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Show of life, the coarseness of those who continue to live, with unspeakable loss of that tiny, wise center of animation that had been Sadie, like a miniature housebird that is lost outside, and flickers from one winter branch to another, until it finally freezes in one spot. I had wept, aloud. Tate had come lunging out of the chattering crowd. "Who are you?" he had demanded, although he had surely seen me at the GoldenGlow. "What are you doing this for?" I had stood back for a moment, astonished, staring up at that enormous man. Then slowly, I gathered myself together, to answer him. "I have been your mother's friend." Tate backs off, uncertain, and I know it would be well to let things remain. But I cannot resist showing him something more. Perhaps, as impossible as it seems, he can understand the truth. Slowly, I put my hand to my pocket, withdraw from it the fawn-colored scarf that had been hers. It is still folded, almost as she had folded it herself. I unwrap the corners of the scarf one at a time, to reveal two rings. One is a shimmering opal, set in small gold leaves; the other is a single large diamond, an extraordinary stone. "They're my mother's!" Tate says, snatching them from the scarf. "She gave them to me." "They've been missing from her jewelry box," he growls, and I know the word 'thief is forming in his mind. But I am seeing again the afternoon Sadie slid the first of the rings over the knuckles of her ancient fingers, and laid |