“I feel like I did when I was a kid and found out we were moving near my grandparents. I was all excited, until I realized I was going to be leaving behind my friends. I guess this defines a mixed blessing.” She looked up at him. “I was surprised at how, um, passionately you felt on the question. You must be a big supporter of the clinic.”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Then why were you so vehement in defending its funding?”
“Jane Mairs Ketchem, that’s why. She’s rolling over in her grave right now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she kicked her way out of the coffin and marched down here to defend her precious clinic.” He ran his hand over his thick white brush cut. “I’ll tell you something. She was the only woman who could ever scare me. And the fact that she’s dead doesn’t make me any less scared.”
Chapter 7
NOWMonday, March 13
Clare came with Mrs. Marshall to the clinic the next Monday. “You really don’t have to do this, dear,” Mrs. Marshall said, pulling on her black kidskin gloves and setting her hat at an angle on the silver waves of her hair.
Clare brought her attention back from her look-around at the airy foyer of the Marshall house, one of several “executive mansions” outside Millers Kill that had been built for high-level General Electric people in the sixties. It was decorated-tastefully and expensively-at the same time and had never been changed again. Clare hadn’t seen so much Danish modern and smoked glass since her last visit to an Ikea store.
“I know,” she said, fishing into her pocket for her own bulky Polarplus gloves. “You don’t have to tell the clinic director about your decision in person, either. But you are.”
Mrs. Marshall smiled. She had on fuchsia lipstick today, and the effect against her paper white skin was startling. “I suspect we were both raised to do the right thing, whether we want to or not.”