Free Caught Dead in Philadelphia by Gillian Roberts Page B

know.”
    â€œI was so happy when you two became friends, when she started staying with you. I always wanted the best for her. She stayed with good families, rich families, important people, when I worked for them. She lived in their houses, ate their food, wore the same clothing. You couldn’t tell her apart from their children. She belonged there. She always belonged there.”
    My legs were cramping, and I stood up. Mrs. Nichols grabbed my hand. “You understand?” she demanded. “You understand?”
    I nodded, although I didn’t understand at all.
    Her voice became dreamy. “I used to watch the children in the neighborhood, and I could tell, right from the beginning, that Liza didn’t belong here. She was different, special. When she got so wild in high school, it broke my heart. And then, the acting, and wanting to go to New York, and—” she brushed something imaginary away with her hand—“and then, look, it all started happening the right way. Like magic. Like I always dreamed. Engaged to Hayden Cole and…”
    Mrs. Nichols was deep, deep inside that old dream of hers. She smiled proudly, and I knew she had momentarily forgotten again. And then she looked around the crowded room as if something had leaped out of a corner, and her face collapsed. She stood up and leaned against the television console. Its top was covered with framed pictures of Liza. Some were ads cut from slick magazines. Some were fuzzy snapshots of a young Liza. Mrs. Nichols touched the silver frame of her daughter’s engagement portrait. “She was beautiful,” she whispered.
    â€œYes,” I agreed.
    She walked over to the sofa, near me. “The police, they asked if anything was bothering her. Why?”
    â€œI think it’s just something they ask in these situations.”
    â€œHow could she be troubled? She was marrying Hayden Cole! She was going to be a senator’s wife, maybe something even more someday. She was going to live in a mansion. Is that something to bother a girl? Since the day she was born, since her father ran out on us, I’ve worked every day to get back her real place in life. I gave her speech lessons, dance lessons. I never let her feel she was a little girl whose daddy ran away with a cheap—who didn’t care if we had a cent or a way to live like decent people. It was all for her. For Liza.”
    I understood why Liza didn’t find it easy to talk to her mother. The woman had decided how the world worked a long time ago, and how to make it work for her, and she wouldn’t have been interested in any of her daughter’s opposing theories. She cataloged half a dozen more special lessons given her daughter. Modeling, singing, on and on. It reminded me of geisha training.
    â€œOf course, she was high-strung,” Mrs. Nichols said. “Especially lately. But all brides get cold feet. If she’d had any important worries, I would have known. We were very close. You must know that.”
    I had a sudden painful realization of how far apart we all stand from one another, how single-minded we all must be in what we want and what we choose to see.
    â€œMrs. Nichols, you must be exhausted.” And if she wasn’t, I was. “You should be resting. I just wanted to express my sympathy. Is there anything I can do to help you through this?”
    â€œYou aren’t leaving?” She looked terrified. “Let me fix you something. Coffee, tea, please?”
    So I followed her into the tiny kitchen that was really a side slice of the dining room. It was decorated with the same heavy hand as the living room. The toaster was covered by a gingham rooster with a skirt. The salt-and-pepper shakers were a ceramic angel and devil. Magnets shaped like bananas and pears held a calendar and notes to the refrigerator.
    Mrs. Nichols busied herself with the kettle. “It’s so awful. Things go on like normal, as if