Free The Clock Winder by Anne Tyler Page A

not your last chance. Besides. It gives me something to say when old ladies tell me I shall pass this way but once. ‘Oh, well, or twice, or three times …’ I tell them.”
    “How far do you carry this business?” Timothy asked. “Do you think you were once a high priestess in Egypt? Do you feel we knew each other in Atlantis?” He was hoping for her to give some crackpot answer, something that would disenchant him, but it wasn’t that easy. “Who knows?” was all she said. “What would it matter, anyway?”
    “You just thought this up to irk your father,” Timothy told her.
    “Well, maybe so,” she said cheerfully.
    “And he wouldn’t have started a fight over a little thing like that.”
    “Of course he would. Besides, he didn’t like this boy I was seeing.”
    “Oh,” said Timothy. “What was wrong with him?”
    “He just considers me a trial. Always has. You can’t really blame him.”
    “No, I mean the boy.”
    “Oh. Well, nothing, to the naked eye. He was just a State College student. Then he got arrested for robbing laundromats.”
    Timothy swerved to avoid an abandoned car. “You certainly know some funny people,” he said.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Did he tell you what he was doing? Did you know?”
    “Oh, no, just that he was working. I wondered what at.”
    “You could have guessed, if he wouldn’t say. I could have guessed. You could have been a little more curious, and maybe stopped him.”
    “I would never change someone else’s affairs around,” Elizabeth said.
    That kept him silent for a full five minutes; he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He concentrated on driving, which was growing more difficult. The road felt like cotton beneathhis wheels. The few cars he met were barely creeping along, shapeless white igloos eerily glowing beneath a white sky. “How can you see? I can’t,” Elizabeth said, and Timothy said, “I don’t understand you. Fighting with your father! And here I thought you were Miss Easy-Going. Miss Fix-It. I wondered how your family was managing without you to patch the plaster.”
    “At home I break things more than fix them,” said Elizabeth.
    Then she rolled the window down with a jerk, which was unnecessary. Their breaths seemed likely to freeze in front of their faces. A new wave of mist fogged Timothy’s vision and he hunched forward, peering for the turnoff. “Can’t see a thing,” he said, but he found it, anyway—an overhead sign swinging and whipping in the wind—and turned blindly.
    “I thought they had snowplows up north,” Elizabeth said.
    “Well, this burglar,” said Timothy. “Are you supposed to be visiting him or anything? Waiting until he gets out?”
    “Waiting for what?”
    “Well, to get married, maybe.”
    “He wasn’t going to be in
that
long, it was only laundromats.”
    “The reason I’m asking all this,” Timothy said carefully, “is that you and I seem to be going out together a lot. I wanted to know if you were committed in any way.”
    “Committed?”
    “Not tied to this burglar or someone.”
    “Why do you keep calling him a burglar?” Elizabeth said. “He was a chemistry major. We hardly even knew each other.”
    Timothy gave up. “Would you like to go out to dinner tomorrow?” he asked.
    “I can’t. I’m going to see Matthew’s house.”
    “Matthew?” He turned to stare at her. “How did
he
get into this?”
    “Why not? I like him.”
    So this was where all the uneasiness had been going: Matthew. “Break it, can’t you?” he said.
    “No,” said Elizabeth. “I want to see his house. Besides, I never turn down an invitation.”
    “Do you
have
to keep
telling
me that?”
    Then he slammed into the Schmidts’ driveway and cut the engine and piled out. He didn’t open the door for Elizabeth. She followed on her own, calmly swinging her handbag and shuffling up the narrow groove of cleared sidewalk. Timothy waited on the front porch with his back turned, ignoring her. She