Enchanted Again by Nancy Madore Page A

was just being a good friend.”
    “I feel responsible somehow.”
    “How could you be?” Mary asked her soothingly. Then she added, “But I have to admit, if any of us was going to lose it, I never would have thought it would be Jane. I really thought she had it together.”
    “I don’t think Jane ever confided in us about everything that was really going on in her life. I think she had more problems than she let on,” Carol said.
    “Did you know she was on the verge of losing her business?”
    “I had heard that afterward, yes,” Carol replied.
    “It seems so strange without her here.”
    “I know.”
    Their drinks came then. Carol raised her glass. “To Jane,” she said. There were tears in her eyes, but they were tears of joy.
    Mary touched her glass to Carol’s. “To Jane.”

DESPERATE DAN
    Desperate Dan, the dirty old man
washed his face in a frying pan.
     
    Claire walked into the shoddy little restaurant and tried to ignore that all eyes were on her. It was nerve-racking being the object of so much attention. She had never received so much as a second glance when entering a room back in Chicago, but here in this small town she was practically a celebrity. She was actually the first person to move to Anamoose, North Dakota, in over twelve years. None of the locals could believe she had done it. It was always the first question she was asked by the people she met: What on earth made you come here? Which meant she was asked it a lot, because even though it was a town of just over three hundred people, it was inevitable that she would meet every last one of them. She always answered the question with the same unwavering reply: that she preferred peace and quiet for her work, and furthermore—she would always add—she absolutely adored living in the country. This seemed to satisfy the askers, even though any one of them might have reasoned that there were plenty of quiet little country towns that were not quite so…bygone as theirs. Anamoose looked like a town that had been passed over and left behind, giving it a sense of eeriness that was just as tangible as the old, decrepit buildings that lined the streets. But if her questioners were at all skeptical of her explanation they never mentioned it to Claire. And she could hardly have told the plain-faced, straightforward inhabitants of Anamoose that her real connection with their town originated more than thirty years ago, when she was just a small girl learning to read and happened to come across the name Anamoose on a label on a jar of her favorite rhubarb jelly. It would have seemed strange indeed to have attempted to explain that she remembered the name all these years because, to the ears of the whimsical child she was back then, there was a pleasing ring to it that made it seem a kinder, friendlier place than the one she presently found herself in. She used to repeat the name out loud, again and again. She tried to imagine what a place called Anamoose would be like. Sometimes, when she was angry, she was apt to think, I shall go to Anamoose someday, and live happily ever after there. It was a childish fancy that carried over into a troubled adolescence and then stubbornly remained through adulthood, becoming by then almost a mantra to get her through difficult times. Like religious people look forward to ascending upward toward the heavens someday, so Claire always imagined going to Anamoose.
    Even so, Claire never really believed she would ever go. As long as there was even the tiniest thread of hope that she might someday assimilate herself to the city where she was born and raised, she continued the struggle to exist there. But each time she came close to building any real ties, it seemed the fast-paced city of Chicago would metamorphose into something new altogether, leaving Claire behind to start all over again. Yet always there remained some small bond that was too hard won to simply walk away from. The deciding factor came at last when her