Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm

exactly the way a boy would become fascinated with a frog under the dissecting knife.
     
        "You say Kendricks left his wife six years ago and just turned up again. Why didn't she divorce him?"
     
        Her father looked startled, then thoughtful.
     
        "I don't know why not."
     
        "Well, find out. And while you're at it, find out who she's been sleeping with. Or is she celibate at thirty-two?"
     
        She stood up.
     
        "I'll bring in some of my stuff. Most of it can stay in the trunk for the next few days until I take off." She left him on the terrace.
     
        NINE
     
        she carried her suitcases upstairs to the guest room she had used in the past. It had a western view, a better view of the river, actually, than the terrace. The water had taken on a golden sheen that looked like a shiny satin fabric in just enough motion to keep the highlights moving, to keep new patterns appearing, vanishing. She watched it for several minutes, her head empty, content to watch the infinite changes.
     
        When her father's words began to overtake the peace that she could almost feel seeping into her, she began to move briskly around the room, first to examine the drawers of the chest, empty, and then to open her suitcases and begin unpacking a few things. The closet had a down jacket and two sweaters, apparently left here on her last visit.
     
        She had forgotten them. In the bathroom there was a jar of soap roses with the spicy fragrance of wild roses.
     
        A sharp memory came to mind. Her mother, slender, white-haired, lovely, saying in her soft voice, "Dear, leave it open. If the soap air dries, it lasts longer. That's why I always unwrap them all." Barbara caught her breath at the clarity of the fleeting moment. Her mother had been talking to her father, who always closed the jar. It was open now.
     
        She went back to the bedroom to stand in the center indecisively. There was a comfortable chair, a reading lamp, some books, magazines. Newspapers. The bed was the three-quarters brass bed from her old room, with the same quilted spread in pink and green leaves and flowers.
     
        She wanted to lie down on the bed and cry, as she had done in that distant past over this heartbreak or that.
     
        She finished putting away the few things she had decided to unpack. Then she set her shoulders and went back downstairs.
     
        At the foot of the stairs, her father called her from the kitchen.
     
        "In here, honey. Doing things with food."
     
        She went through the hallway, glancing into his study on her way, and on to the kitchen. His study was more muddled than the living room, more books, many of them open, a computer setup that was new, a pair of slippers near his favorite leather chair.
     
        "What I thought was grilled trout. You're not on a diet or anything, are you?" He looked across the room at her over the top of his glasses. She had stopped at the dinette table and chairs. When she shook her head, he went on.
     
        "Good. Good. Stuffed tomatoes. Lonnie grew them, and sweet corn. You remember Lonnie Rowan, don't you?"
     
        "I don't think I met her."
     
        "Maybe not. She was probably still in the hardware store last time you were around. Her father owned it since the Flood, I guess, and then a few years ago he upped and died on her. She was fifty-five. It seemed that all the promises he made about providing for her were fairy dust. He died in debt, store with a mortgage, house mortgaged, more bills than you could imagine."
     
        As he talked he moved around the other side of the kitchen, to a cutting board where he cut the tomatoes, salted them, turned them over to drain. To a short step ladder he always had used as a stool, where he sat to shuck corn. Back to the sink.. .. She didn't offer to help. He was a much better cook than she was, and he couldn't stand another person in the