CHAPTER ONE


     The March lion was not giving way to the lamb. North and inland it was still snowing. But along south-coastal New England the weather fussed between heavy downpours that soaked to the bone and icy mists that give hair, wool sweaters and dog's fur a cold dewy coating.
     Eva Kidwell, Mercedes Hebert and I, in layers of clothing under hooded wind-breakers, defied the cold, early morning drizzle to walk the beach. Compadres through ten hectic years in the childrearing trenches, we walked to keep in touch, keep fit and, for me mostly, pound off fat.
     The air out at the beach smelled like decaying seaweed and our conversation was just as dead.
     Merce and I had been out of sorts all winter. I was uninspired and lethargic, putting one foot in front of the other. Without bounce. She was struggling with her aging mother’s deteriorating health and seemed to be hanging onto sanity by an eyelash.
     Levelheaded Eva finally broke the silence. "Okay, Merce. So how many are coming tomorrow?"
     "Seventy five. Thereabouts." In the dark depths of February, Mercedes had decided that a great big, immoderate cocktail party was just what she needed to shake off winter and bring some levity to life.
     "At this point I don't know why I'm doing it.” Her chin and mouth were tucked into a Kelly green cashmere scarf that squabbled with her black and deep purple parka. Not up to her usual refinement. "I’d rather have gone to Key West."
     A few yards ahead a flock of fifty or so least terns lined the water's edge, strung out on top of the humps of seaweed that marked high tide, their backs to the beach, their sharp, slender beaks pointed into the on-shore wind.  As we approached the closest birds took off and flew out over the water. Groups of fifteen or so followed in succession, hovering briefly, waiting for us to pass then calmly returning to land.
     At the end of the beach, we turned and started back, straight into a gust of wind that kicked sand into our faces. "Damn!" I gasped from the blast of air and stinging sand. "I need spring! I need asparagus. Soft-shell crabs.  Key lime pie." I screamed back at the wind.
     Mercedes looked at me for a split second as if she'd just woken from a trance. "I need warmth!  Blossoms. Gin and tonics."
     “Heat.  Silk.  Steamy skin.” Eva shrieked.
     The terns, now wading in the shallow water, rose into the air. This time they flew away. We headed back to Barrow’s Lane.

     Ten years ago Hal was a junior partner in a New York law firm. I worked in a journalistic pressure-cooker as a research associate and contributing writer for Newsweek. Until one day, with two small children cared for by a nanny and walked on a leash to go out and play, we came to our senses. Kids had altered our lives; we needed to make some changes.
     Deciding what that change would be took time and hard soul-searching. The answer finally jumped at us during our annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to our roots in Massachusetts - a For Sale sign in front of the only surviving inn in my hometown of Sutton. Under it, a board hung askew, flapping in the wind, saying “Price Reduced”. To us it seemed to say "Salvation. Adventure. Home."
     The move took us from life in the crackling synapse of the city to life in the world of small town memory; from mentally challenging and versatile work to physically demanding and often routine chores.
     In the long run, the choice suited us. Spring through fall was arduous, but we liked testing our ingenuity. In the winter we closed Thistle House, in part to recharge our batteries and in part because no one in their right mind would vacation in the cold, wet, windy southern coast of New England from December through April.
     I left Merce and Eva at their driveways and ambled fifty feet further down the lane to Thistle House. As I walked up the gravel drive the yard mimicked the monotony that had depleted me all this winter ... bleak gray and black trees, and dun-colored grass. Dead brown leaves stuck in the peeling white picket fence. A spot of bright blue, fluttering in the still sleeping perennial bed in front of the fence, caught my eye. I walked over and bent down to pick it up. It was a dead blue jay.
     "Damned cats."
     I went into the barn, got a trowel and walked back to bury it. Easing the blade under the body I lifted it up to carry it into the woods for its final rest. Instead of the ripped wings I'd expect from a cat attack, the limp lifeless body was intact except for a hole in its chest. Gingerly holding it between my left thumb and forefinger, and turning it over, I could see the hole went all the way through. Not the kind of damage done by a domestic tabby practicing his hunting skills. More like a human practicing his.
