TWENTY-SIX
BY DECEMBER IT HAD BECOME possible, for hours at a time, to forget. Gideon’s autopsy at the hospital had proceeded without her but she sensed it like a phantom limb, and Hazel made sure she was occupied elsewhere when the body was being loaded on the plane to St. Paul’s. She knew there would have been no shortage of curious onlookers. She didn’t trust herself to watch him go again.
In the early weeks she’d noticed probing and sympathetic glances, sometimes in connection with a mysterious illness that caused fainting spells, but this attention all but disappeared in the wake of excitement over a new wonder d**g. Not even Ruth broached the subject any longer, though she’d tried to draw Hazel out on several occasions in the weeks following Gideon’s death. Hazel refused to answer
