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was about to say hello when Andrea spoke up."Richard called," Andrea said, not bothering to hide her disgust. She was filing her perfectly manicured nails with vigor, as if trying to scrape a bug off the tips.
    "He did?" Julie asked. "What did he want?"
    "I didn't bother asking," Andrea snapped. "I'm not your secretary, you know."
    Mabel shook her head, as if telling Julie not to worry about it.
    At sixty-three, Mabel was one of Julie's closest friends-that she had been Jim's aunt was almost beside the fact. Mabel had given Julie a job and a place to stay eleven years earlier and Julie would never forget that, but eleven years was long enough for Julie to know she would have enjoyed Mabel's company had none of those things happened.
    It didn't matter to Julie that Mabel was a little eccentric, to put it mildly. In her time here, Julie had learned that practically everyone in town had rather colorful aspects to their personality. But Mabel put the capital E in eccentric, especially in this small, conservative southern town, and it wasn't simply because she had a couple of harmless quirks. Mabel was different compared to others in town, and she, along with everyone else, knew it. Despite three proposals she'd never been married, and this alone disqualified her from the various clubs and groups of people her own age. But even if you ignored her other idiosyncrasies-the fact that she drove a moped to the salon unless it was raining, favored clothing with polka dots, and viewed her Elvis collectibles as "fine art"-Mabel would still be regarded as positively odd for something she'd done over a quarter century ago. When she was thirty-six, after living in Swansboro her entire life, she moved away without telling anyone where she was going or even that she was leaving at all. For the next eight years, she sent postcards to her family from around the world; Ayers Rock in Australia, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, the fjords in Norway, Hong Kong Harbor, the Wawel in Poland. When she finally returned to Swansboro-showing up as unexpectedly as she'd left in the first place-she took up right where she'd left off, moving back into the same house and going to work in the salon again. No one knew why she did it or where she got the money to travel or buy the shop a year later, nor did she ever answer questions about it when asked. "It's a mystery," she'd say with a wink, and this only added to the whispered speculations of the townspeople not only that Mabel's past was a bit unsavory, but that she had more than a couple of broken cups in the china cabinet.
    Mabel didn't care what people thought, and to Julie this was part of her charm. Mabel dressed the way she wanted, associated with whom she wanted, and did the things she wanted. More than once, Julie wondered whether Mabel's quirks were real or whether she simply played them up to keep people wondering about her. Either way, Julie adored everything about her. Even her tendency to pry.
    "So how'd it go with Richard?" Mabel asked.
    "Well, to be honest, I was a little worried about you the whole time," Julie said. "I thought you might pull a neck muscle if you craned your head any farther trying to listen in."
    "Oh, don't worry about that," Mabel said. "A little Tylenol and I was good as new the next day. But stop changing the subject. Did it go okay?"
    "It went well, considering I just met him."
    "From where I was sitting, it almost looked like he knew you from somewhere."
    "Why do you say that?"
    "I don't know. His expression, I guess, or maybe it was the way he kept staring at you all night. For a second there, I thought his eyes were attached to you by an invisible string."
    "It wasn't that obvious, was it?"
    "Honey, he looked like a sailor on shore leave, watching a girlie show."
    Julie laughed as she slipped into her smock. "I guess I must have dazzled him."
    "I suppose."
    Something in her tone made Julie look up. "What? You didn't like him?"
    "I'm not saying that. I haven't even met him