to 6:10 P.M. After Weigand left, Liza O’Brien had sat for a time looking at nothing. Pam North had poured her fresh coffee and, hardly tasting it, Liza drank. She tried to make the confusion in her mind stand still, tried to make turmoil fall into pattern. “It’s all bits and pieces,” Pam said. “I know. It will come right.” But the words were meaningless to Liza, the optimism without substance. Serves me right, Pam thought, looking at the girl, seeing her words rejected. Talking like God’s in his heaven. Pollyanna passes. How do I know it will come right? Because, Pam thought—still looking at the girl—her young man isn’t what you’d expect; he’s so much more everything. And, of course, he hasn’t told all of it, particularly not what he thinks. And he’s so fond of his mother. As if— But that was reasonable, Pam North had thought, continuing. A young wife with a young child, a much older husband; step-children older than she. Turning to the child, and he turning to her as he grew, because they were both so young for what they were, she as wife and step-mother, he as half-brother to a man and a woman already grown.
