Shakespeares Christmas Page 0,58

ever threaten to hurt Anna?"

He turned white as a sheet. I'd never seen anyone pale so fast. "What - how - " He was spluttering.

"Before she killed herself, did she threaten to hurt Anna?"

It was like I was a cobra and he was a mouse.

"What have you heard?" he choked out.

"Just a guess. Did she try to hurt Anna?"

"Please go now," he said finally. "Lily, please go."

I'd certainly handled that well. What a masterly interrogation! At least, I reflected, Dill and I had been equally unpleasant to each other, though I might have the edge since I'd talked about something new, something that wasn't common currency in Bartley - at least, judging by Dill's reaction.

I was willing to bet I wouldn't be invited to go on vacations with Dill and Varena.

It seemed possible that Dill's first wife had been capable - at least in Dill's estimation - of harming her baby. And page 23 was missing from a memory book that was most probably Anna's.

I understood what the word "heartsick" meant. I tried to comfort myself with the thought of Anna's birthmark. At least I'd learned one fact.

As I backed out of Dill's driveway I discovered I didn't want to go home.

I began cruising aimlessly - shades of being a teenager, when "riding around" had been a legitimate activity - and didn't know where I was going until I found myself parking at the town square.

I went into the furniture store, and a bell tinkled as the door swung shut. Mary Maude Plummer was typing something into a computer at a desk behind a high counter in the middle of the store. Reading glasses perched at the end of her nose, and she was wearing her business face, competent and no-nonsense.

"Can I help you?" she asked and then looked up from the computer screen. "Oh, Lily!" she said happily, her face changing from the inside out.

"Come go riding," I suggested. "I've got the car."

"Your mom let you have it?" Mary Maude dissolved in giggles. She glanced around at the empty store. "Maybe I can, really! Emory," she called. Out of the shadows at the back of the store, Emory Osborn materialized like a thin, blond ghost.

"Hello, Miss Bard," he said, his voice wispy.

"Emory, can you watch the store while I take my lunch hour?" Mary Maude asked in the gentle, earnest voice you use with slow children. "Jerry and Sam should be back in just a minute."

"Sure," Emory said. He looked as if a good wind would whisk him away.

"Thanks." Mary Maude fished her purse from some hidden spot under the counter.

When we were far enough away that Emory couldn't hear us, Mary Maude muttered, "He should never have tried to come to work today. But his sister's here, and she's managing the home front, so I think he didn't have anything else to do."

We went out the front door like two girls skipping school. I noticed how professional and groomed Mary Maude looked in her winter white suit, a sharp, unwelcome contrast to me in my sweats.

"I've been cleaning Dill's house," I explained, suddenly self-conscious. I couldn't remember apologizing for my clothes, not for years.

"That's what you do for a living now?" Mary Maude asked as she buckled up.

"Yep," I said flatly.

"Boy, did you ever think I'd end up selling furniture and you'd end up cleaning it?"

We shook our heads simultaneously.

"I'll bet you're tops at what you do," Mary said, matter-of-factly.

I was surprised and oddly touched. "I'll bet you sell a lot of furniture," I offered and was even more surprised to find that I meant it.

"I do pretty well," she answered, her voice offhand. She looked at me, and her face crinkled in a smile. "You know, Lily, sometimes I just can't believe we grew up!"

That was never my problem. "Sometimes I can't remember I was ever a teen," I said.

"But here we are, alive, in good health, single but not without hope, and backed by family and friends," Mary Maude said, almost chanting.

I raised my eyebrows.

"I have to practice counting my blessings all the time," she explained, and I laughed. "See, that didn't hurt," she said.

We ate lunch at a fast-food place decorated with tinsel and lights and artificial snow. A Santa Claus robot nodded and waved from a plastic sleigh.

For a little while we just got used to each other. We talked about people we'd known and where they were now, how many times they'd been married and to whom. Mary Maude touched on her