      A quick shutter of revulsion made me dispose of it quickly, burying it deep in a large black plastic garbage bag in the barn, and scuttle inside to a shower and the growing mounds of inn business.
     The rest of the morning continued cold and edgy. Every gust of northeast wind rattled the old inn’s windows and sent a chill through the downstairs rooms. My office was stuffed into an interior nook underneath the front and back staircases. Hunkering down to wade through the sea of papers, bills, menus and recipes that covered most of the available surfaces in the tiny workplace, I was, at least, in a room that was cozier than the rooms with rattling windows.
     I kept at it into the early afternoon when my grumbling stomach drove me out into the open. I was sitting at the kitchen table finishing off yesterday's leftover roast chicken when Andy, our first born, burst through the back door wearing his light nylon windbreaker for a jacket ... hardly adequate for walking down the road from the school bus in March, with New England’s thin winter light and damp blustery air. With a cold gust trailing behind him he dropped his heavy load of books, stripped off his windbreaker and slipped out of his sneakers right inside the door. Standing there in his black Pearl Jam tee shirt and his fraying-hem khakis, he blew into his cupped hands to warm them up.
     “Hi. There are cookies if you’re hungry. They’re still warm.”
     “Thanks.”
     “How was schoo…”
     “I'm going up to my room," cut me short, and he was gone, bouncing an imaginary basketball, dodging the table and chairs as if they were a scrappy opponent he had just dusted. At fifteen, he was fully entrenched in adolescent inaccessibility. Recently he had told me that I should pack my need to be his confidant away with his baby shoes.  One day, I told myself, he’ll be back.
     I closed the door, cleaned up my lunch and went to the laundry room, just off the kitchen. Just enough time for folding a load and starting another. The school’s bus schedules, staggered according to school level, meant a 30 minute lag between the time each of our kids got home. Unless after school activities changed their schedules.
     The sun was slanting low through the laundry windows when I heard the door scraped open again, turned, and in blew Sweetpea, along with a second blast of raw air.
     Our twelve-year-old daughter’s real name is Jennifer. Sweetpea is a baby name that outlived the nursery and got cemented to her when she went off to kindergarten with a gaggle of other Jennifers scattered through grades K to Six.
     "Hello. How was schoo..?" She dumped her backpack next to Andy’s and swept past me to the kitchen table, a huge clue that things were not going well today for her. A stain on her blouse was my second clue.
     "If you give me your blouse, I can probably get the stain out," was my laundry-obsessed remark.
     “Maahaam! Can't you leave me alone?  I spilled a little soup on my shirt at lunch. It was so humiliating! Everyone laughed." She covered the stain with her jacket and left the kitchen.
     With another scrape and cold gust, the last of our kids came through the door. My third "Hello. How was school?" finally got an upbeat response.
     “Mom. I have homework!”
     The innocence of younger siblings. They think the things that the older ones do are the keys that unlock the door to all the good the future holds. To Peter, getting homework was like being given a chance to hit some balls thrown by Curt Shilling.
     "Peter, that's great! How about some cookies? Then you can start in on it.
     He stepped over Andy’s shoes, dropped his jacket amid the growing debris, sat down at the table and snagged a handful of cookies, all in ten seconds.
     “I’m going to go over to Jasper Koontz’s to shoot some hoops and tell him about my homework. He’s in another class and probably doesn’t have any yet.”
     I smiled and stopped myself from squashing his ebullience by again mentioning doing the homework he was so elated about. His zeal would leave on its own in due time.
     A loud, sharp bark from the farmer’s porch meant Toots knew the kids were home and wanted in. I tugged open the door, letting in a fourth blast of cold, damp air. Toots trotted over to the debris pile, gave it a sniff and lay his seventy-pound furry body down on Peter’s jacket.
     I went back to the laundry room and picked up a balled up sock from the floor. They come down the chute, into the washer, into the dryer, into the laundry baskets, back upstairs into drawers, and down the chute again. Like that great Hindu wheel of fortune.
