Free The Sabbathday River by Jean Hanff Korelitz Page A

the house. A house without a kitchen, I might add.” She swung her head around and coolly surveyed the produce department. “Not that we’ll have any use for a kitchen.”
    â€œYou’re moving here?” Naomi said, refusing to make the inferential leap without confirmation.
    â€œMoved already.” She grinned. “No turning back now. Hey”—she put her hand out, three chunky silver rings glinting in the supermarket light—“I’m Judith Friedman.”
    Of course you are, Naomi wanted to say, but it wouldn’t come out. She reached her own hand forward across the carts between them: the outstretched fingers of the Bering Strait, the clutch and unclench of the relay race. “Oh, thank you for coming,” said a voice; as it happened, her own.

Chapter 7
    Our Bodies, Ourselves

    â€œA MOMENT OF YOUR TIME, MRS. ROTH.”
    Naomi looked up and, despite herself, groaned. She’d been sitting in her office at the mill, entering addresses at her IBM and being progressively deafened by the grader Ashley was running in the parking lot. She hadn’t heard them, naturally.
    He came in, followed closely by Nelson, who ducked his head. Charter, she realized, had loomed larger in her memory than perhaps he deserved: a tall and gaunt inquisitor in a black cape, beak-nosed, with lines etched deep across his forehead. She allowed herself a small, private smile. He must have really freaked her out to leave such a distortion of himself behind, Naomi thought, since—before her now—he was by comparison so ordinary. Just a man in his fifties or so, with that faintly comical comb-over and iron set jaw. It was no feature, after all, but the cumulative pinch of his expression and the tractor beam of his gaze, the acrid odor of his ambient distrust.
    â€œI’m not interrupting,” he observed, rejecting the courtesy of phrasing it as a question.
    â€œNot now, you’re not.” Naomi watched them find seats in the small
room. Beyond, in the main work area, the women hadn’t noticed the police were here; they continued to speak together, loudly, over the grader. “Mary,” she said to Mary Sully, who had stopped filing and was staring at the D.A., “would you give us a few minutes?”
    â€œUhkay,” Mary said. She looked happy to leave them. She wedged her way out from between the desk and the cabinet, and moved heavily into the workroom.
    Charter watched her go, pursing his lips. He turned to Naomi and offered his facsimile of a smile. “It must be nice not to have to dress for work.”
    She crossed her legs to show off the hole in the knee of her jeans. “I hope I don’t look undressed, Mr. Charter.”
    â€œI only meant that most women are required to dress formally when they work.”
    â€œMost of the women I know work all the time,” Naomi observed. “Women’s work has never been limited to men’s business hours, unfortunately.”
    The D.A. sat forward in his chair. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Roth. I’m not here to malign your lifestyle or your livelihood, and I certainly apologize if I gave that impression. I only have a few questions.”
    Automatically, she began to protest, but Nelson cut her off. “Place looks good, Naomi.” He hadn’t been out since the winter, when they’d had a break-in—broken glass all over the workroom floor and a pair of grubby underpants in the attic. “You get that window fixed?”
    â€œAshley did it.” She nodded toward the workroom. “Did a nice job.”
    â€œAny more problems?”
    Not unless you count fishing dead babies out of the Sabbathday, she thought. “Nope. Nothing here to steal but ratty old rugs.”
    â€œI understand you sell your ratty old rugs all over the country,” Charter said. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he meant it as a compliment.
    â€œThat’s true. Outside of Goddard