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the plant manager at Pan-Am Agra?”
    “His job just got upgraded to vice president in charge of manufacturing.” I turned a page.
    “Have you been married long?”
    By golly, I was on the verge of being rude. Really.
    “Two years,” I said briefly.
    Then, thank goodness, Trinity called Angel’s name.
    “Please come in with me, Roe,” my bodyguard said quietly.
    Considerably surprised, but pleased to be escaping Dryden, I tucked my book in my purse and rose to my feet. Dr. Zelman’s new nurse took over from Trinity, leading us to a cramped examining room with rose-and-blue walls and a table that would barely hold Angel. Something about the nurse seemed familiar. As she talked to Angel about her aches and pains, efficiently taking Angel’s blood pressure and checking her temperature, I realized the woman in white was Linda Ehrhardt, whose bridesmaid I’d been in the long, long ago. She’d been Linda Pocock for years now. As she turned away from Angel, she recognized me too.
    After the usual exclamations and hugs, Linda said, “I guess you heard I got divorced and moved back home.”
    “I’m sorry. But it’ll be nice to see you again.”
    “Yes, that’ll be fun. Of course I brought my children, and they’re in school here now.”
    “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten. Was that two girls?”
    “Yes, Carol and Macey.” Linda extracted the thermometer from Angel’s mouth and glanced at the reading. She wrote it down on Angel’s chart without a change of expression.
    “Mrs. Youngblood, you’ll need to disrobe for your examination,” Linda said rather loudly, as though Angel’s habitual silence meant she was short on wits rather than words. “There’s the cubicle in the corner, just put on one of those gowns.”
    Angel glared at Linda after she’d looked at the cubicle, and I had to admit I couldn’t see Angel’s changing in that tiny area as a possibility. But she managed, grumbling to herself. So I wouldn’t be just sitting there listening to her, I brushed my hair with the help of the mirror over the sink, carefully drawing the brush all the way through the mass of streaky brown waves, trying not to break off my ends by pulling the brush out too soon. I gave up when it was flying around my head, wild with electricity. By that time Angel had managed to reensconce herself on the table with the obligatory sheet across her lap, though she was clearly unhappy with the whole situation and not a little afraid.
    Dr. Zelman burst in just as Angel was about to say something. He never just came into a room, and he never just left; he made entrances and exits. He almost never closed the door completely, something his nurse or his patient’s friends had to do. (I crept behind him to do it now.) Now in his early fifties, “Pinky” (Pincus) Zelman had worked in Lawrenceton for twenty years, after a short-lived practice in Augusta that had left him inexplicably longing for something more rural.
    “Mrs. Youngblood!” he cried happily. “You’re so healthy you’ve never been to see me before, in two years here, I see! Good for you! What can I do for you today?” Dr. Zelman caught sight of me trying to be unobtrusively solicitous, and patted me on the shoulder so heavily I almost went down. “Little Ms. Teagarden! Prettier than ever!” I smiled uneasily as he turned back to Angel.
    Angel stoically recited her symptoms: occasional exhaustion, occasional queasiness, lack of energy. I winced when I thought of asking Angel to help me mow the yard the day before. Now quiet and intent, Dr. Zelman began examining her from head to toe, including a pelvic, which Angel clearly hadn’t expected (I hadn’t either) and which she barely endured.
    “Well, Mrs. Youngblood,” Dr. Zelman said thoughtfully, rooting for his pencil in his graying hair (it was stuck behind his ear), “it’s really too bad your husband didn’t come with you today, because we have a lot to talk about.”
    Angel and I both blanched. I reached