     The call of spring's first flock of geese, returning from their winter vacation, drifted through the growing dark. I looked out the window at the great flying V honking and signaling flight instructions to each other on their hunt for a sanctuary for the night. I turned around and went out, walking around the side yard into the back, scanning the skies to follow the flock.
     Their annual feat of repatriation back to Canada buoyedme up every spring. It seemed to me the embodiment of the rightness of routine and tradition. Spirits in charge of their destinies. Unlike those wimpy geese who just stay in New England all year round, gobbling hand-fed day-old bread and foraging for seeds on golf courses, the migrators understand that to give in to indolence and the easy life is to surrender part of the essence of gooseness.
     But this year they seemed stuck on the same controlling wheel I felt stuck on. Rotating north in the spring, south in the fall. Without choice. Unconsenting. Forced to repeat their cycles.
     "Likewise," I whispered to myself.  And turned to go back into the house and continue beavering away at the bottomless pile of dirty clothes. On my way across the yard, a dark object caught my eye lying on the ground. I leaned down to pick up what I assumed was a stray static-dried sock that had ridden outside stuck to my pant leg, but found myself looking at another dead blue jay.

     “Are you okay, honey?” Hal walked over to the couch and bent to kiss me.
     “Fine, basically,” I said. “Just had an odd day and wanted to have a few minutes with you before dinner. Sit down a minute. The kids are occupied. I’ll fix us a drink.”
     “Uh oh,” he said to Toots as he loosened his tie with one hand and leaned to scratch him behind his ears with the other. I went to find something suitably alcoholic to brighten my mood.
     Hal was still fooling around with the dog when I returned with his favorite vodka loaded with olives and a glass of red wine for me.
     “I found two dead birds in the yard today.”
     “Oh, Toots,” Hal took a sip. “You’ve done it now.”
     “I wish it was Toots. I think the birds were shot.”
     Hal stared at me for a second then blinked. “Did you hear anything that might have sounded like a gunshot?”
     “No. Not at all.”
     He took another sip, the wrinkle between his eyebrows deepening from the bite of the alcohol. “Firing off guns in a neighborhood is nutty. They must have been shot somewhere else.”
     I gave him an exasperated look. “Why would anyone plant dead birds in the yard?  That’s equally nutty...”
     “Leah, relax. Toots could have found them in the field down the road and brought them home. So could have any of the other dogs in the neighborhood.”
     “A dog would have chewed them up.”
     “Not Toots. He hasn’t chewed anything since he was a puppy. And for all his motley parentage, he has all the instincts of a retriever. He handles things in his mouth very gently, and brings them back home.” He fended off Toot’s who, looking for more attention, was jumping and about to spill his vodka. “I don’t think it’s anything to be overly excited about.” In the process of playing with Toots and reassuring me, Hal had thoroughly rumpled his hair, his tie and his shirt. “Cautious, yes. But you needn’t be timorous...”
     “I’m not being timorous. Where did you get that word?” If there was one thing I’ve never been able to stand, it’s timidity. I hated the after taste. Playing the shrinking violet was degrading.
     I paused and finally added “I just.. .don’t like it. It’s scary. Menacing even.”
     “It’s not menacing. But it could be classified as stupid.” He looked at me levelly for a minute. “I’ll stop by the Police Station on Monday and talk to them. Why don’t you try to talk to the neighbors. See if they’ve seen or heard anything.”



CHAPTER TWO

     "Six years into the Millennium and we still haven’t found a way to not lose socks!" Hal stood in his boxers staring into an open dresser drawer, digging through his socks.  I watched the socks spill through his fingers; some onto the floor, some back into the drawer. Brown socks with gold toes, black socks with orange toes, gray socks with brown toes.  No two of them matched.
     "Cheek to jowl, in the middle of the Hebert's living room, who's gonna' see my socks?" He sat down on the bed and put on one black sock with an orange toe and one brown sock with a blue toe.
     Hal held up his left foot and wiggled his orange toes.  “Let's just not go. That will solve the sock problem."
