“Or if you’d like to come,” said Harry Brendan; after one rapid glance at Sarah’s face he turned away, as if to divert attention from it.
“Of course,” said Kate Clemence after a tiny lag. She stood against the dining room fireplace, dressed in the clothes that suited her best: gray ski jacket, its hood back, impeccably tapered gray ski pants that set off her long legs. Her ragged dark hair looked brilliantly black by contrast, so did the brows over the great gray eyes. “Preston isn’t what you might call a shopping center—but I keep forgetting that you know the town.”
So you do, thought Sarah. She said to an imaginary third person between Harry and Kate, “If you don’t mind an extra passenger, I would like to come,” and went to get her coat.
She came back to find them congregated in the kitchen: Evelyn stirring something at the stove, Bess sorting quail eggs for shipping, Harry Brendan leaning against the sink and gazing with exasperation at Kate, who sat at the kitchen table with an air of permanence. She had taken off her jacket. She said to Harry, not turning her head as Sarah entered, “No, really, I’d rather. I had nothing pressing to do anyway, and frankly I’ve gotten so comfortable here . . . Do you think I could have a drink, Bess, in honor of its being Saturday?”
The last had a faintly driven air, like a wisp of steam escaping from under a clamped-down lid. In the car, Sarah said without expression, “Did Charles know she was in love with him, do you suppose?”
Harry backed clear of the gatepost. “They were unofficially engaged at one point.” After a short pause she could feel his glance swing to her silent profile and away again. “Years ago. Long before you came on the scene.”
. . . And what else, Sarah wondered astoundedly, might Charles not have bothered to tell her? Sunny, open, clear-as-a-book Charles . . . well, in a way it served her right. It bordered on arrogance to presume that anybody at all was that uncomplicated. Or had there been something about the breaking-off with Kate Clemence that made it a matter of ethics with him not to mention it?
She said after another string of telephone poles had gone by, “What happened?” and saw Harry Brendan’s hand lift from the steering wheel and then drop back. “Nothing,” he said, but his voice sounded different, puzzled. “It just dwindled off.”
“About the time of his father’s marriage to Nina Clemence.”
Harry swung the car in at the snowy curb in front of one of the shops and turned to face her. He said in what sounded like an indictment, “Sarah, you were fond enough of Charles to marry him. Do you realize what you’re trying to prove?”
The strap of her calf handbag, holding what it held, seemed to burn across Sarah’s wrist. “Yes,” she said, and got out of the car.
The drugstore’s phone booth was occupied. Sarah bought cigarettes, equipping herself with quarters and dimes, and walked half a block to a street booth. After an interval of long-distance queries and clickings and coins rattling out of the chute and having to be deposited again, she was connected with Dr. Vollmer’s office in New York.
It was either a bad connection or the waiting room was being redecorated with a power drill. After a good deal of repetition on both sides, Dr. Vollmer’s absence at a convention was established, and—would Mrs. Trafton hold on a minute—the fact that Mr. Trafton had come in for his last appointment on December first. Of course there was no possibility of error, their records were most accurate. In fact, that had been Dr. Vollmer’s mother’s birthday and he had been particularly anxious to leave the office on time. (Aha, mother complex, Doctor?) The nurse remembered quite clearly that as an earlier patient had delayed him, Dr. Vollmer had had to shorten Mr. Trafton’s alloted hour by fifteen minutes.
And there it was. Sarah had thought she was sure before, but all at once her forced detachment shattered like glass; she had to clench her free hand to keep it from shaking. She said through the rushing in her ears, “What did Mr. Trafton look like?”
The far-off voice said angrily, “Just one moment. Who is this speaking, please?” The operator came on, requesting more coins; Sarah cried, “Wait! Please—” and her unsteady fingers sent her neatly-spread change rattling off the shelf. Someone tapped metallically on the glass door of the booth, and she turned her head distractedly to see Milo Gideon smiling blandly at her and holding up a quarter.
Sarah hung up the receiver without a word. She gathered her gloves and purse and opened the door, feeling the icy air in every pore of her damp body; to bend and search for her scattered change was, for the moment, beyond her.
Milo did that, puffing exaggeratedly, straightening to say chidingly, “Tsk tsk. Easy come, easy go. Here you are.” He dropped the coins into her hand and tipped his round head to one side, studying her brightly. “Evelyn was monopolizing the phone at home, I take it, because Bess isn’t that mean about the phone bill. I happened to see Harry’s car there as I came out of the dentist’s, and somehow I thought I might find you. Do you know that tooth of mine is so inflamed the dentist can’t do anything with it yet?”
Sarah would not be subjected to an intimate view of Milo’s mouth, which seemed imminent. She said rapidly, “How awful,” and somehow Milo stood directly in the path of the step she started to take away.
“It promises to be my Operation,” he said mournfully, but his owlish face, without changing a single plump line, had grown as cold and sharp as ice. “What did you think of my portrait of Nina, by the way?”
So it had not been all
