But Bobby was not to be distracted. “So what’s wrong with her?”

Dinah deduced correctly that he wasn’t speaking of their daughter. His face-taut black skin stretched over high cheekbones, a broad brow, and a very firm chin-bore an anxious expression, which didn’t become him, mostly because she’d never seen it before. Her heart melted, and she subsided gracefully into the lap that there was enough left of his legs to make. “I think it’s her house.”

He was honestly bewildered. “Her house?”

“The one the Park built for her. I think she feels like she owes us.”

He still didn’t get it, but he was calming down. He tucked a strand of white-blond hair behind her ear. “Why us?”

“Not just us us,” Dinah said. “Everybody in the Park us. Everyone who had a hand in the construction and the furnishing thereof anyway. And the purchase of materials for.”

“Oh, sure,” Bobby said after a moment. “I get it. Her cabin burns down and the Park rats build her a new one, so she turns herself into a one-woman version of the Salvation Army, with a little Jimmy Carter thrown in?”

“All summer long,” Dinah said, nodding her head. “Billy Mike told me he had to throw her out of an NNA meeting before things escalated into a shooting war.”

Dinah was happy when Bobby grinned and then threw back his head and laughed out loud. “I’d like to have been a fly on the wall that day.”

“Yeah, Billy said Kate kept insisting on telling the truth, out loud and in front of God and everybody. Said it took him a month to calm the board down to where he could get a decent vote out of them.”

Bobby shook his head. “How long do you think she’s going to keep this up?”

“I don’t know. Edna told me Kate got her and Bernie a counselor so they could work on their marriage. Annie Mike says Kate’s been calling in favors all the way up to the state supreme court to help out with Vanessa’s adoption.” Dinah paused, and said with a straight face, “I hear tell she took Keith and Oscar fishing for reds down at the aunties’ fish camp.”