursed together, a disapproving rosebud.
“You’re telling me I’ve given up on life because I’m not driven by raging hormones. That’s what I’m getting out of the conversation. Yes, I miss Blackie… but I couldn’t rely on him. And I couldn’t stand the smell of other women on his skin. Stolen flowers.”
“Huh?”
“Stolen flowers seem to smell sweeter than the ones you’ve grown in your own garden. Those women were stolen flowers.”
“You could have stolen a few of your own. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Vice versa in your case.”
Cig shrugged. “When would I have had the time? Someone had to keep life stable for the kids.”
“You were too busy being a martyr.”
“I was not. I didn’t want my kids packing suitcases for their weekend with Dad. I figured maybe I would divorce him once Laura was in college and that would have been four years down the road. What’s four years?”
“Could be the difference between life and death.”
“In Blackie’s case it was.”
“It’s not sinful to be happy. He was happy, but I agree he was irresponsible in some ways. He made a vow and he couldn’t keep it, he couldn’t stay faithful. But he fulfilled the rest of the marriage bargain.”
“I fulfilled all of it!” Cig snapped.
“You would never have divorced him.”
“You started this. You said what was good for the gander is good for the goose.”
Grace twisted some shiny hair around her forefinger. “Did I say that?”
“Yes. You just did.”
“Yeah… well, playing devil’s advocate. I’m not sure it matters if your husband is faithful to you. It only matters that you love him.”
“Of course you say that. You’ve been unfaithful to will since year one of your marriage.” She leaned toward her sister slightly, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Grace took her stockinged feet off the coffee table and pushed Cig backward. She flopped back on a pillow.
“So…?” Grace said.
“You don’t know what I feel!”
“Well, feel something! Say something. Do something.” Grace’s cheeks flushed. “I hate to see you suffer.”
Cig sat up and twirled around, tucking her legs under her so she faced her beautiful sister. “Sometimes I hear the clock ticking. Sometimes I hear my heartbeat. I hear myself breathing. That’s my life that’s ticking away. I’ve never seen Paris. I’ve never been to Munich or St. Petersburg or Buenos Aires or Santiago or the fjords of Norway—you name it. Blackie took me to Ireland—once. I’d like to go back. I want to go places that are magnets for energy, for culture, for whatever the human race has thought and done over the centuries. I want to feel that crazy sweat running between my breasts when I see a man who excites me. But it seems out of reach… what I want. I can’t even pay my bills. I can’t imagine falling in love again. My one solace is foxhunting. FU still have that when the kids leave.”
Grace grew solemn. “You know what I want? I want to go to the airport and hop on the first plane that has an open seat. I don’t want a plan, I don’t even want to know anyone wherever the destination may be—Istanbul, whatever. I just want to go. Maybe I want to forget myself. Maybe if I don’t hear English spoken I will forget myself.”
“What’s keeping you?”
“I don’t know.” Grace wistfully pushed a lock of hair off her forehead.
“Will?”
“God no.”
“Dad?”
“No.”
“I want to make sure you’re all right. I want to see you laugh again, really laugh. Then I’ll go.”
Touched, yet somewhat disbelieving, Cig shook her head. “You are not your sister’s keeper.”
“We all are. You said it yourself. You and I have unfinished business. Maybe when that’s done I can go.”
This startled Cig. “What are you talking about?”
Grace blinked. “I don’t know, really. It’s in the back of my head. When it comes to the front I’ll let you know.”
Cig, long accustomed to Grace’s ways, didn’t press. Instead she asked, “Are you really that bored?”
“Sometimes.” Grace shifted her position. “Aren’t you?”
“The kids…” She smiled at Grace. “I think I want less than you do.”
Grace started to speak then seemed to think better of it. “I don’t even know what I want.”
Cig reached out to pat her sister’s hand. “I think the anniversary of Blackie’s death is hitting you harder than it’s hitting me.”
Grace thought a bit, then said, “I miss him. He could be a bad boy but he was so much fun. Sheer irrepressible fun.”
They sat a while longer before Cig observed, “You know how I know that Laura’s blabbing on the phone? It hasn’t rung once. She doesn’t quite get that the phone is business.”
“You need another line.”
