Free Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden Page B

another stroke?” Marie put in, repeating Louise Brice’s frequent warning. “It’s foolish, Nora, and downright dangerous for you not to have one.”
    “I know,” Nora told them, “but as I’ve said before, he won’t have it.”
    “Well, he’s just going to have to have it, isn’t he? I’ll talk to him. You let me handle it.” Angrily, Marie selected a piece of cinnamon toast.
    “He needn’t even know.” Charles took a piece himself. “Good toast.”
    “Thanks to your wife.” Nora smiled at Marie. “Father would know. He’d know people were inside the house, installing it, and he’d hear it ringing.”
    “All right,” said Marie, “but what can he do about it, really? I mean, the man is helpless!”
    “Ah, but he’s not as helpless as he makes out he is,” said Charles. “Look at today. I agree with Nora that there wasn’t a single thing wrong with him. In fact, Nora, I’m not even sure he fell off his bed. Did you hear a thump?”
    “No. As a matter of fact I didn’t.”
    “There you are.” Charles drained the remaining tea in his cup. “I think he faked the whole thing to get your attention. Got off the bed and carefully lowered himself to the floor. I’d like to get that X-ray machine in just to prove to him that he’s not hurt and to perhaps discourage him from trying such antics again.”
    “Charles, really!” exclaimed Marie. “We can’t be positive he was faking. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. If something really does happen, Nora, you might not be able to leave to get help. And what about thunderstorms, winter, all sorts of things? You can’t run out in a blizzard to get the doctor if your mother has a stroke in the middle of one. And suppose there’s a fire? With that old stove…”
    “But even if he’d agree,” said Nora, “he’d never stand for the expense. You know how he is about money. Just the other day he complained about the town taxes again.”
    “Humph,” Marie grunted. “I shouldn’t think he’d have to pay much, without town water or sewage or anything.”
    “That’s the plan, isn’t it?” Charles said. “Doing without those things in order to keep the taxes down? After all, there’s all that land. Fifty or so acres, isn’t it? But that’s beside the point,” he went on. “The parish fund can easily manage a telephone.”
    Nora shook her head. “He’d call it charity.”
    Marie patted Nora’s hand, momentarily enveloping it. “He’ll just have to accept it, then.”
    “No,” Nora said firmly. “If there’s to be a phone, I’ll pay for it out of my proofreading money.”
    “And,” Marie said just as firmly, “the parish fund will reimburse you, pay part of it, something. You need that money for other things, Nora, and you know it.”
    “No, really,” Nora protested, embarrassed. “I insist.”
    “And so do I. We can work out the details some other time. Meanwhile, I’ll call the phone company. So”—Marie got up and fanned her legs once or twice surreptitiously with her skirt—“that’s settled then, isn’t it? You really do need to be sensible about this, Nora. For your parents’ sake as well as your own. Think of them, if not of yourself.”
    Nora felt too tired to resist any more. “All right,” she said dully.
    But she knew it would be she, not the Hastingses , who would bear the brunt of her father’s wrath.

Chapter Ten
    The traffic was murderous leaving New York, but Liz had expected that. It thinned out on the Connecticut Turnpike—probably because there’s more room for it, she mused. Still, given that it was the first nice Friday that June, she suspected that many of the cars whizzing past her, zipping in and out of lanes, were vacation- or at least free-weekend-bound.
    And so am I. She settled back, elbow out of the window of her newly purchased secondhand Toyota, head momentarily against the anti-whiplash headrest. So, if you ignore the botany texts and sketch pads, am I.
    ***
    Outside