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her visit to the
station seriously.
    “Meg, if they have some
reason to suspect you, you must tell us.  Now’s not the time for secrets,”
I said.
    Her fair skin flushed scarlet. 
“Secrets!”  She glared at the three of us.  “Sometimes you
remind me of those three witches in Macbeth:  Higgelty, Piggelty and Nod, or
whatever their names were, cackling over your boiling cauldron.”  Her
voice rose to a shriek, “No, we wouldn’t want any secrets here!”  She
scooped Little Bunny Foo Foo up and ran out, her footsteps pounding down the
hall then up the stairs. The door of her room slammed shut.
    “Perhaps it’s a good thing
she dropped out of Wellesley after all.”  Mother sniffed.  “Higgelty,
Piggelty and Nod!  What are they teaching these days?”
    I managed to say, “At least
she got the play right,” before Fran and I erupted in laughter.
    Mother levered herself to her feet
and glared down at us.  “You girls can laugh all you want, but education
in America is going downhill at a perilous rate.”
    We laughed even harder.
    Mother made her way to the
refrigerator where she’d left her cane hooked on the handle and then thumped
down the hall.
    After a while, Fran shook my arm
and said, “Hey, Higgelty—”
    “No, I’m Piggelty.”
    “Stop, stop, my sides
hurt.”
    When we finally sat up and wiped
our eyes, the last giggles shivering through us, Fran said, “Why would
they have taken her clothes?”
    “I don’t know.  It scares
me.”  I poured more tea for both of us even though it was lukewarm and way
too strong.  Fran dumped the tea out and poured us healthy slugs of brandy. 
“That’s the first time I’ve seen Meg go off the deep end,” she said. 
She pulled her velvet jacket closed.  “I see what you mean about her being
irrational.”
    “She’s so changed.”
    “She’s as cheery as ever when
she comes into the paper.”
    “Not around here.  She’s
sullen, and she never used to be.  Mood swings, so much anger.  But the play’s
been good for her, steadied her a little.”
    “Should you talk to her again
about a therapist?”
    I shrugged.  “She refused
absolutely.  I wish I had a clue what’s wrong.”
    “Something that happened at
school, you think?”
    I rubbed my forehead. 
“Maybe.  Though I noticed some unhappiness before she went back in
September.”
    “She and Benjamin were still
in love then.”
    “Yes.  That didn’t fall apart
until after Christmas.”  I sighed.
    Fran sighed too.  “So, last
summer.”  Fran touched my hand.  “The only traumatic thing I can
think of last summer was Hugh’s death.”
    I did my best to ignore the
familiar stab of regret.  “I don’t see how that could have affected her so
much.”
    She said, “Intimations of
mortality?  Because he was Jared’s father and someone she’d known all her
life?  Because she knew how you once felt—”
    I touched the lapis bracelet on my
wrist, the only one of Hugh’s gifts I had kept.
    “Maybe the futility got to
her,” Fran said, “being caught in the crossfire during a convenience store
hold-up.”
    “While buying flavored
condoms.”  My eyes filled with tears, “Oh, Fran, the dumbest thought
keeps coming back.  If Hugh’d only bought the condoms here in Warfield instead
of in Portland, he’d still be alive—it was such a stupid thing to die
for.”
    “Well, his lady friend was
down there.  Probably he and Alisz didn’t use condoms, and you know how people
talk around here.  Give him credit for being discreet.”
    “Poor Alisz.”
    Fran shrugged.  “It’s too bad
Hugh’s affair got the publicity it did when he was shot, but I always say men
don’t stray if they’re getting what they want at home.”
    I poked at the crumbs on my
plate.  “I wish—I’d give anything to go back twenty years and start
over—”
    “I’m sorry I brought it
up.”  Her arm went around me and she hugged me tightly.
    After a moment I sat up and
reached for my