     "Aren't you looking forward to an evening of scintillating conversation?” I was standing next to my chest of drawers putting on my undies. “Rob Healy's rapier wit, Dick Tuttle's elegant stories?" My second foot got caught in the panties and I started to topple.
     Hal grabbed over and steadied me. "Tell you what. Let's get scintillating here, instead."  He slipped his hand over my now tricot-clad fanny. I slowly turned to face him, making sure his hand stayed on my left bun.

     We were a little more than fashionably late to the party.  Walking through a heavy gray mist to the Hebert’s was not the way to approach a supposedly cheery evening. The mist swirled around the party-goers cars that lined the street, squatting low and dark like hiding behemoths.
     We stood in the Hebert's hallway for a minute to hang  our coats on a rented metal rack and adjust to the sounds of laughter and the vivid colors of the party. Despite Mercedes' glum view of the party yesterday, guests had cast off the grays of winter, had begun to stretch toward the sun and sniff the coming warm breezes of April. Women dressed in shimmering silk, glittering gem-colored beaded tops, soft dark wools and draping velvets; men in brown or black pants with a bold tie to accent the ubiquitous blue blazer. Neither Hal nor I quite fit suburban vogue. He wore charcoal pants, and a black wool turtleneck under his blazer. I was in a knee-length black skirt with a zipper up the front, a black long-sleeved silk tee and a gray silk quilted vest. A smiling attendant dressed in white and black took our coats as we devised the easiest way to enter the din. Mercedes came out of the dining room to our right and put her hand on my back to get my attention.
     "Where have you been?" she said. Before Hal could answer she moved her hand to his arm and propelled him through the living room maze.
     "Better fortify yourselves with a drink before you leap into conversation about the M1 money supply with a financier." She left us to place our wishes in the hands of a smiling young man in a white tuxedo shirt and black bow tie behind a table of bottles and glasses.
     "What'll it be?" asked the gleaming white teeth.
     "I'll have vodka, on the rocks, with water and lots of olives," said Hal, making an expansive motion with his hands to indicate that when he said lots of olives, he meant lots of olives. "What would you like, Leah?"
     "Oh, wine I guess. Red."
     Clutching our drinks we began to move into the crowded living room, only to be stopped by a young woman, dressed to match the bartender and holding a tray of hors d'oeuvres.  We each selected a gorgeous morsel from the tray. I looked at the small piece of pita bread spread with soft cheese and herbs and topped with three beads of caviar. "Sandwiches made by elves for an elfin wedding in an English meadow," I declared.
     "Not mine," Hal tasted his stuffed mushroom, slowly furrowing his brow. "It’s definitely made by Turkish pixies as an offering to their gods.  Bread crumbs, because bread is the staff of life; herbs because they are the pleasure of life; and mushrooms because they sit under them."
     "Not bad," I opened my eyes wide in admiration. "But the Turks are mono-theists, not pan-theists like the Hindus and the Japanese."
     “You sound like you have a lisp."
     "Nonetheless, the Turks don't believe in more than one Supreme Being."
     "The Turks don't, but their pixies do."
     Over in the far left corner of the living room laughter burst out. "Rob Healy's rapier wit," Hal smiled. "And there's Dick Tuttle in the far right corner telling an elegant story, no doubt.  What shall it be?  Elegance or rapierness?"
     "I don't think 'rapierness' is a word."
     "Sure it is.  I bet you'll hear it four or five times tonight."
     It could have been elegance that lured him to Dick’s group but my guess was that the real draw was Rebecca Farnsworth, standing next to him.
     Rebecca had two tracks. Her music and anything male. Her celebrity status as a cello player in the Boston Symphony Orchestra �\ at least that's celebrity status for us �\ made her more interesting than the average townie. She rubbed elbows with the Best of Boston. But her devotion to the male sex made me edgy. I found it disheartening for anyone to be so dissatisfied with herself. She had moved here from Washington D.C. about the same time we did, and was very private. But she treated every man she saw with glittering and ardently attentiveness. Even Hal fell prey to her talent for making men feel indispensable.
