But on the other hand, Betsy still didn’t know what she was doing at Crewel World. Okay, she could write up sales slips, she could read and understand invoices. And she could knit, embroider, and just today she realized she could tell silk from perle cotton from wool at a glance. Just as she could tell at a glance that she had knitted one and needed to knit another. Purl two.

But what about payroll? When were paychecks issued? And in what amount? And how did one figure withholding taxes? And what did one do with the money withheld? She felt the familiar despair come over her. How in the world did she think she was going to do this? She was a fool—an old fool! Her fingers cramped and she realized she was gripping the needles too tightly. She forced herself to open them, wriggled them a bit, then slowly knit and purled her way across the rest of the row, waiting for her mind to settle and clear again.

When it did, a memory rose up. Years ago, right out of the navy, Betsy had worked in a small office, and had helped the office manager do payroll. She remembered it fiadn’t been all that hard.

And Jill had said that Margot kept all her business information in her computer.

It was time to have a look. Betsy put down her knitting, careful to stick the pointed ends of the needles into the ball of yarn to keep the stitches in place, and marched into Margot’s bedroom.

Everything was as it had been, the bed smoothed rather than properly made, Margot’s makeup still on the dresser, the scent of her perfume still lingering in the air.

Betsy nearly fled, but told herself not to be an idiot, and went to sit at the computer. She found the power switch and turned it on. The screen flickered, the computer grumbled, and then came the chord of music: ta-dah!

At first Betsy just explored, noting the AOL icon, finding games (FreeCell solitaire and something called You Don’t Know Jack, which made her smile wryly) and the word-processing program. Margot had Windows 95, which Betsy had had on her own computer, so it didn’t take long to get comfortable.

She began looking for a business program and found Quicken. But when she tried to get into it, it demanded a password. She tried Margot and Berglund and Crewel and World and Crewelworld, and then all the needlework terms she could think of, to no avail. She sat back, frustrated.

She remembered her own computer, and the list of her assets she had kept in a file that required a password. She had used “Margot.” She looked at the screen, its cursor flashing impatiently. She typed “B-E-T-S-Y” and hit Enter.

And she was in.