I clung steadfastly to the railing and clunked down all three flights with slow, guarded steps. I was glad my wristwatch was waterlogged. I didn't want to know what time it was.

I arrived at the entrance of the chandeliered dining room and skulked into the room, looking for Nana's face among the tables of diners. People looked up at me as I passed, set their silverware down, and regarded watches that were still working. They obviously hadn't tried out their showers yet. Eyebrows lifted. Brows furrowed. I could hear damning whispers above the clink of china. "My watch," I explained to Bernice Zwerg as I squeezed behind her chair. "It stopped." But that wasn't going to cut it. I'd committed the Eighth Deadly Sin. The one they'd accidentally omitted from my grade-school catechism. The sin that was worse than gluttony or sloth to any Iowan.

I'd committed tardiness.

"Being on holiday is no excuse for being late," Lars Bakke grumbled when I passed.

"Are we going to have to wait for her if she's late for the bus in the morning?" Solvay Bakke asked.

I found Nana seated at a table for four with three other ladies. She glanced at her watch. "You're late, dear."

"How late?" My heart was pounding. I was breathing hard. I guessed I was hyperventilating. Okay, I'd work on the calm and in control thing.

"It's 6:04." She shook her head. "You've very nearly missed dinner, Emily."

I looked around at the empty place settings. "But they haven't even served yet!"

"Excuse me, Madame." A waiter with slicked-back hair and a five o'clock shadow circled around me. He set a plateful of food in front of Nana and one of her companions.

"You better find a place to sit," Nana said. "There's an empty chair over at that table with the Dicks." She gestured toward the wall.

I located the table and rolled my eyes. The table was set for eight. Seated around it were Dick Teig and his wife, Dick Rassmuson and his wife, but no Dick Stolee and Grace. I wondered what the scoop was there. The Dicks always sat together. Hmm. Filling out the rest of the table were our local pharamacist at the Pills Etcetera store in Windsor City, a blonde lady I'd never seen before, and Andrew Simon. And wouldn't you know. The only empty chair was beside Mr. Casanova himself. I gritted my teeth. I'd eat fast.

"Is anyone sitting here?" I stood behind the empty chair that separated Andrew Simon from Jane Hanson, the pharmacist. Helen Teig flipped open the cover of her pendant watch.

"It's 6:05. Didn't you hear Wally say dinner was at six?" Helen was a squat, roly-poly woman with no sense of humor and no eyebrows. She'd lost them when a gas grill blew up in her face on her fiftieth birthday, but she remedied the situation by drawing them on with a black grease pencil. Today, one eyebrow slashed over her eye like a hyphen while the other shot upward in an arch. It made her look as if one side of her face was permanently surprised.