Rose laughs. “A fan of the Smothers Brothers,” she says.

“I get it,” Marion says without a trace of amusement.

“Six,” Rose says. She blows away the loose beads, then moves quickly around the wall into the activities room.

“Where did you go?” Marion asks.

“Hiding. With luck, she’ll think Mary Alice slipped out and went home.”

Chuck is no longer yelling.

Karen can be heard stomping down the hall, making every footfall count.

The lights are out in the activities room, but nowhere in the lockdown unit is it ever truly dark. Streetlight filters through the windows. Night-lights glow in at least one socket in every room. The hall and the nurses’ station are brightly lit day and night.

The activities room is like, but not identical to, the room Rose remembers from when she was an inmate there. It is smaller, dimmer, the table a bit bigger. A sofa she hadn’t noticed sits beneath the room’s one window. The wall opposite the arch is covered with a bookcase. No closet, no drapes, nothing that can conceal a grown woman.

Not that Rose ever noticed Karen check the activities room, but the nurse has her radar on tonight. She obviously suspects Alice Mary Alice is not on the up-and-up.

In the dimmer half of the room, away from the arch and the window, chairs are neatly tucked under the big wooden table.

Quick and quiet, Rose pulls out the chair farthest from the light. She crawls under the table. In the shadowy forest of chair and table legs, she folds down, butt on her heels, nose between her knees, tucking herself into a stony heap no more than eighteen inches high and consuming less than three square feet of floor space. Grasping the horizontal brace on the displaced chair, she pulls it in as far as she can. Folding her elbows to her sides, hands over her face, she listens.

“Are you hidden?” Marion asks.

Rose dares not answer.

“Talk to me when you can,” Marion says, then goes silent.

Footfalls halt. Her bottom and the soles of her feet toward the archway, face pressed against her thighs, Rose can see nothing. She feels—or imagines—a change in the quality of the dim light. The nurse’s considerable bulk eclipsing the fluorescent spill from the adjoining room?

A distinct click, no imagining this time. Karen has turned on the light. Rose screws her eyes shut and holds her breath. Woman found hiding under table in old folks’ home. News at eleven. Humiliating; even a closet or under a bed would have been less embarrassing. What possible excuse could explain being wadded up under the arts table in a secure hospital unit?

Playing at armadillo.

Chair yoga.

Looking for a contact lens.

Kissing her ass goodbye.