"Lily, I know you and I have never gotten close. But I don't have a sister, and I hope you'll be one to me."

I was repelled. Emotional appeals were not the way to make a relationship happen.

"You don't know how hard it's always been for Varena."

I raised my eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Being your sister."

I took a deep breath. I held my hand palm up. Explain?

"She would kill me if she knew I was saying this." He shook his head at his own daring. "She never felt as pretty as you, as smart as you."

That didn't matter now. It hadn't mattered for more than a decade.

"Varena," I began, and my voice sounded rusty, "is a grown woman. We haven't been teenagers for years."

"When you're a younger sister, apparently you have baggage you carry with you always. Varena thinks so, anyway. She always felt like an also-ran. With your parents. With your teachers. With your boyfriends."

What c.r.a.p was this ? I gave Dill a cold stare.

"And when you got raped ..."

I'll give him that, he went right on and said the word.

"... and all the focus was on you, and all you wanted was to get rid of it, I think in some way it gave Varena some . . . satisfaction."

Which would have made her feel guilty.

"And of course, she began to feel guilty about that, about even feeling a particle of righteousness about your getting hurt."

"Your point being?"

"You don't seem happy to be here. At the wedding. In the town. You don't seem happy for your sister."

I couldn't quite see the connection between the two statements. Was I supposed to wag my tail since Varena was getting married . . . because she'd felt guilty when I got raped? I didn't have any active animosity toward Dill Kingery, so I tried to work through his thought.

I shook my head. I wasn't making any connections. "Since Varena wants to marry you, I'm glad she is," I said cautiously. I wasn't about to apologize for being who I was, what I had become.

Dill looked at me. He sighed. "Well, that's as good as it's gonna get, I guess," he said, with a tight little smile.

Guess so.

"What about you?" I asked. "You married one unstable wife. Your mother's not exactly predictable. I hope you see nothing like that in Varena."

He threw back his head and laughed.

"You take the cake, you really do, Lily," he said, shaking his head. He didn't seem to find that endearing. "You don't say much, but you go for the throat when you decide to talk. I think that's what your parents have been dying to ask me for the past two years."

I waited.

"No," he said, quite seriously now. "I see nothing like that in Varena. But that's why I dated her for so long. That's why our engagement went on forever. I had to be sure. For my sake, and especially for Anna's sake. I think Varena is the sanest woman I ever met."

"Did your wife 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 gla.s.ses 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 divorce and the baby she'd lost to crib death. We didn't need to talk about my past; it was too well known. But Mary asked me some questions about Shakespeare, about my daily life, and to my pleasure it was easy to answer.

She, too, asked if I was seeing someone special.

"Yes," I said, trying not to stare down at my hands. "A man from Little Rock. Jack Leeds."

"Oh, is he the ponytail guy who showed up at the wedding rehearsal?"

"Yeah," I said, not even trying to look up this time. "How'd you know?" Why was I even asking, knowing the Bartley grapevine as I did?

"Lou O'Shea was in yesterday. She and Jess have a bed on layaway for Krista for Christmas."

"They seem like a nice couple," I said.

"Yeah, they are," Mary Maude agreed, dipping a french fry in a puddle of ketchup. She'd made a trail of paper napkins to keep her winter white in a pristine state. "They sure are having a hard time with that Krista since they had Luke."

"That's what I hear. You reckon she feels unloved now that the little boy's here?"

"I suppose, though they were real open with her about her being adopted and telling her they loved her enough to pick her out. But I guess maybe she feels like Luke is really theirs, and she isn't."

I said I hadn't realized that the O'Sheas were so open about Krista being adopted.

"Lou more than Jess," Mary Maude commented. "Lou has always been more out-front than her husband, but I guess he's had more practice at keeping secrets, him being a minister and all."

Ministers do have to keep a lot of secrets. I hadn't thought of that before. I got up to get some more tea-and another napkin for Mary Maude.

"Lou tells me the man you're seeing is quite a looker," Mary Maude said slyly, bringing the conversation back to the most interesting topic.

It had never occurred to me someone as conventional as Lou O'Shea would find him so. "Yes."

"Is he sweet to you?" Mary Maude sounded wistful.

This was everyone's day to want to know about Jack. First Anna, now Mary Maude. Weddings must bring it out in women. "Sweet," I said, trying the word on Jack to see how it fit. "No. He's not sweet."

Surprise hiked up Mary Maude's eyebrows. "Not sweet! Well, then! Is he rich?"

"No," I answered without hesitation.

"Then why are you seeing him?" Suddenly her cheeks got pinker, and she looked simultaneously delighted and embarra.s.sed. "Is he . . . ?"

"Yes," I told her, trying not to look as self-conscious as I felt.

"Oh, girl," said Mary Maude, shaking her head and giggling- "Emory is single now," I observed, trying to steer the conversation away from me and into a channel that might lead to some knowledge.

She didn't waste time looking shocked. "Never in a million years," Mary Maude told me as she consumed her last french fry.

"Why are you so sure about that?"

"Aside from the fact that now it would mean taking on a newborn baby and an eight-year-old girl, there's the man himself. I never met anyone as hard to read as Emory. He's polite as the day is long, he never uses bad language, he's ... yes, he is ... sweet. sweet. Old ladies just love him. But Emory's not a simple man, and he's not my idea of red-blooded." Old ladies just love him. But Emory's not a simple man, and he's not my idea of red-blooded."

"Oh?"

"Not that I think he's gay," Mary Maude protested hastily. "It's just that, for example, we were outside the store watching the Harvest Festival parade, back in September, and all the beauty queens were coming by riding on the top of the convertibles, like we did?"

I'd completely forgotten that. Maybe that was why riding in the Shakespeare parade had plowed up my feelings so deeply?

"And Emory just wasn't interested. You know? You can tell when a man is appreciating women. And he wasn't. He enjoyed the floats and the bands. He loved the little girls, you know, Little Miss Pumpkin Patch, that kind of thing, and he told me he'd even thought of entering Eve, but his wife didn't like the idea. But those big gals in their sequin dresses and push-up bras didn't do a thing for Emory. No, I'm going to have to look farther than the furniture store to find someone to date."

I made an indeterminate noise.

"Now, we were talking earlier about Lou and Jess O'Shea. They were watching that parade catty-corner to where I was standing, and believe me, honey! That Jess can enjoy grown-up women!"

"But he doesn't... ?"

"Oh, Lord, no! He is devoted to Lou. But he's not blind, either." Mary Maude looked at her watch. "Oh, girl! I have to get back."

We tossed our litter into a can and walked out still talking. Well, Mary Maude was talking, and I was listening, but I was agreeable to listening. And when I dropped her off at Makepeace Furniture, I gave her a quick hug.

I couldn't think of anywhere to go but back to my parents' house.

I walked right into yet another crisis. The couples dinner in honor of Varena and Dill, which had been rescheduled at least twice, was once again endangered. The high school senior who had been booked to baby-sit Krista, her little brother Luke, and Anna had caught the flu.

According to Varena, who was sitting at the kitchen table with the tiny Bartley phone book open before her, she and Lou had called every adolescent known to baby-sit in Bartley, and all of them were either flu victims or already attending a teen Christmas party the Methodist church was giving.