"I know you've done this before, but just a reminder... all four feet of the walker need to be on the floor

before you make your first step. The walker goes first, then your sore leg, then your good leg. Are you ready?"

Mary opened her eyes and nodded.

Tess was the worst possible nurse. She had always loved her mother, but moving along beside her during her first hesitant steps with the walker was traumatic. She discovered she was holding her breath, glancing from Mary's white knuckles to her grim face, from her moist forehead to the sheen of tears the patient couldn't keep from her determined eyes. Her legs looked like kegs, bound in those thick, flesh-colored PEDs. Everything about her seemed foreign, and Tess felt as if she never knew the right thing to say. Give her a crowd of ten thousand to entertain, but not one mother in pain.

"You're doing great, Mom," she tried, after Mary's first three steps, then overanxiously to Virginia, "Isn't she doing great?"

"Absolutely. There's no hurry, Mary. Take your time."

Tess repeated silently, Take your time, take your time, wishing she were anywhere but in that hospital room.

"Keep all your weight on the walker and don't look at your feet."

"Look up," Virginia instructed.

Mary went six feet that first time with the walker. Each step was arduous, a repeat of the pain suffered two years earlier, pain to which Tess had been oblivious until now. She was amazed by her mother's courage to face this a second time, knowing what she'd have to go through, and chagrined with herself for her chickenheartedness.

By the time the patient was returned to bed, it was hard to say who was more relieved, Mary or her daughter. Tess got Mary's adductor pillow and helped tuck it between her knees, covered her with the sheet, rolled up the towel she'd used to lift her leg, and put it in a bedside drawer. Mary looked worn and frail, and Tess again searched for a distraction to offer. Suddenly she remembered.

"Oh, I brought your mail!" she announced brightly, digging it out of her large gray bag. "Looks like you got some cards. Want me to open them for you?"

Mary lay with her eyes closed, her breathing labored. "In a minute."

Tess felt stupid for making the suggestion at the wrong moment. She would never be natural at this the way her sisters were. She bent down and felt awkward drying Mary's forehead with the sweep of a palm. She kissed Mary's forehead, and even that felt forced. "Of course. There's time for that later. You rest awhile first."

Mary nodded without opening her eyes and Tess was left to sit on a chair watching her and wishing she were someplace else.

Renee came later that morning and brought her daughter, Rachel, with her. They both seemed so natural at saying and doing the right thing. "How ya doing today, Momma?" Renee said, bending over the bed and kissing her mother. "Did they get you up to walk?"

"A little."

"And it was awful, I know. But this afternoon will be better and tomorrow better than that. Look who I brought."

Rachel stepped close. "Hi, Grandma."

"Rachel, darling." Mary rolled over and smiled wanly.

"Mom and I made you some cookies. The chocolate ones rolled in powdered sugar that you like so much."

"Top-of-the-Mountains?" She immediately brightened and made an effort to push herself up. "Where are they?"

While Renee uncovered the tin, Rachel found a chance to greet her aunt. "Hi, Aunt Tess, I haven't seen you yet."

"Hi, Rachel." They hugged a little stiffly: they scarcely knew each other. "How are the wedding plans coming?"

"Perfect. All we need is sun. I'm so glad you'll be home for it."

"Oh, Tess, look at these cookies," Mary said, already more animated since the two had arrived and brought the treats. "You've got to have one."

"No, thanks, Mom."

"Oh, what's one little cookie going to hurt?" Mary was looking into the tin as she spoke.

Renee said, "Mom, you know she doesn't eat this kind of stuff," and Mary stopped insisting.

The longer Tess was home the more she realized that her sisters were probably right, she was out of touch with her family. She couldn't have guessed that her mother preferred dark chocolate candy, or what kind of cookies were her favorite. She scarcely knew enough about Rachel to carry on a comfortable conversation. After the obligatory hug they found little to say, while Rachel and Renee found plenty to visit with Mary about.

Shortly after Renee and Rachel arrived, Faith Oxbury showed up, dressed in a pastel print dress, jewelry and pumps, bearing a big vase of irises.

"Hello there," she said cheerfully from the doorway. "Is there anyone in here with a brand-new hip?"

"Faith," they all chorused. "Hello!"

Tess straightened up and took notice of this woman whose car was parked across the alley most nights after work.

"Mary, dear, how are you? The nurses tell me that you've been up already and have taken a few steps. I'll bet you're glad it's over and all you have to do is file your insurance papers." She set down the flowers and kissed the patient's cheek. Then she stood at the bedside squeezing both Mary's hands, and looking right into her eyes. "I'm so glad the worst part is over for you. I can't tell you how many times I thought of you day before yesterday."

"Oh, thank you, Faith. That means so much to me."

"Kenny sends his best and tells me to give you a big kiss, so that's from him. And the irises, too. I picked them in his yard."

"They're absolutely gorgeous. Thank you again."

"And something from Casey, who says she'll try to come up tonight after supper." From her purse Faith extracted a card. "She made it." Mary read it aloud.

"Certain people leave a glow, Love-dust everywhere they go, Smiles and cheer and happy-dom, Hurry home and sprinkle some."

