How Nancy Drew Saved My Life by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page B

less, if I ate even more. So my selections were parsimonious insurance against the weight I would undoubtedly regain.
    She let me have the requested scissors and I happily snipped away, considering it a small triumph when I showed rare coordination and didn’t nick myself in the process.
    Ringing me up, she placed my other purchases in a bag: several more pairs of jeans, a few pairs of cords for dressier occasions, a half dozen sweaters, all in the same simple but elegant style, and two weeks’ worth of warm socks. When she moved to put my old things in the bag, my T-shirt and shorts, I stopped her, asked her to throw them away instead. I no longer wanted anything from the life I had lived before. I would get rid of the remainder when I returned home.
    I was almost out of the store when I saw a rack of dresses I hadn’t noticed earlier and remembered Mrs. Fairly telling me that part of my duties would be to take Annette to church every other week. Back home, even though I didn’t attend religious services myself, I was aware of a change in the attire of those who did. When I was young, religious services had been a more formal affair, with men and boys in suits, women and girls in dresses. A lot of the women even wore hats, although most of them looked silly, not being Princess Diana. People tried to look their best. But in recent years, when I saw people exiting churches on Sundays and synagogues on Fridays and Saturdays, I’d noticed that there were hardly ever ties or jackets, that the women almost never wore dresses and sometimes you even saw young people in jeans.
    But I knew enough to know that respect in terms of dress here would still be more the standard than the exception. With that in mind, then, I reached for the rack of sweater dresses and selected a delicate, off-white one with a cowl neck that, when I held it to me, looked to be about the right size.
    â€œYou don’t want to try it on first?” the shopgirl asked when I handed it to her along with my credit card for the second time.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, not that it matters.”
    I knew she must find me puzzling at best, but I didn’t particularly care.
    Before leaving the mall, I stopped at a shoe store, where I was able to get both hiking boots and a pair of heels to go with the dress, plus a few pairs of stockings.
    It wasn’t until I was on the bus back to Laufasvegur 21 that I realized I had once again forgotten to get anything to protect myself from that rain that was sure to come again before too much more time had passed.
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    Back at the house, I had a light meal—okay, so maybe it was more substantial than light; how hungry I was now!—before commencing to decide what to do with the remainder of my last day as a free nonmastered woman.
    Mrs. Fairly had plans for me.
    â€œCome,” she said. “There’s a couple of more things about this house that you have not yet seen.”
    I thought she must mean the master’s bedroom or perhaps that other bedroom door, behind which I’d imagined I’d heard laughter, but that wasn’t the case.
    Instead, she led me upstairs to my own bedroom.
    â€œWhat?” I said, looking around me, not understanding: everything was as familiar to me as it had already become in my short time there.
    â€œLook upward,” she smiled, looking upward herself.
    I followed her gaze.
    At first, all I saw was the wide expanse of the high white ceiling. But then, in the corner of the room, above my new writing desk, at which I had yet to do any writing, I saw there was the outline of a trapdoor with a cord extending down from it.
    â€œA secret trapdoor!” I said, charmed.
    â€œNot so secret,” she laughed. “It’s right there.”
    How had I not noticed that before?
    Again, it was as though she read my mind: “People see mostly what they expect to see,” she said, “and only that.