     I wasn’t catching the spirit of the party. It could have been the fog; it could have been the passivity that had engulfed me this winter. I looked around for a safe haven.
     Eva and Shirley Tuttle were over by the fireplace, a study in contrasts. Russet-haired Eva, barely five feet tall and slender as an athlete, was punctuating whatever she was saying with hands and head, rising on her toes, as lively as the bubbles in champagne.
     Shirley was medium height, with pale, fading, Waspy good looks. Eva, Mercedes and I had always thought of her as the zenith of Twentieth Century wife-dom and motherhood. A pet rabbit. Plump, noiseless, and happily caged.
     "Hi, Mrs. Magruder." I turned around to Annasara Kraus and Julia Hebert, two 19-year-old daughters of Sutton, standing behind my left shoulder, beaming with youth.
     “I’m glad to see you two,” I smiled back. I don’t beam any more. “You can save me from having to dawdle around in middle-aged conversations.”
     Both were in their first year away at college and had worked summers at Thistle House during high school. I’d been trying to remember to get their .edu e-mail addresses to check to see if they could come back this summer.
     "Helping your parents out at the party?" I asked Julia.
     "Until some friends come by. We're headed for Cambridge."
     "How long's Spring Break?"
     Julia turned her head slightly to Annasara in a hesitant gesture that meant, "You go first."
     "Well," Annasara picked up slowly. "I dropped out of school this semester."
     "Oh," I said, then recovered with "What other challenge have you stumbled on to?"
     "Actually I'm working with my father this semester. I plan to go back in the fall."
     I squelched a tinge of surprise that started to bloom on my face. Spreading her wings and leaving home for college always hit me as a good thing for shy, timid Annasara. Maybe finances were tight with her father, Lance’s, travel agency, an industry that’s taken quite a hit from the Internet.
     "I guess that means you won't be able to work at Thistle House this summer. Our loss."
     Annasara smiled vaguely, her eye wandering to the clump that Hal was still standing in. “I might have time on week-ends.”
     "Wonderful. I’ll talk to you next week. How ‘bout you, Julia?" She had been looking around the room, probably to give Annasara some space. "You don't need to give me an answer just yet. I'll get your e-mail."
     They took off and I felt a little silly standing there all alone.
     Eva and Shirley had disappeared. Looking around at the monotony I resigned myself to joining Dick’s circle. There had been a time when Dick intrigued me. And intimidated me some. He was the ultimate Alpha male – officious, haughty, involved in everything that went on in town, and a little stiff. Just as I reached the group, Rebecca, who was carefully listening to whatever story Dick was telling, placed her hand on his right arm, looked up at him through well-mascaraed eyelashes and laughed charmingly.
     "I'm hungry." I whispered to Hal and beat it to the dining room.
     A swarm of seven or eight college kids blew through the front door and sucked me along in their wake, into the dining room.
     "Evening Mrs. Magruder."
     "Hi Ruben. Spending your weekend in bustling Sutton?”
     Ruben laughed. "We're heading for Cambridge. But did want to stoke up on the free eats.”
     Ruben Brown waited tables for us in the summer and I had to watch him like a hawk to keep him from sticking his finger in the mashed potatoes waiting to be plated. He also helped Hal out with repairs and upkeep. The lunch he brought with him would feed a family of six. At six foot three and solid muscle, his furnaces needed constant stoking.
     There was plenty to keep him busy in the dining room. Trays of hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, large bowls of spring vegetables and grain salads for scale watchers, pates, a large country ham and a smoked turkey surrounded by three or four different kinds of mustard, crocks of mayonnaise, and sliced breads. I watched the boys fill their plates with the recklessness of youthful appetites. The girls’ plates looked like they were dabbling with vegetarianism. Although bent on food, they all took the time to honor their upbringings by spreading out around the crowded living and family rooms. It was fascinating to watch as they helloed Misses and Misters here, asked personal questions there, and answered the “How’s school?” question ad infinitum. Finally, fortified with food and the good will of successful, possessive parents, the kids re-swarmed and buzzed toward the front door, Cambridge on their minds now, me somehow still following their magnetism like iron fillings.
