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Show CHAPTER TEN That Christmas vacation an event occurred which was totally unforseen. One of those events in life which come sweeping out of some larger design, some larger force which touches the small eddy of our concerns as it whirls past, altering those concerns without malevolence -apparently-but altering them nevertheless, altering them irrevocably. The actual days from Thanksgiving to Christmas went quickly, so that vacation seemed suddenly there, before the accumulated drudgery of waiting one day after another settled in. Partly, it was because the hormone shots continued to work with Katie, she remained in an almost pleasant mood. And then it was Sharon's senior year. Classes were not going any better grade wise, but there was the specialness of this being her last year, the knowledge that these days in the big, red brick building would not be repeated. It was like one of the passages the nun had read in her literature class, from a book called The Rubaiyat. Sharon couldn't recall the exact words, but they went something like this: "The moving hand writes and moves on, And all your knowledge and your wit, Can never return to erase a word of it." She found herself repeating them on her way to work each morning. There was a magic to the words, the sound of them, which fixed-held, in some way-their truth: that a person can never go back, can never redo what has happened. Also, this year the store was busier than last Christmas. The cosmetics department in particular was doing well, this was at least partially because of the care she had taken with the customers throughout |