Michael Malone - Weebly

without leaving behind explanation or excuse—like her
father.
How had it happened? Somehow lives and time
and chances sneaked away from her behind her back,
when she had always intended to be brave and
beautiful. How could she have dared so much in her
dreams, but asked so pitifully little of life? She who had
never meant to stop looking like Norma Shearer? She
who had once, once, intoxicated, danced atop a
captain's table, and had lived at that height in no other
moment, and was now sixty-six years old?
"I really think you are the silliest old creature," Miss
Lattice told herself, and sighed as she tied up the last
box of marzipan she'd made that night. She felt sorry for
herself, and sorrier because there was no one but
herself to pity her, and sorrier still because self-pity was
such an unattractive quality, revealing, as it did, that
very weakness of character for which she pitied herself.
"I'm just overtired. I ought to go to bed. I'm just upset
about Scheherazade."
Although Miss Lattice had gathered up all the
possessions of the dead Siamese, she had found herself