The next thing I knew, we were in the parking lot of the SPACOLEC complex, and Melinda and I were hugging each other and crying. This was unprecedented, and maybe we were both a little relieved when we separated to dig in our purses for tissues.

“They’ll find out,” Melinda said.

“Yes, they will. But at least it won’t have been us who told them.”

“I don’t know why that makes me feel better,” Melinda said, giving a few hiccupping sobs, “but it does. You know if that Arthur Smith finds out we’re lying, he’ll make it hard on us, and Avery will never forgive me.”

I nodded grimly. If Melinda thought Avery was the most frightening thing facing her, she’d never seen my mother angry.

“What should we do with them?”

I pulled the cloth straps out of my purse and glared at them. They were cute as the dickens. They’d been embroidered by Poppy, who was fond of needlework, for the sons of Cartland (“Bubba”) Sewell and my friend Lizanne. The boys, Brandon and Davis, were now-well, Brandon was a toddler, and Davis was sitting up. The straps, which snapped into a circle, were designed to run through the plastic loop on a pacifier, so when the baby dropped the pacifier, it wouldn’t fall to the floor. You could run the strap around the baby’s neck, or around the brace of a car seat, or whatever. Brandon’s had his name and little bunnies embroidered on it, while Davis’s had footballs and his initials. Lizanne had loved them when Poppy had given them to her; I remembered the day she’d opened the little package. And I’d found them on the ground in Poppy’s driveway. Melinda and I exchanged a long glance, and I stuffed them back into my purse.

I drove to Melinda and Avery’s house, trying to be extra careful, because I was all too aware of how dazed I was. I waited out in the driveway while Melinda ran in to check on the kids, tell the baby-sitter what had happened, and change shoes.