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41 " Oh,” he said. That seemed to satisfy him. At least, he didn’t ask anything more. In the silence that followed, Willa’s eyes met her sister’s, and the two of them exchanged a long, stunned, stricken gaze. "
― Anne Tyler , Clock Dance
42 " Marriage was often a matter of dexterity, in Willa’s experience. "
43 " Willa made sure to keep a rapt expression on her face so the stewardess wouldn’t feel ignored. "
44 " This is a gun,” he said quietly, “and it’s loaded. Move and I shoot. You’re not allowed out of your seat, and neither is he. "
45 " She felt a lot less grateful to Derek now than she had when they were on the plane. "
46 " How come you pack your clothes in Kleenex?” she asked. Tissue paper, she meant. Willa said, “Oh, that’s just something women do when they have too much time on their hands.” Cheryl said “Huh?” and Willa laughed. "
47 " Coming here had not been a mistake. Willa couldn’t say exactly how she knew that, but she did. "
48 " So let me just catch you up on what is going on here,” Cheryl told her. “There’s this bunch of total strangers, see, eating lunch in a hamburger joint. All these different people on their lunch break. And these space aliens come and kidnap them and take them off to study them, because they believe "
49 " these people are a family. See? They want to learn how families work and that’s what they think these customers are. Get it?” “Got it,” Willa said. "
50 " To him it was a cinch, figuring out directions, but Willa seemed to be lacking that particular part of her brain. And the GPS on her phone was no help, because it didn’t let her see more than two inches ahead; and anyhow she hated driving, and she especially hated driving "
51 " a car that wasn’t familiar to her. "
52 " It’s everything. I hate the heat; I hate the humidity; the accent is atrocious…I don’t know what we’re doing here.” “Well, sweetheart? We’re just helping Denise for a few days.” “We don’t even know Denise! "
53 " I don’t suppose you know the password "
54 " she wants to wait till she graduates although me, I’m thinking this summer would be good; I mean, she could finish school in California just as well as at Kinney, so I’m hoping to talk her around, but in any case "
55 " And here’s Miss Carroll’s house who taught me clarinet, except one day I rang the doorbell and got no answer and it turned out she’d run off with Mr. Surrey from the auto-parts store who was married and had five children.” Derek said, “I didn’t know you played the clarinet.” She drew in a breath to speak but then just stared at him, because what? Oh, boys were such foreigners. (Not for the first time, she wished she’d had a brother or two.) A girl would have begged for every detail about Miss Carroll’s running off. “Well, not anymore,” she said finally. “I wasn’t very musical. "
56 " Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing for some man’s behavior. More than half her life, "
57 " She began to have a slight feeling of panic. What am I doing here? she thought. "
58 " turned out that Elaine was so cool and sensible that she arranged to arrive the night before the funeral and fly out right afterward. Willa wasn’t happy about that. Still, she had to admit that her literal request had been for Elaine to come to the funeral, period. Oh, they were never going to be like the sisters in Little Women! "
59 " couldn’t tell her then. It would have been adding insult to injury. It would be, first the main dish is a flop and then her husband abandons her, all in the same evening. Right? "
60 " She had promised herself that her children would never have to worry what sort of mood she was in; they would never peek into her bedroom in the morning to see how their day was going to go. She was the only woman she knew whose prime objective was to be taken for granted. "