LITMIR.BIZ

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Shelton. Sorry that I was too wrapped up in myself to be there for you.”

      Maggie lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “It’s okay. Just caught me flat-footed, you know?” She glanced my way. “I knew he wasn’t anything special when he asked me for cash to leave a tip. Besides, I’m better off finding out now.”

      “You’ll find the one you’re supposed to be with, Maggie.”

      “Of course. Somebody’s gotta be brave enough to take me on. And I’m a whole heap older and wiser now. Hell, I was my own worst enemy with Shelton. I just kept lying to myself, telling myself he’d change.”

      Is that what I’m doing with Joe? I asked myself. Just fooling myself into thinking once he holds Meredith for the first time, everything will be okay?

      Maggie must have picked up on my sour thoughts. “I know I’ll find somebody. After all, look at you and Joe. He may be a definite member of the husbandus irritatus species, but he doesn’t lie, he doesn’t cheat and, most importantly, he won’t gamble away your life savings.” She took the opportunity at the Industrial Boulevard intersection to reach over and squeeze my hand. “I know it’s rough now. But he’s just scared. He’s afraid to hope. I’ve been there. It’s hard to get back up on that horse after it’s thrown you.”

      I smiled. “Husbandus irritatus, huh? Maybe I’ll get him a T-shirt with that printed on it. He is a good guy, isn’t he?”

      “Sure. Look how much he cares. He never forgets your birthday or your anniversary, he puts up with all the crap from your mother and I know more than one man who would have bailed on a woman once she wound up with cancer. Not Joe, though. He stuck by you. Shelton wouldn’t have done that, not in a million years. The only ding Joe has is Cherie.”

      Her mention of Cherie reminded me about the early morning phone call I’d had the day before. When I gave Maggie the high notes on it, she shook her head.

      “Now that is scary, Cherie using her pea-brain to figure anything out. See? That’s probably what Joe’s so wigged out about. He and Cherie probably got into it again yesterday before he got home, and now he’s thinking it’s all his fault how she turned out. But you and I know that young’un’s always been a spoilt brat.”

      That was true. The first time I’d met Cherie was when Maggie and I had spied on Joe during football practice our senior year. Cherie, an immature eight, had barreled up the stands where we sat and grabbed my soft drink out of my hands.

      “I’m thirsty! I wanna drink!” she’d shrieked as I told her no out of pure reflex.

      The resulting altercation had attracted the attention of Joe’s football-coach dad, who’d been glowering on the sidelines. He came up to where we tussled over a fifty-cent soft-drink can.

      “Baby girl, you know you don’t want somebody else’s germs,” he’d said, swooping her up and totally missing the part about respect for personal property. “Here’s some money. You go get your own drink. But don’t tell your mama, okay? Just our little secret, got it?”

      Then he’d turned, looked out on the field at his son. “Joe!” he’d bellowed in a harsh voice. “You knuckle-head! That’s not how I wanted you to run that play! Give me twenty and then sit your backside on the bench so you can let a real quarterback show you how it’s done.”

      The bump of Maggie’s SUV as it hit the access ramp to I-16 brought me back to the present. Maybe Joe feared he’d be the father his dad had been to him—or to Cherie.

      But Joe’d proven an excellent father to Matthew. I just had to remind him to have faith in himself—and pray China would soon fling wide the adoption floodgates.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      MAGGIE AND I blew Saturday. We poked along like two little blue-haired old ladies. I had no inclination to head back to the demilitarized zone I called home, so for once I wasn’t rushing her.

      We pulled up in my drive at about six. I saw no sign of Joe, but Rick’s truck was parked in front of the workshop. I figured they’d wandered off somewhere.

      After Maggie had headed home to Campbell, I sorted out my groceries from the ones I’d bought for Ma. I dreaded facing her, but she was right: Grocery shopping with no means of transportation was difficult.

      Like Maggie, Ma lived in Campbell. It was where I grew up, where I’d gone to school. Ma had raised me in a series of tar-paper shacks and rundown mobile homes, always moving one step ahead of the eviction notice. I remembered too many times when we’d go for a day or so without lights or propane because Ma had drunk up all her paycheck.

      I never knew my dad. Ma had gotten pregnant when she was sixteen, followed by a shotgun wedding at the behest of Ma’s own drunk of a father. I suspected Granddaddy was more concerned with ridding himself of responsibility than with his only daughter’s virtue.

      The marriage vows dissolved before I was even born, and my dad took off to parts unknown. Ma said he’d gone out to get a fifth of liquor and never came back. She always seemed more ticked about him diddling her out of that last bottle than him abandoning us.

      She waitressed at a series of local cafés and beer joints, chronically disenchanted with whatever her current employment situation was. My ma was made to be a rich, idle woman with a richer man to take care of tedious details like paying bills on time. She was not made for hard-scrabble survival.

      Our penury, though aggravated by her love of liquor, humiliated her. She’d send me in the grocery store to buy food so I would be the one to present food stamps to pay for it.

      It bothered me, too. I still remember the burning shame that coursed over me when a careless lunchroom worker shouted to the new cashier, “Honey, don’t mind her. She’s one of them that gets a free lunch.”

      The Boatwrights’ clean, well-run home told me I didn’t have to live in squalor. To this day, the smell of laundry-fresh sheets will take me back to the day Cecilia Boatwright showed me how to fold a fitted sheet. It boggled the mind of a kid whose mother was content to sleep on sheets gray with filth.

      Maggie’s mom taught me everything about running a house. She made a big production out of including Maggie in her tutelage, but even as a little kid, I knew what she was doing. I loved her even more fiercely for it.

      I pulled into the housing project Ma unwillingly called home these days. She hadn’t liked it, but after I’d sold her car, she didn’t have much choice. She needed to live in town where she could at least walk to the small selection of stores Campbell had to offer, and public housing was about all she could afford on her monthly disability check.

      The sight that greeted me in the growing twilight filled me with dismay. Ma was busy having herself a dustup with her neighbors and the police. I groaned and got out of my Volkswagen.

      “—don’t want nobody botherin’ my stuff!” she shrieked. “’s my stuff, and don’t want none of youse botherin’ it. I know you took it, you theivin’, no-good—”

      Here, her language deteriorated into a string of racial slurs, sure to go over well with the young black patrolman who looked like he’d rather be anywhere but dealing with Nora O’Rourke.

      I crossed the threadbare grass, worn down to the South Georgia sand where kids had played tag and baseball. “Ma! Ma! Calm down. What’s wrong?”

      But asking Ma to calm down produced as much result as telling a hurricane to go back to the middle of the Atlantic. I turned to the patrolman. I recognized him. Cedric had graduated from Bryce County High School only the year before.

      “Hey, Cedric. What’s the deal here?”

      “This your mama, Mrs. Tennyson? Gosh, I wouldn’t have thought it. She sure ain’t like you.” Cedric looked momentarily abashed at his unsolicited candor. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it.”

      “No, Cedric, you’re right. She’s not like me. But

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