Everyone murmured appreciatively and the card got passed around. When it reached Tess she read the additional note Casey had put at the bottom. " 'Hospitals are best when you're getting out of them. Glad you're coming this way soon. Miss you! Love, Casey.' "

As Tess closed the card, Faith said, "Mary, I haven't met your other daughter yet, though I waved to her from the back step last night." She approached Tess and took both of her hands as she'd done to Mary earlier. "I'm Faith Oxbury."

Tess squeezed back. "Hi, Faith. I'm Tess."

"And you're every bit as pretty as your pictures." Faith had the rare combination of sincerity and candor that struck the perfect chord with Tess. She recognized immediately what a genuinely kind woman she was. ' "Thank you."

"And as nice, if Casey can be believed." Tess chuckled at Faith's directness. "Thank you again."

"She thinks you can walk on water. That's all we've heard around the house since you came home is Mac, Mac, Mac. You have that girl absolutely glowing."

"Well, I don't know why. I didn't do much."

"You respected her music, that was enough. I think you have a disciple for life."

Faith finally released Tess's hands.

Tess said, "So she told you she and I are writing a song together?"

"Told us! Why, that's all the girl can talk about! She's been up in her room playing her guitar and singing

constantly since you got here."

"I didn't know she played guitar."

"Oh, yes. Since she was ten and her hands got big enough."

"Well, I'd like to hear her sometime." That was a statement Tess rarely made, but speaking the words

today, she truly meant them. Undiscovered talents were always trying to get to her, perform for her, but

most were not allowed. Yet Casey she welcomed, for reasons she had not clearly defined.

Faith was saying, "I'm sure all you'd have to do is say the word and she'd have it at your door. Her father is concerned that she's bothering you, though, coming across the alley too much."

"Oh, no, not at all. Will you tell her, by the way, that I like the second verse?"

"Second verse?"

"She'll understand."

Faith smiled. "I'll tell her."

Tess liked Faith Oxbury. There was nothing about her not to like. She was very genuine, charitable, kind

to Mary, obviously as dear a friend to the entire family as Kenny was, and more than likely a wonderful

influence on Casey.

What bothered Tess was that she found herself analyzing Faith not in light of all this, but in light of the fact that she was, from all apparent evidence, Kenny Kronek's longtime paramour.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

At seven o'clock that evening, Kenny and Faith had the house to themselves as they got ready for their weekly night of bridge. Casey had driven her rusty pickup over to Poplar Bluff to visit Mary at the hospital, and Faith had finished putting away the sandwich fixings from their quick supper. She closed the dishwasher, hung up the dishcloth underneath the sink and took a squirt of hand lotion from the bottle she kept on the windowsill. Rubbing it into her hands she passed through the living room to the only downstairs bedroom, the one she always used to change her clothes whenever she was here. It had been Kenny's parents' room, but after they were both gone, he'd never wanted to use it as his own. He always said, "It was theirs. It's where I remember the two of them being. I'm just as comfortable upstairs."

His mother had been a widow already when Kenny's wife, Stephanie, declared out of the clear blue sky that she didn't want to be married any longer and was leaving Casey and him and taking a trip to Paris, which she'd always wanted to see, and from there she didn't know where. All she knew was that living in this small town with its change-lessness and dearth of culture was strangling her. She was sorry, but she simply had to go.

It was natural that Kenny, left in shock with a seven-year-old daughter, move back in with his mother, who took care of both of them until she had a stroke and lost the use of her left hand. Then the two of them took care of her until she had died two years ago. It had been a workable exchange and they'd gotten along extremely well.

Since her death, the house had remained largely unchanged. It had been Kenny's home for most of his life and he liked it as it was, even though it had only one bathroom, and that on the main floor next to his parents' old bedroom. The bathroom was a barn of a room, papered in yellow nosegays with a huge claw-foot tub and a lot of wasted space. It had a wide window that stretched from shoulder level down to ankle level-peculiar in a bathroom, Faith had always thought-but it looked out into a huge ornamental pear tree and had a white shutter on its lower half, so privacy was no problem. The room still held an antique washstand shaped like a small dresser in which Lucille had kept towels. On top of it, the attached towel bar still held two of Lucille's embroidered linen towels, which Faith washed and starched and ironed twice a year when they got dusty.

Faith was getting a washcloth out of the top drawer when Kenny came clumping downstairs and stopped in the bathroom doorway. He watched her as she wet the cloth and wiped off her face, peering in the mirror above the wall-hung sink. She was dressed in a pair of pleated beige trousers, beige flats and a white rayon blouse with pearl buttons and pleats down the front.

Circling wide around her eyes with the damp washcloth, she said, "I hope I don't get Midge Randolph for my partner tonight. She always plays for blood."

Kenny was thinking of something else. "I had an interesting talk with Casey after you went home last night," he told her.

"About what?" she asked, taking a compact from a glass shelf above the sink and snapping it open.

"About a number of things. You and me mostly."

Faith rubbed powder on her face. "What about you and me?"

"She was wondering if we're ever going to get married."

Faith closed the compact and opened another. "Sounds like the same conversation I had with Casey,"

she said, applying rouge with a foam pad.

"Are we?" Kenny asked placidly.

"I don't know, Kenny. Are we?"

He wandered into the room, propped a hand on the towel bar of the dresser and let it take his weight.

"We haven't talked about it for quite a while."

"I assumed you didn't want to talk about it."

"Well..." he said, and let the thought hang.