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might never come back here. And I hear that Lenox is nicer, quite honestly.”
    Cascadians liked to scoff at suggestions that Lenox could overtake Cascade in general popularity, but Lenox had a similar cultural bent andlong history of moneyed vacationers. Lenox, once known as the “inland Newport,” peppered with palatial “cottages,” had clear lakes and nearby mountains, and easier travel routes from New York and Connecticut.
    Abby jumped up. “Hey, I’m sorry. Let’s cheer you up, do something fun,” she said. “Get your pencils and paper. Do you still carry a pad in your pocket? We’ll draw while we talk and see where our minds take us.”
    Freudian parlor games had been popular back when they were in school—everyone bent on tapping into his or her unconscious mind. Dez fetched pencils from her worktable, pausing by the newspaper clipping Abby had referred to. Abby was right. Even if that particular clipping was yellow and dry now, she
had
once been written up in the
Evening Transcript
. She
had
won prizes.
    “So we talk and eat and draw,” Abby said, her hand hovering over the paper. “Now tell me about this husband of yours. Will I get to meet him? You never said much about him when we were in school—what’s he like? Go ahead! Draw!”
    Dez scratched at the paper. No, she’d never said much at all.
Because I never expected to marry him, because even though I really liked him, I always felt we were too different to ever become serious.
    She gave Abby the rundown—how, after graduating pharmacy college, while Dez was in Paris, Asa had turned his father’s dusty storefront into a modern drugstore. He’d put in a grill, a fountain, and a fancy oak-and-glass cigar case with an antique, piped-in gas lighter. But all the while she was talking she was remembering how proud he’d been to show off the store to her. She’d been truly surprised and a little unsettled to know he’d been waiting for her. She tried to make light of it, tried to discourage him. She was leaving again, she said, going to Boston, to a four-year program, and she thought she wanted to try New York after that. Promise you’ll date other girls, she’d said, and he’d said he would, and he did, she knew that. But she suspected he had been secretly grateful when their fortunes turned upside down. It gave him the chance to step in and save them. The day she said yes to him was the same late-September day thesheriff knocked on the door, removed his hat, and said he couldn’t put off the Springfield National Bank any longer. Dez asked how long did they have, and the sheriff said he could give them three weeks. He was a lumbering man with big hands, and eyes that apologized for everything his mouth was forced to say. “I’m afraid I’ll have to put this up,” he said, and pushed a red auction flag into the small patch of front lawn, where it flapped in the chill breeze blowing off the town common. It was the day of her mother’s birthday—Caroline Hart, who hadn’t lived to see forty.
    “We do well enough. People still need medicines. A Coke is an affordable treat. And he barters a lot, especially with the farmers.”
    “No family of his own left?”
    “A brother down in Hartford. Silas. He sees him about once a month, when he goes down there for supplies.”
    “Well, how about some tidbits? Is he good-looking? You know, you’ve never really said, never sent a photograph, which—”
    “He’s good-looking, if that’s what matters.” Dez realized she had drawn a face. One eye had become two, had become Jacob’s. She quickly penciled in the skin, rubbing the lead back and forth, back and forth, making it Othello-dark.
    “Of course it matters. You mean to tell me it doesn’t to you?”
    Asa was ten times better looking than Jacob, so no, it didn’t matter. “He’s good-looking in that Lucky Lindy sort of way. Though not as lanky.”
    “He looks like Lindbergh? That’s good! How is he between the sheets?”
    It was