The Unforgiven by Patricia MacDonald Page B

said.
    “Uh-oh,” Grace clucked. “Well, all right. You get on home.”
    Evy picked up her purse and started for the door.
    Maggie spoke up in a strained voice. “Do you need a ride?” she asked.
    “No,” the girl retorted.
    Grace wrapped an arm around Evy’s shoulders and accompanied her out of the office, murmuring words of advice.
    •   •   •
    At 5:15, after an hour of silence save for a few razor-sharp exchanges between them, Maggie watched Grace retrieve her black coat, put it on, and gather up her packages. With a brusque “Good night,” she left, slamming the front door behind her.
    Maggie sat back in her chair and stared over at Evy’s empty desk. In the silent room Maggie had the eerie sense that the battered old antique accused her for the absence of its occupant. Slowly, she rose to her feet and crossed over to it. Everything on the chipped and gouged-out desk top was neatly in place. There were piles of papers and a group of pencils all sharpened and carefully aligned on the sides of the blotter. A box of rubber bands, paper clips, and a stack of typing paper sat on the right. Nothing on the desk betrayed anything of the girl who sat there, except for a round, crystal paperweight with a blue-, black-, and golden-winged butterfly inside it, which rested on a stack of papers. Maggie ran her fingers over the object, then picked it up to examine it. She frowned as she inspected the fragile creature, trapped in its crystal orb. It was beautiful, suspended there. Beautiful and lifeless. Maggie replaced it on the papers and noticed that her fingers had left smudges clouding the glass. Guiltily she picked it up and tried to wipe it clean with a tissue from her pocket. The smudges lengthened into smears.
    “Maggie.”
    She started and looked up. Jess stood in the doorway in his coat. “If anyone calls, I had to run over to the health food store and pick up their ad copy. Last-minute amendments from the counterculture.”
    She tried to conceal the paperweight. “Okay,” she said without looking at him, “but I’m just about to leave.”
    “All right.” He seemed about to add something, but then he thought better of it and left.
    As he disappeared out the door, Maggie replaced the paperweight on Evy’s desk. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but it was better this way. The memory of Evy’s stricken face recurred, as it had all afternoon. She sat down heavily in the girl’s chair. A feeling of shame overcame Maggie as she recalled the girl’s awkward attempt to find out the truth, and her own lies, now exposed, that she had given in response. I was only trying to protect her, she thought. Whatever the motive, it had done more harm than good.
    The girl’s infatuation with Jess was so apparent. Naturally she’d resent any attention he showed to another woman. Maggie realized that she had come, unwelcome, into Evy’s life and disrupted her fantasy. Evy was very young, and in love with her boss, and it was painful. Stinging memories of Roger recurred as she sat in Evy’s seat. She too had been young, alone in a strange town. She had fled her home and the years of silent recriminations from her mother, whispered imprecations from Sister Dolorita. She had settled in a new place and had promptly fallen in love with her boss. For months she would go home to her lonely rented room at night and think of him. And at work her stomach would churn with jealousy when she heard the familiar, disembodied voice of his wife on the phone.
    And then, unbelievably, she found her love returned.That was when the guilt, and the pain, had begun in earnest. But she had been vulnerable, like Evy, and she needed him.
    Maggie rubbed her eyes, as if to banish a disquieting vision. Then her glance fell on a bag under Evy’s desk. Glad for any distraction, she reached down and picked up the package, which had a pharmacy’s mortar and pestle insignia on the front. She looked inside and found that the bag contained