Free Sarah's Window by Janice Graham Page B

me."
    "Well, if you'd feed her once in a while..."
    "Jack, I feed that damn cat three, sometimes four times a day and she's still between my feet."
    "She loves you, be thankful you've got somethin' loves you, Blanche. Somethin' you don't have to stick dollar bills in their birthday cards every year so as to get their attention."
    Blanche had finally unwound her muffler and stuffed her gloves in her pocket and was unbuttoning her coat.
    "Well, I've never liked cats, so how is it I got myself three of 'em."
    Ruth appeared from the kitchen with a scrap of cold ham. "Here, give this to her." Blanche held open the screen door and tossed the ham onto the porch, but the cat was not interested. Finally Blanche gave the animal a swift kick with her black rubber overshoe and sent it hissing off the steps and into the front yard.
    "Blanche!" cried Ruth.
    "Oh, hell, she ain't hurt. She'll be right there when I come out. Never seen a cat like that. Acts like a damn dog. Only worse."
    Only when she was relieved of her coat and the cat did she turn her twinkling eyes to John and hold out a bony hand.
    "What's your name?" she said, squinting at him through fogged glasses. John was surprised she didn't already know, didn't set about cursing him right then and there for his betrayal all those years ago.
    "John Wilde," he answered.
    "This here's Clarice's son-in-law," clarified Jack. "Married to Susan Blackshere."
    Blanche flopped down onto a chair and bent over to remove her overshoes. She looked up at him and the look unsettled him just as her first appearance had done, for the resemblance—although not perfect—was stunning.
    "Where you from, John?"
    "California for the last ten years, but I was raised in Lawrence."
    "Ah!" She lit up. "I've got family up in Lawrence. Good town," she said.
    "You look a lot like a lady who used to attend our church."
    Blanche was massaging her toes through thick wool socks.
    "The Congregational Church, by any chance?"
    "Yes. It was."
    "That was my twin sister. Hortense."
    She looked up at him and John felt the back of his neck tingle.
    "Did you know her?" she asked.
    It took him a moment to answer. "She seemed to take an interest in me."
    "That doesn't surprise me. She didn't have kids of her own and she was always meddlin' with those youngsters at that church, tellin' 'em what they should and shouldn't do. But they loved her for it. She had the best darn Halloween parties. She'd get all dressed up and do these haunted house things, 'n kids'd come from all over the neighborhood to parade through her house." Her voice had softened from the brusqueness of earlier, and she engaged John with a direct look and said, "You must've been a little boy when she died."
    He answered gently, "Yes. I was."
    John just stood there staring blankly at Blanche while she rubbed her foot.
    There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, and then John excused himself politely, said he should be going. As he left he deposited the envelope on a table next to the door.
    It was a confluence of events, to be sure, happenings that slowly seemed to construct an awareness of a place, a person. And so it was that he felt himself drawing closer to a world that was not his, and at the center of trnVworld was a woman.

CHAPTER 13
    At the end of February, invitations went out announcing a reception to celebrate Armand Wilde's sixty-fifth birthday. It was to be held at the Wildes' home up in Lawrence, a stately colonial-style house set well back from the street in a grove of birch trees just behind the university chancellor's residence. The guest list included the chancellor himself, along with deans and high-ranking professors from a multitude of disciplines. Several of Dr. Wilde's former aeronautics students who were now in prestigious positions in academia or the corporate world had flown in for the occasion, which included a colloquium planned in his honor.
    Sarah rode up with Susan and the baby early in the day; John, who was to leave early