Chapter1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

While Stannie slept off his Friday-morning hangover in Florida, Rose woke up before dawn in a bedroom at the Westford farmhouse. It had been a child's room once, whether long ago or recently, she couldn't tell. A nightlight shaped like a bear glowed near the door; a stuffed rabbit sprawled on a rocking chair by the window.

Rose got out of bed and looked into the navy sky over the treetops. You could actually see a few stars out here in the country. She'd spent too much time in Washington lately and too little on the road. She hadn't planned to stay more than the afternoon at Sibyl's, hadn't even brought a toothbrush. Then, Jim Westford mentioned at yesterday's reception that most of the real League business would happen the next morning, after a prayer service in the chapel.

"Oh, that's too bad," she said, looking at him over the rim of a plastic punch glass. She'd just found out that he specialized in medical malpractice. "I'm going back to Washington tonight."

"Well, don't go if you don't want to. Sibyl wouldn't mind one more for the night—would she, Jenny?"

Jenny Lemke came over, smiling vaguely. "Huh?"

"Sibyl could find Rose here a room tonight, couldn't she? Rose needs to come to our meeting tomorrow."

"Sibyl would do anything you told her to."

So Rose agreed to stay, though she was pretty sure Jim had to twist his sister's arm over it—maybe other arms, too. At the picnic supper in the evening, she felt people looking at her more suspiciously than earlier in the day. The priest and the hippies and the others all smiled but kept the conversation shallow, even when she set up a lawn chair near the priest and said, "Hope you don't mind me plunking down here—I'm a friend of Jenny's."

"Jenny's a very fine person," he said, "but I don't know anything about her private life." He sank down in his chair with his head near his plate. His long face looked like it might slide right into the potato salad. Rose almost laughed out loud.

After eating just half a hot dog and none of her sauerkraut she got up and folded her chair against an oak tree nearby, then started across the broad lawn toward some women with children. She hoped they'd be more talkative, but as she came closer, the women pulled their children away and spread out slowly in a wide semi-circle over the light green grass. In fact, the nearer she got to them, the further out the semi-circle moved. She felt like the wrong side of a magnet, pushing these people away. (Or was she just imagining that they moved away from her? Maybe she was hanging back, herself—you could fool yourself that way; like taking your foot off the brake at a red light and thinking other cars were creeping backward.)

She went back and found an empty table set up under a tent that had "Parker's Funeral Home" emblazoned on each side. This seemed like a good place to roost, alone: she slid onto a bench and took a few pictures of the children with her telephoto lens, then looked around and studied the faces closer to her. There were plenty of people whose types she didn't recognize—women with long dresses and bows in their hair, a man in knickers, a teenage girl wearing a sari. Almost everyone was a little—how could you say it?— off, but nobody looked like a terrorist. Suddenly she realized she hadn't seen Jenny in a while; she scanned the crowd, but couldn't pick her out anywhere. It was starting to get dark. She put the lens cap back on her camera and went inside to examine Sibyl's house, unchaperoned.

She was standing in a long, carpeted hallway, squinting at old family photographs of the Westfords, when someone walked up quietly behind her. "Recognize me in any of those?"

She turned, startled, and found herself facing Jim Westford. He was tall like his sister, with the same earnest expression. She had decided by now that she found him more interesting-looking than handsome: pale but dark-haired, with bright blue eyes and a high, straight nose that gave him a brainy look.

"Big family," she said. "Which of these kids is you?"

He smiled and pointed to a black-and-white photo of a small boy with a cocker spaniel. "I'm number six, the youngest. But I came long after everybody else, so I get my own picture. How come you're not outside with the folks?"

"Nobody seems to want to talk to me. I think they've been warned off."

"They probably have. We don't trust anyone we haven't known for years."

"Me neither."

He looked at her for a moment, cocking his head to the side, clearly considering something. "Want to come in my office, drink a cup of tea or coffee or something? Actually, I have a very nice bottle of wine I've been saving for a special occasion. If you don't object."