Together Alone Read Free Page B

them coming and going. He wasn’t the one whose privacy would be disturbed.
    Emily deserved more. Myra did what she could to help—and her lace cookies were the best in town—but lace cookies could only do so much.
    Flowers helped. Myra always had one bloom or another to give Emily. And, of course, there were things like knitted mittens or an afghan, guaranteed to bring a smile.
    Myra gasped. There they were, Emily, Jill, and Doug, climbing into that rusty wagon, off to the Whittakers’ cook-out. Tomorrow night there was a party at the Davieses’, and the next night one at the Eatery, where Jill and her friends had all waitressed.
    One party after another. Myra didn’t know what it was about people that made them want to make fools of themselves in public. Emily understood that. She wasn’t throwing a party for Jill. She didn’t see the girl’s leaving home as cause for celebration. Their parting would be a private affair, surely a sad one.
    “But I don’t talk,” Myra vowed as she rose from her chair, “never have, never will. I bake my cookies and knit my sweaters, and keep still. So what do they do? They plan a party for me .” She started down the stairs. “I don’t want a party. They ’re the ones who want it. They left here the very first chance they could, and they never came back for long, and they feel guilty about that. So now they’ve brought food for a party, and they’ve taken over my house.”
    To her right, at the bottom of the stairs, the dining room table was covered with her mother’s embroidered linen and the first of the food her daughters-in-law had brought. To her left, the living room was filled with sons and grandkids, all glued to a baseball game on television.
    Turning toward the back of the house, she slipped through the kitchen, let herself out the door, and went down the steps and across the lawn without being noticed. She paused to admire the whole of the huge, pale green weeping willow that stood on the bank of the pond, before settling onto the scrolled wrought-iron bench that sat beneath the veil of its arms.
    She plucked bits of fallen leaves—willow lint, she called it affectionately—from the bench, then leaned over and plucked bits from the ground. She worked her way down the bench, grooming the grass beneath the willow until it was neatened to her satisfaction. Then she sat back and admired the pachysandra she had planted and pruned over the years, and beyond that, the impatiens, and beyond that, the lilies. Looking out over the water, she sighed.
    Such a beautiful spot. And so well tended. She had done her best. She would continue to, until the day she died.
    That thought made her restless, impatient, and frightened at the same time. She carried a dreadful burden. When she thought of death, the burden shifted and threatened to spill. She gathered her strength, steadied it, and vowed that she wouldn’t die yet.
    But it was coming. She knew it, more and more so, with each birthday that passed. Time was running out.
    “Myra?” It was her daughter-in-law Linda, the career woman who believed that all women were sisters, regardless of age, and that “mother” was too formal a name for her mother-in-law. “Why are you sitting out here alone?”
    “I’m not alone,” Myra said kindly. She liked Linda, actually. Quirks and all, Linda was more tolerant than the others. The others would have argued with her even now, but Linda merely smiled.
    “We want pictures. Will you come inside?”
    “But pictures should be taken out here. This is the most beautiful spot around.”
    Linda swatted away a mosquito. “It’s very buggy.”
    “Not for me. I use the right perfume. It’s in the bathroom off the kitchen, if you’d like to try some. Not that the boys will like it, but a few bites won’t hurt them any. Yes,” the idea was growing on her, “if we’re taking pictures, I’d like them taken here. But you’ll have to call Frank. We can’t take pictures without