Guiltily, she knew she was looking forward to it, too. A whole summer of swimming, sleeping late, staying up all night to read all those juicy escapist books she never had time to read during the school year.

And no more frozen dinners. No more school cafeteria! She was going to eat fried corned-beef hash with catsup and onions for breakfast and fried banana sandwiches for supper, and work off all the calories by walking and swimming.

Who said you can’t have it all?

What’s more, she was going to play her guitar until she built up a set of calluses that would shatter bricks. And she’d sing along, even if she couldn’t carry a tune. Which she couldn’t.

The night Alice had called, Lucy had been feeling mildewy. Rain always depressed her, and it had been raining for over a week. Studying the help-wanted ads for a summer job hadn’t improved her mood, either.

When she’d picked up the phone, expecting to hear Frank’s familiar voice, and heard Alice Hardisson’s instead, she’d been so shocked she inhaled a piece of popcorn. It was minutes before she could speak coherently. Even now she wasn’t sure she’d been thinking coherently. “Goodness, you’re the last person in the world I ever expected to hear from,” she’d managed to say.

They had been friends while Lucy was married to Billy, or at least as much as two women of different generations and totally different backgrounds could ever be friends. Alice had been quietly furious about the marriage, but she’d covered it well. Every inch the gracious lady, she had never let on by so much as a single cross word. Instead, she’d had her secretary mail out announcements and then hustled Lucy off to do some serious shopping, tactfully avoiding comment on the flowing shirts and tight pants she’d favored back then.

Alice always wore dresses. Gradually Lucy had begun to notice that her clothes never looked quite new—never looked quite fashionable, either—yet they never looked really unfashionable. Understatement, she came to learn, was a fashion statement all its own.

She also learned that Alice’s particular brand of understatement could cost a mint.

She had learned much more than that from Mother Hardisson. Gradually she had come to admire the woman, emulating the way she dressed, the way she expressed herself—even the way she smiled.

Grins were vulgar, loud laughter quite beyond the pale.

Lucy hadn’t even known what a pale was.

But by the time she had learned to cover her five-foot-eleven, one-hundred-forty-pound frame in suitably understated fashions, to wear modest pearl buttons in her ears instead of three-inch gold-plated hoops with dangles and to drink watery iced tea instead of diet cola with her meals, her marriage was already foundering.

By the time Alice had left for Scotland, Lucy had been wondering how long she could go on hiding the truth about the wretched state of affairs at 11 Tennis Court Road. Billy began drinking soon after breakfast, and when he drank, he was mean. Lucy had tried repeatedly to make him seek help, which had only made him meaner.

Alice had gone from Scotland to France and then directly back to Scotland, almost as if she didn’t want to come home. Lucy could have used her support at the time—particularly after she lost the baby. But Alice would have been devastated, and Lucy couldn’t wish that for her. Alice had still been visiting friends abroad when the divorce had become final.

It had been a quick one. At least Billy had agreed to that much, paying for her requisite six weeks’ residency. Afterwards, Lucy had sold her wedding and engagement rings, and the diamond and sapphire guard ring Billy had given her for her birthday, a week after their wedding, for enough to relocate. She’d been intending to try Richmond, but she’d missed a turnoff and ended up taking I-40 through Winston-Salem. Just north of town, her car had broken down, and by the time she’d had it repaired, she had only enough money left to rent a cheap room and look for a job. It was a way of life which was all too familiar. Unscheduled moves, unscheduled stops.

But the job had turned out to be a good one, waitressing at a popular restaurant. She’d attended night school, finished her teaching degree and was now in her second year of teaching sixth grade. Not half bad under the circumstances, she thought proudly.

“Lucy, my dear,” Alice had said that rainy night nearly two weeks ago. “Why didn’t you ever write? You knew I’d be concerned.”

“I’m sorry, Mother Hardisson” was all Lucy could think of to say. Sorry your son turned out to be such a bastard, sorry he robbed you of your grandchild and sorry you can’t divorce him, too. You’d be better off, believe me!

“Oh, please, my dear. I’m the one who’s sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me. I’m sure if I’d been able to reason with you both, we could have worked things out. Now I reckon it’s too late.”

It had been too late the first time Billy had struck her. It had been too late the first time he’d brought one of his floozies home and she had found them in the hot tub together, jaybird-naked.

It had been over the day she found his private stash in the celadon vase on the mantel. She had flushed it down the john and threatened to tell his mother if he didn’t straighten out. Wild with anger, he had struck her on the side of the head, knocking her halfway down the stairs. A few hours later she had miscarried.