Michael Malone - Weebly

astonishing him with her sudden leaps and turns.
Smalter recalled hearing as a child that a young couple,
sweethearts, people called them, had fallen through the
ice and drowned. For weeks he'd waked with
nightmares of their swimming down the black river
under ice, pushing up against the dark cold, searching
for the jagged hole of light they'd fallen through. His
parents had thought he was dreaming of his operations.
"Hi, Mr. Smalter." It was Luke's voice. In a bend a
few hundred feet ahead, Luke and Polly sat quietly by
the bank, Polly in a huge tree trunk hollowed into a
seat. From a distance they looked like a Winslow
Homer painting. Close up, they looked thinner to the
pharmacist; their eyes different.
Smalter nodded and stood beside them for a while.
Then he said, "I told Ramona that you'd dropped by
earlier, Polly, but Dr. Scaper thinks it'll be better in
general that she not have any visitors while she's feeling
so weak." (Miss Dingley had in fact said to Smalter,
"Tell her, don't come. Could pontificate. Be pleasant.
Deathbed advice.
Young heiress. Tears and gratitude. Won't indulge