No Love Lost #972367

‘I never did think her eyes were a patch on yours, Miss Ann. Take a good look. You can see them. They’re as plain as anything. Now let me get you a hand mirror.’
Rhoda planted the folded newspaper with the photograph in it squarely in front of me, supporting it against my after-lunch coffee cup. She was forthright and innocently excited in every one of her two hundred pounds, and she tore open an old wound as surely as if, with her plump, well-meaning fingers, she had found the cicatrix and ripped it from my flesh.
It was so unexpected. I had had such a busy morning and was so full of other people’s troubles that my own life was utterly forgotten. She took me completely off guard and got right through at a stroke, without my being aware.