The next time she’s home from college you ought to bring her back over here with you.”

I smile at the thought. If Sarah is still in her morally indignant phase, as she was in November, she will denounce Angela as a racist. It

occurs to me that Angela was much like Sarah when she was her age.

“You might regret it,” I kid her.

“She can preach a sermon with the best of them.”

I tell Angela about our visit to Bear Creek in November and how appalled Sarah had been by old Mrs. Washington’s story.

“Granted, what my grandfather did was terrible, but Sarah doesn’t see the gray in history. It’s all black and white to her.”

Angela toys with her spoon.

“I heard that you were over here.”

I should have figured. Does nothing over here happen without the whole town knowing about it?

“Why didn’t you say something yesterday?”

Angela smiles sympathetically.

“I assumed you would tell me if you wanted to talk about it. I think I heard it at a party over Christmas,” she replies vaguely.

“Mrs. Petty isn’t the only one who likes to gossip.”

I decide to let it go and am cheered by the fact that as much as people talk over here, at some point if Paul was involved in Willie’s murder,

somebody is bound to spill the beans on him.

The next hour whizzes by. Angela likes to talk about her boys as much as I like to talk about Sarah. I try to reassure her without much success that they will settle down and graduate. Yet, as soft as the economy is and as worthless as a B.A. degree has become, the only jobs they may be qualified for are as chicken pluckers at Tyson Before we leave, Angela allows me to buy her “Deluxe” breakfast and nods approvingly as I leave a two-dollar tip for Mckenzie.

“I wonder if he hired her because he understands her isolation,” she says as we walk out the door.