The two women entered the library, the walls of which were lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves crammed with books, mostly law books. Rita's husband was a lawyer turned politician, presently serving in the state legislature.

"This room is the spitting image of my husband's library at home," Alice said, "except all the books there are Bibles and Biblical studies."

Rita lugged an armload of books to the leather-upholstered couch where Alice had taken a seat and the two women started paging through them. Alice's heart was pounding. She couldn't contain a girlish squeal when she came across a picture of herself and Rita as freshman cheerleaders in high school. In the picture, both girls were performing perfect splits as they waved pom-poms.

"Think you can still do this?" Alice asked, showing Rita the picture.

"Think you can?"

"We were so cute in those days," Alice said. "Look at our ponytails. I wonder what it would be like to be this young again."

"Dream on."

"Just for a few minutes, I'd like to be this young again to see what it's like," Alice said.

"You'd have heart failure, and so would I," Rita said. "Even if we do exercise our butts off at the spa, our middle-aged hearts couldn't take the excitement of being thirteen again, even for a few minutes."

"You're probably right," Alice said with a sigh.

Rita got up to open a window. "It's stuffy in here. And look at this dust! If Pam thinks she can get away with such a shoddy, job of cleaning, then she's going to be out of a job, even if I did just hire her only two weeks ago. Good help is so hard to find these days."

"You're telling me," Alice said, who had fired more housekeepers than she could count.

Rita slid up the window and was about to return to the couch when she put her hand over her mouth.

"My God!" she whispered, gaping out the window.