     The door closed behind them separating the fresh air from the stale, and I was left standing in the quiet entry. Turning to try again at getting something to eat, I saw Ruben coming down the center hall from the kitchen with Annasara, his hand on her elbow powering her along as if she were a mechanical toy.
     “Ruben,” she said in a hushed undertone. “He hasn’t...” she stopped and turned her face toward him and the rest of her conversation was unintelligible.
     "I don't care." His voice was heated, a little louder. "I'm getting you out of here." And he continued to move her toward the door.
     I wished Annasara would remove his hand and leave under her own steam, but such independence was probably unthinkable for her. I had known her since she was 10. Worked with her since she was 14. At an age when she should have been testing herself, gaining confidence, even making a few mistakes, her parents had continued to make most decisions for her... bickering endlessly, before and after their divorce, about how to handle each new step. Rumor had it that her name had been the one time they compromised. Her mother wanted Sara; her father wanted Anna.
     Out of the corner of my eye I noticed people looking at their watches.  Watch-looking is as infectious as yawning and I found myself glancing at mine.  It was nearly 10 pm.
     I turned to go back into the dining room but while I’d been dawdling around in the entry hall, the catering staff had cleared the table of dinner food and replaced it with desserts and coffee.
     I needed sustenance so I joined the circle around Dick and silently pulled Hal out.
     "Have you eaten?"
     "Not yet." He finished the last sip of his drink.
     "Well, I think we missed our chance, unless you want tortes and tarts. I'm starving.  Let's go to Sutton's Tavern and get a burger or something."
     "Sure.  How 'bout Eva and Brian?  Maybe they'd like to go."
     "You ask. I’ll get our coats and say goodbye to Mercedes and Ken."
     I found them quickly, said our goodbye then plucked our coats off their hangers in the hallway, deciding to go outside with the coats to wait for Hal. People were drifting down the Hebert's driveway and along the street to their cars, their talk disengaged from their bodies by the mist, male voices carrying better than female. I stepped way to the right side of the walkway to wait, slipping on my short jacket while juggling Hals. Once snuggled against the damp I stood quietly, watching the migration along the road, until I heard a voice further to the right, off the walkway on the lawn. It was Ruben out of range of the front lights. “It’s okay,” I think Annasara voice whispered in the muffling fog. I turned to try and find them in the dark, but they were hidden in the shadows.
     Rebecca came out alone. Her route home was a 100-yard walk across the lawn, and she disappeared into the murky night near where Ruben and Annasara must have been. Lance Kraus also came out alone. He, too, lived within walking distance and headed in the same direction when he stopped. ”Annasara.” He snapped in surprise. “I thought you’d gone to Cambridge with Julia. Is that you Ruben?”
     “Yes, Mr. Kraus. I’m just walking Annasara to her car.”
     I jumped when Hal put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry. He said. “Just me.”
     Dick and Shirley came up behind us. "Excuse us," Shirley chirped. She was wearing a fluffy blue mohair coat thrown over her shoulders and clutched closed by her right hand, as if Dick had been too impatient to wait for her to put her arms in the sleeves.  She looked like a parakeet.
     Halfway down the walkway Dick's voice floated back toward us, carried by the fog. "I'll take you home."
     "You're not coming?" Shirley's voice lost its chipper pitch.
     "No. I think I'll go for a nightcap with the locals at Bub and Chubs.”
     “I don’t remember you telling me that.”
     “Oh, it was something that came up while I was filling my gas tank at the Mobil station this morning. I’d dismissed it, but since we’re leaving the party so early, I think I’ll just swing by. Not exactly your cup of tea."
     "I guess you're right. I don't know anyone who frequents Bub and Chubs."
     "Nor they you, dear."

     "Okay.  Okay.  We're here.  Last ones out."  Brian was standing behind us, helping Eva on with her coat.  "Where to?"
     Hal and Brian discussed the possibilities as we walked down the driveway.
     "Sutton's Tavern?"
