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You can’t trust people these days. There’s the front door again. Don’t answer it.”
    But Nora was already up. “It’ll be Mrs. Brice,” she said, “with the nurse.”
    “Look out the window to make sure. It might be that woman again.”
    Nora turned, hands on hips. “Oh? Does that mean you don’t want the jack if she brings it back?”
    “It means I don’t want strangers here. If it’s her, don’t answer. If she’s brought the jack, she’ll leave it in the yard.”
    I may go mad, Nora thought as she went to the door. I may scream soon. I may just walk out of here and never come back.
    But I can’t leave Mama.
    She did not look out the window, and she opened the door to Louise Brice, a stout church-going woman wearing a sensible black raincoat, and Ms. Sarah Cassidy, Visiting Nurse, in a dark blue dress covered with a yellow poncho, over which tumbled quantities of wavy red hair that spewed out from under a wide-brimmed yellow sou’wester. She carried a small black bag.
    “Hello, Nora, dear,” Louise Brice said brightly. “Isn’t this rain something?” She wiped her plastic-overshoe-clad feet on the worn sisal doormat, leaving streaks of mud from, Nora realized, what was left of the washed-out front path.
    “Come on in out of it,” said Nora, “while I get my coat. Hi, Sarah.”
    “How are they today?” Sarah Cassidy shucked off her poncho and sou’wester and held them uncertainly with two fingers while, dog-like, she shook out her hair. “Where…?”
    “Oh, anywhere,” said Nora feigning a gaiety she didn’t feel. “What are front halls for if not for rain and mud?” She hung Sarah’s things on the rack beside the hall table.
    “There’s plenty of both,” said Louise, opening and flapping her raincoat. That action stretched the jacket of her new-looking light green suit across her ample bosom, threatening the grasp of several buttons. She untied the clear plastic kerchief that covered her limply curled gray hair and shook it vigorously over the doormat before hanging it and her coat next to Sarah’s. “But April showers bring May flowers.”
    “Of course,” Sarah whispered to Nora as all three women went through to the kitchen, and Nora handed Sarah a towel for her hair, “it’s already May. Thanks.” Sarah shook out the towel, then rubbed her hair briskly before bundling it into a net that she took out of her pocket. “Any change?”
    “Not really,” Nora whispered back; they were still in the doorway. “Father’s argumentative and Mama’s a bit vaguer than usual, but I don’t think there’s anything special wrong. We had a visitor yesterday; maybe that tired them, although Mama didn’t see her.”
    “A visitor?” Louise asked with interest as she moved into the room. Smiling at Ralph and Corinne, she raised her voice several decibels and caroled, “Hello, all, how are we today? Was it a nice visitor, the one you had yesterday?”
    “Some woman had car trouble,” Ralph grumbled. “I think my blood pressure’s gone up.” He held his arm out to Sarah.
    “We’ll just see.” As Sarah whipped out her equipment, she looked toward Corinne, who hadn’t acknowledged her presence; she seemed asleep. “Hello, Mrs. Tillot ,” she shouted. “How are you today?” She wrapped the cuff around Ralph’s arm, pumped it, and applied the stethoscope. “I hear you had a visitor yesterday.”
    “How can you hear through that thing if everyone’s yelling?” Ralph said, shouting himself. “Let’s have a little quiet.”
    Nora had already taken her raincoat off its hook by the back door and picked up the list. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she announced to no one in particular.
    “Hadn’t you better wait to see what my pressure is?” Ralph whined. “I think it’s probably high.”
    “Your pressure’s fine.” Sarah unfastened the cuff; Louise nodded and glanced significantly at Nora as if she’d suspected as much. “Now your turn, dear,” Sarah