Thursday, March 9

There was a protestor blocking the sidewalk in front of the free clinic. Clare drove slowly past the three-storied Queen Anne, a grand old lady of a house awkwardly modernized by a lumber wheelchair ramp and a rickety-looking fire escape. A large sign with MILLERS KILL FREE CLINIC and the hours had been bolted next to the entryway, fine mahogany double doors whose original windows, probably etched glass, had been replaced with scratched Plexiglas.

Blocking the sidewalk was probably an exaggeration, since the lone woman, placard over her shoulder, was striding back and forth between the edge of the walk and the foot of the clinic’s stairs. Clare pulled into the parking spot she had seen on her first pass down Barkley Avenue and turned off the car’s engine. She was going to have to run the gauntlet, no way around it. This was the only parking space anywhere near the historical society she could confidently get in and out of. Evidently recently vacated by a much bigger vehicle, it was practically dry. Her pretty little rebuilt Shelby Cobra, a dream car when she bought it last spring, was lousy in snow and slush. She had chosen it with her vanity, not her good sense, and she had been paying for it-literally, when its transmission gave out-all winter long. Pride’s painful, her grandmother Fergusson used to say, whenever she was twisting Clare’s straight hair into curlers.