receiver in her hand for a moment before hanging it up. As she poured herself another cup of coffee, she suddenly made up her mind.
Jim was right—she couldn’t hang around the house all day. She quickly drained the coffee cup, then began dressing for work.
For Sally Montgomery, there was a chill to the morning that even the spring sun couldn’t penetrate. She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, studying the strange, haggard image that confronted her—slender arms wrapped protectively around a body she barely recognized as her own, hair limply framing a face etched with lines of exhaustion that even careful makeup hadn’t been able to erase—and wondered how she was going to get through this day.
The sounds of morning drifted up the stairs, unfamiliar, for it should have been herself rattling around the kitchen, murmuring to Steve, urging Jason to hurry up. Instead it was her mother’s voice she heard, and even the sounds of the coffeepot beine put back on the stove and the frying pan clunking softly as it was placed in the sink bore the unmistakably purposeful tenor of her mother’s efficiency. She moved to the closet and tried to decide what to wear.
She owned nothing black, never had. Navy blue? Her hands, shaking slightly, plucked a suit from a hanger. Something caught, and instead of stopping to disentangle the unseen snarl, Sally simply yanked at it. The rasping sound of a seam giving way raked across her nerves, and she knew she was going to cry.
I won’t, she told herself. Not now. Not over a torn seam. Later. Later, I’ll cry. She glanced at the tear in the lining of her suit jacket and felt that she’d won a small victory.
She went to her dresser next, and as she was about to open the second drawer where all her blouses lay neatly folded in tissue paper, her eyes fell on a picture of Julie. The tiny face, screwed into an expression somewhere between laughter and fury, seemed to mock her and reproach her at the same time. Now the tears did come. Sally backed away from the picture, sank to her bed, and buried her face in her hands.
That was how Steve found her a few moments later. He paused at the door, watching his wife, his heart aching not only for her, but for his own inability to comfort her, then crossed the room to sit beside her. With gentle hands he lifted her face and kissed her. “Honey? Is there anything …” He left the sentence unfinished, knowing there was no real way to complete it.
“… anything wrong?” Sally finished for him. “Anything you can do for me? I don’t know. Oh, Steve, I—I just looked at her picture, and it all came apart. It was like she was staring at me. Like she wanted to know what happened, wanted to know if it was a joke, or if I was mad at her, or—oh, God, I don’t know.”
Steve held her for a moment, sharing the pain of the moment but knowing there was nothing he could do to ease it Then Sally pulled away from him and stood up.
“I’ll be all right,” she said, more to herself than to her husband. “I’ll get dressed, and I’ll come downstairs, and I’ll eat breakfast I’ll take each moment as it comes, and I’ll get through.” She took a deep breath, then went once more to her dresser. This time she kept her eyes carefully averted from the picture of Julie as she opened the drawer and took out a soft silk blouse. Then, taking her pantyhose with her, she disappeared into the bathroom.
Steve stayed on in the bedroom for a while, his eyes fixed on the picture of his daughter, then suddenly he turned the picture face down on the dresser top. A moment later he was gone, back to the kitchen where his son was waiting for him.
Chapter 7
THE CAR MOVED SLOWLY through the streets of Eastbury, and Sally found herself looking out at the town and its people with a strange detachment she had only felt a few times before. The last time had been when her father had died, and she had been driven through these same streets toward the same cemetery. On that day, as their car passed through the center of town, where the charm of old New England had still been carefully preserved, the people of Eastbury had nodded respectfully toward Sally and her