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Show Moon - 93 into the dirt where the floor used to be. The stones she'd collected hadn't been worth saving after all. That night she gathered up the courage that had escaped her while she was with Esther and confronted James as he sat alone after her mother and brothers had gone to sleep. She said, "What aren't you telling us?" He stared into his beer. "I shouldn't have written them." "Written them about what?" He paused, as if considering silence, then said, "Your mother has a little problem with her nervous system, but her case is very mild." "Her case of what?" It was starting to tire her, this having to drag the words out of hirri. "We'd have to do further tests to be sure. Those can wait." "Wait for what?" His eyes grew cold. "This isn't your problem. It's mine." He looked tired. "She isn't going to die, not for a long time." James left the next morning to find them a house in Washington, where they'd live until the next overseas assignment. Anne and Joy and the boys stayed at the cottage a few more weeks. Joy walked blindly round and round the lake, as if to outdistance a gathering sense of dread and pity. She felt a sort of paralysis around her mother, could not decide what to say or not to say. She could think of only of resolving to be as nice to her mother as she could, and~ somehow this was the important thing-to let the fireflies out of the jars. |
