Free Sarah's Window by Janice Graham Page A

screen door separated them, but John could still catch a glimmer of mistrust, a seasoned wariness in the old man's eyes.
    "I apologize for dropping in like this...," John began. "Is Sarah here?"
    "Nope."
    John had sealed the batch of letters in a large manila envelope, and Jack Bryden cast a suspicious look at the package John now gripped in his hand.
    "You sellin' somethin'?"
    "No, I'm returning some things she left at our place last night when she baby-sat my son. I'm John Wilde."
    Recognition lit up the old man's face and smoothed out the deeply furrowed brow.
    "John Wilde! Well, come on in. Too cold to be standin' out there."
    The room reeked of stale cigarette smoke only partly masked by the odor of roasting meat wafting in from the kitchen. A hand-sewn quilt covered the wom seat of a chesterfield sofa, and limp lace doilies hid the threadbare armrests. Next to the recliner sat a metal TV tray littered with the old man's essentials—a sand-filled Fol-gers coffee can in which to extinguish his cigarettes, this week's TV Guide, nail clippers, a tin of Altoids. The room was dark except for the flickering light from the television tuned to the evening news. Beside the recliner, lodged between it and the chair, rested a prosthetic leg.
    "Sorry I didn't recognize you. I was a little under the weather that night of the open house," apologized Jack. With the rubber tip of his crutch he jabbed at the switch on the base of a floor lamp behind his recliner and light flooded the room. Only then did John notice where his denim overalls were turned up and pinned just above the knee.
    There was an awkwardness in the encounter, and if Jack Bryden, who was generally a convivial man even with strangers, found himself looking with vague suspicion on this man with the unsettling blue eyes, it was because somehow Sarah figured into the equation. He looked down at the leather-bound volume John held out to him, shifted his weight a little on his crutches.
    "This is what she left?" His voice was edged with surprise.
    John handed him the envelope. "And this, too."
    He gave a cursory glance at the envelope but made no move to take it, just hung there on his crutches cradling the book in his hands.
    There was a movement across the room, and John looked up to see a gray-haired woman standing in the kitchen doorway, a woman as drab and ordinary as a sparrow. A housedress hung loosely on her thin shoulders, and she stared warily at him as she dried her hands on her apron.
    "This here's my wife, Ruth," Jack said.
    Ruth gave him a curt nod.
    "That's a rare book, isn't it?" John said, shifting his gaze back to the old man.
    "Well, it's a pretty special book if that's what you mean. It belonged to Sarah's mother." He shifted his weight and then went on softly, "She drowned. Off some damn island in Greece... hell if I can ever remember the name of the place. Even though I been there. Had to go over to pick up Sarah and bring her home. She was just a baby. Not even a year old." His voice had turned gruff and he was thumbing the soft leather of the book.
    "Don't need to talk 'bout those things in front of strangers," spat Ruth, and just as she turned back into the kitchen they heard snow crunching underfoot and footfalls on the porch steps, and Jack shouted, "Hold onto that handrail, Blanche!"
    There was a flurry of stomping feet and mumbled curses as the door burst open, and John stepped back to make way for a bundle of fur swathed in yards and yards of muffler. A gloved hand unwound the knitted wool from her head and neck, and Blanche shook out her softly curled white hair, and John looked down into the face of a vision.
    "John Wilde, meet Blanche. Bazaar's one and only registered historical monument."
    But it was not Blanche, it was Hortense, with the ice-blue eyes.
    John muttered a greeting, but Blanche didn't take note of the awe in his voice. She was too busy trying to untangle the cat from her feet.
    "Damn her hide, she's gonna be the death of