“The noise! It’d be off the hook. Anyway, I can’t afford another line. I think I’ll go up there and yank the damn cord out of the wall.”
“Later. Don’t you remember what it was like at that age—you had so much to say and it was the first time you’d ever said it? The first time you exchanged a confidence over a crush or talked about a book you loved and actually understood? I hear myself now and it’s like an old tape.”
“Maybe you do need to go to Istanbul.”
“You could come with me when Laura gets into college.”
“Can you wait that long?”
“I don’t know.” Grace became serious, then suddenly stretched out her arms and wiggled her fingers under Cig’s nose. “Snakes!”
“Snakes.” Cig repeated the gesture, and they fell on one another laughing.
Their mother used to do that whenever she wanted to hex somebody, usually at the card table, but she was known to do it at social gatherings very discreetly so that only her family could see. She said she had learned it from her husband’s mother. Dad wouldn’t do it because he thought it was undignified. Blackie loved to do it after he picked it up from the Deyhle family. There has to be an oddball in the family, and their mother often played that part.
“I miss Mom.” Cig laughed again, remembering the delight in Amy Deyhle’s eyes when she’d pull one of her snakes.
“Is this what getting old is about?” Grace innocently asked. “Do we just say good-bye all the time?”
“I guess it is, but we get to say hello, too. Hello to grandchildren. Hello to the new generations.”
“What if I don’t like the next generation? I certainly didn’t want to produce any of them. I left that to you. Will still harps on it though.”
“Some people are meant to be mothers and some aren’t. You aren’t.”
“I don’t think I’d be a good mother.” Grace sounded unconvincing.
“Probably because you’re still a child.” Cig laughed. “I’m hungry again. Can you believe it?”
They repaired to the kitchen where Cig served up a delicious carrot cake she’d bought on the way home, and Grace declared she was not a child and if she really wanted to she’d be a superior mother or a mother superior, take your pick. After devouring the cake and washing it down with a good cup of tea, Grace glanced at the big wall clock. “Time to boogie.”
“Stay here if you want. We’ve got to get up so early.”
“Will pitches a fit if I’m not home when he’s had a late night at the hospital. I don’t know why. I’m usually sound asleep.”
“He loves you in his own way.”
“No—he’s dependent in his own way.”
“All men are dependent, Grace. Big deal.”
Grace pushed down her fork to mash the crumbs on her plate. She ate them, too. “Why? If I just knew why. You start out as their siren and wind up as their mother.”
Cig shrugged. “Who knows?” Then she added, “I’m glad you came over tonight.”
“Me, too.” Grace scooped up the vicuña then hugged her square-shouldered sister, who walked her to the back door. As they entered the mud room, Grace said, “October has to be the very best time of year. The leaves changing, the first frosts, those clear, crisp nights that cut into your soul.”
“Yeah.” Cig agreed and wished she could be as glib, as descriptive, as Grace.
Grace turned to face her. “Cig, I have this premonition. It’s—well, last night I came home after my tennis committee meeting for the country club and the moon was huge—huge like a bursting melon.”
“Saw it.” Cig smiled.
“Well, I had this feeling, like a Chill crawling down my spine. Even my hair tingled. And I just looked at the moon and a thin cloud passed over it like a Prussian blue knife blade and I thought, ‘Something’s coming down. Something’s coming down and well never ever be the same,’ and I don’t know if it’s good or bad but—I’m scared.”
“Blackie’s death. You’re so sensitive, Grace. The anniversary’s working on you.”
“No. This is about the future, not the past.” Grace reached up and kissed her sister then opened the mud room door and walked to her car as Cig switched on the light for her. “Hey,” Cig called, “maybe the past is in the future.”
She stopped on the worn brick walk. “Wouldn’t it be perfect if there were no time, or at least if we had no sense of it?” She threw her hands in the air, undone by the philosophizing, and changed the subject. “Has Laura talked to you about the dance?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, really talked to you?”
“She said she’s not going with Donny Forbush. And she’s worried about Will.” Cig suppressed a flash of impatience. “We talked about this at supper. Are you suffering from early Alzheimer’s?”
Grace gulped in the sparkling air. “No.” She started to say something then continued walking. She reached the car and then called out, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Cig waved. She closed the door once Grace had started the car. A whiff of clear, cold air snuck into the room.