Anne Shakespeare said, staring out the window into the busy street, “in some ways, I miss him.” “Miss him?” Polly Rogers replied incredulously. “Miss the man who walked out on you and your three children all those years ago? Miss him? You have to be joking, Anne. You’re going soft in the head!” The words not only bounced around the tiny room, but reverberated out into the street, for Polly was known around town for her distinctive, metallic, jarring voice that, as one critic described it, “Sounds like a blacksmith’s hammer against the anvil, and can round up a herd of cattle three mountain ranges away.” Anne could see Polly’s view. She was a good friend, strident voice and all, and knew all about marriage - she and Eric having had five children. But she and Eric were still together. “Well, maybe it is not so much that I miss William,” said Anne, “but rather I simply want to catch up with him, just once, to find out about him, to see how he is going, to hear what he had been up to.”
