That crazy Polish woman was out there someplace, cruising around in her little car.
Nettle sat in her chair, holding her lampshade in her lap. She had been holding it in her lap ever since the crazy Polish woman had driven past her house the first time. Then she had come again, parking and honking her horn. When she left, Nettle thought it might be over, but no-the woman had come back yet a third time.
Nettle had been sure the crazy Polish woman would try to come in.
She had sat in her chair, hugging the lampshade with one arm and Raider with the other, wondering what she would do when and if the crazy Polish woman did try-how she would defend herse f.
She didn't know.
At last she had mustered enough courage to take another peek out the window, and the crazy Polish woman had been gone. Her first feeling of relief had been superseded by dread. She was afraid that the crazy Polish woman was patrolling the streets, waiting for her to come out; she was even more afraid that the crazy Polish woman would come here after she was gone.
That she would break in and see her beautiful lampshade and shatter it to a thousand fragments on the floor.
Raider whined again.
"I know," she said in a voice which was almost a groan. "I know."
She had to leave. She had a responsibility, and she knew what it was and to whom she owed it. Polly Chalmers had been good to her. It had been Polly who wrote the recommendation that had gotten her out of juniper Hill for good, and it had been Polly who had co-signed for her home loan at the bank. If not for Polly, whose father had been her father's best friend, she would still be living in a rented room on the other side of the Tin Bridge.
But what if she left and the crazy Polish woman came back?
Raider couldn't protect her lampshade; he was brave, but he was just a little dog. The crazy Polish woman might hurt him if he tried to stop her. Nettle felt her mind, caught in the vise of this horrible dilemma, beginning to slip. She groaned again.
And suddenly, mercifully, an idea occurred to her.
She got up, still cradling the lampshade in her arms, and crossed the living room, which was very gloomy with the shades drawn.
She walked through the kitchen and opened the door in its far corner. There was a shed tacked onto this end of the house. The shadows of the woodpile and a great many stored objects bulked in the gloom.
A single lightbulb hung down from the ceiling on a cord.
There was no switch or chain; you turned it on by screwing it firmly into its socket. She reached for this... then hesitated.
If the crazy Polish woman was lurking in the back yard, she would see the light go on. And if she saw the light go on, she would know exactly where to look for Nettle's carnival glass lampshade, wouldn't she?
"Oh no, you don't get me that easy," she said under her breath, feeling her way past her mother's armoire and her mother's old Dutch bookcase to the woodpile. "Oh no you don't, Wilma Jersyck.
I'm not stupid, you know. I'm warning you of that."
Holding the lampshade against her belly with her left hand, Nettle used her right to pull down the tangle of old, dirty cobwebs in front of the shed's single window. Then she peered out into the back yard, her eyes jerking brightly from one spot to another. She remained so for almost a minute. Nothing in the back yard moved.
Once she thought she saw the crazy Polish woman crouching in the far left corner of the yard, but closer study convinced her it was only the shade of the oak at the back of the Fearons' yard. The tree's lower branches overhung her own yard. They were moving a little in the wind, and that was why the patch of shade back there had looked like a crazy woman (a crazy Polish woman, to be exact) for a second.
Raider whined from behind her. She looked around and saw him standing in the shed door, a black silhouette with his head cocked.
"I know," she said. "I know, boy-but we're going to fool her. She thinks I'm stupid. Well, I can teach her better news than that."
She felt her way back. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom and she decided she would not need to screw in the lightbulb after all.
She stood on tiptoe and felt along the top of the armoire until her fingers encountered the key which locked and unlocked the long cupboard on the left-hand side. The key which worked on the drawers had been missing for years, but that was all right-Nettle had the one she needed.
She opened the long cupboard and deposited the carnival glass lampshade inside, amid the dust bunnies and mouse-turds.
"It deserves to be in a better place and I know it," she said softly to Raider. "But it's safe, and that's the important thing."