     "Might be crowded."
     "Then we can go to Bub and Chubs. They're right next to each other."
     "It's such a dive." Eva said. We were walking toward the Kidwell's house to get their car.
     The headlights of the Tuttle’s Jaguar flashed as they drove past us. We waved and turned, watching the red of it’s taillights increase in intensity as Dick applied the brakes at the stop sign, then dim as the car moved on through the fog, turning left.
     Sutton's Tavern and Bub and Chub's, which was named after the two brothers who owned and ran it, sat next to each other between the town's main street and the water. A large shared parking lot separated the two buildings. To the left, if you were heading for Bub and Chub's, you cosied your car up to pickup trucks, Jeeps and rusty Ford Granadas  On the Sutton’s Tavern side you eased in between Volvos, Audis, and Range Rovers. Only when one or the other side was parked up did the Volvos and the Grenadas mix. Sutton’s Tavern loomed three stories high, with a patio that spilled out onto a pier at the water’s edge. Bub and Chub’s clientele were more interested in camaraderie then ambience, so cars and dumpsters lined the breakwater on their turf.
     The fog was low and thick down by the water but we could see enough cars on the Tavern side to let us know there would be a wait for a table.
     “What’ll it be?” Brian asked. “Left or right?”
     We settled on the wait at the Tavern and turned into the right side of the parking lot. As we walked away from the car a set of headlights flashed at us through the shifting mist. We stopped to let a ’62 T Bird pass in front of us with Dick Tuttle behind the wheel. Evidently he had dumped the Jaguar as well as his wife.
     As he drove left and around the back the four of us exchanged quizzical glances.
     We grabbed four stools at the bar and ordered drinks while we waited for a table to open up.  Just as the bartender placed our drinks in front of us, Ben Saunders, the Tavern's owner, stepped through a door behind the bar. "Howdy.  In for a nightcap?" he asked Brian.  "Eva. Hal. Leah." He nodded in our direction.
     "A late supper," Brian explained. "But it looks like we're not the only ones."

     It was eleven pm. We were overly fed and all talked out as we walked through the murky dark to the Kidwell’s car, the only one left in Sutton Inn’s side of the patrons’ parking lot, then drove silently back to Barrow's Lane.  The only other sign of life we saw was a set of brake lights glint in Rebecca Farnsworth’s driveway as her garage door rose up. All four heads turned to catch a glimpse of a car driving in.

     "Do you suppose Dick has actually done all the things he talks about?"  I poured Hal a cup of late night decaf.
     "I haven't the faintest," Hal replied from across the kitchen table.  "My guess is that he's at least done them in his mind.  And truth to tell, a good story is a good story, whether it's based on fact or fiction."
     I yawned. "Talking about Dick, this must be Rebecca's week to be between men friends.  Whenever she goes too long without a strong arm to lean on she gets desperate."
     Hal raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.  "Nah.  Dick's a stuffed shirt. She was probably just doing what comes naturally to her. You're male, therefore you must be adored."
     “That’s what I mean. She'll take anything as long as it has a penis. So where was she just coming home from half and hour ago?”
     Hal frowned, mockingly. "Leah, we sound like two old wags with nothing more to do than gossip over the back fence."
     "I'm not a gossip", I said, defensiveness overriding my fatigue.  "I enjoy people for their humanness, their frailties as well as their strengths. I wish everyone could look at life that way.  In fact," my defensiveness rose, "Everyone should sit around after these things and talk about who did what and said what. People who don't, take themselves too seriously."
     Hal scratched his chin and looked at me across the table.
     "If they do," I continued, twirling a strand of hair around my index finger, "I wonder what it is they say about us?"
     "There are probably people all over town, right now, sitting at their kitchen tables, saying, 'Did you see Hal Magruder?  He was wearing one brown sock with a blue toe and one black sock with an orange toe.'  I'm going to call it a night.  I'm going up and take these offensive socks off.  And vow to throw away all my mis-matched ones so I never have to sink this low again."
     "Wait a minute," I called after him.  "We haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet!"