Blind Descent

"Call me Dottie," Frieda's mother offered unexpectedly.

"Dottie," A

Mrs. Dierkz-Dottie-tried to keep up a semblance of conversation. As much, A

It wasn't long before Mrs. Dierkz gave up. Her last sentence, an admirable attempt to liken the black scrub to the graceful lines of Chinese brush paintings, skidded to a halt midsentence. A heartbeat's silence followed, then she admitted, "I've always liked a little more green. So restful on the eyes."

A

"Frieda?" Mrs. Dierkz said then, inviting A

A

"Frieda," she began again, as asked. Monitoring Dottie from the corner of her eye as she talked, trying to gauge what to tell, what to omit, whether to go on or turn the subject to other matters, A

By the time they started the twisting ascent to the park quarters, A

Yet abandoning the topic altogether seemed not only callous but impossible. Now, and for a while, it was the only topic in the world. So A

Zeddie Dillard was an old family friend. Her older sister and Frieda had gone to college together. When her own sister died, Zeddie had attached herself to Frieda and her sister.

Dottie knew Curt, but "just to say hello to." They had met in Mi

Dottie and her husband, Gordon, had been invited to his wedding. They'd been in Italy at the time and hadn't gone, but she'd heard it had been beautiful. "Quite lavish," she said, and managed to convey disapproval without so much as a lifted eyebrow or a lowered tone. "I don't know his wife well." She sounded like she didn't care to rectify that situation in the foreseeable future.

Piqued, A

For a minute it seemed Mrs. Dierkz was too dull with grief or too refined to go for the bait. A need to keep her mind off worse things won out. "I think it might have been one of those hurry-up deals," Dottie said without much interest. "Gilda, Frieda's… my youngest girl knew her from graduate school. Just to say hi to, you know. They didn't travel with the same crowd. I guess there was some trouble with one of the professors and this girl. Then we hear Dr. McCarty's marrying her."

"You think she was pregnant?" A

Too bluntly for Dottie Dierkz. "Who can know?" she said. "We've all got to live our own lives, I guess. Me as much as anybody."

A

"I thought they might get together at one point," Dottie said wistfully.

"Sondra and Peter?" A

"Peter and Frieda." Staring out the rain-streaked window at the broken hillsides they climbed through, her face was turned away, perhaps mourning not only her daughter but grandchildren she would never know.

"Dr. McCarty and Frieda," A

"They went together for a year or two. Frieda seemed like she might be getting serious at one point. Both Dad and I would have liked that. Frieda was always an independent girl. A little too independent to be a doctor's wife, I think."

McCarty and Frieda.

McCarty and Sondra.

McCarty and Zeddie Dillard.

A

A good deed actually paid off, and A

Her first choice, pursuing background information on the members of Frieda's survey team, had ended against several blank walls. Sondra wasn't answering her phone in St. Paul, and, since she was freelance, there was no place of business whose business it was to keep tabs on her whereabouts. Just for the hell of it A

Brent, A