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whatever feels right in the moment.”
    â€œYou don’t even know what he said.”
    â€œI bet I can guess.” Lynda slapped her menu against the table. “He loves you, he wants to do right by you, he misses you. And the best line … he’ll never let it happen again.”
    I squirmed in the wooden chair. “What makes you think he said any of that?”
    â€œShe’s heard it before,” Ruthie said with an implied duh in her tone.
    They were ganging up on me. “He apologized for what happened in April.”
    Lynda’s eyes rolled so dramatically, they seemed to pull an exasperated sigh from the depths of her lungs. “Good grief, those two men are just alike.” She glared desperately at Velma. “How can she not see it?” Lynda didn’t wait for an answer from her sister but stood and stalked out of the diner.
    As the cow bell on the doorframe clanked against the thick glass, indignation swarmed through my lungs like a cloud of angry bees. No matter how well Lynda Turner knew my father, she didn’t have the right to criticize him.
    Velma tsked as the waitress approached, and I quickly skimmed the menu for the lowest priced item. “I’ll have the fried zucchini.”
    â€œShe’ll also have an order of chicken and dumplings,” declared Velma to the waitress, “with okra and corn on the side. Same for me.”
    â€œMe, too,” Ruthie said.
    The baby chose that moment to kick me in the ribs, and I sat up straight and rubbed my side. “Thanks, Velma.”
    She watched me as she sipped her sweet tea and then set her glass down with a thump, obviously forging the conversation in a new direction. “How’s your new home?”
    The woman could read my moods like a gypsy fortune-teller. “I get lonely out there.”
    â€œI can come over more often.” Ruthie’s statement seemed to double as an unspoken regret for her mother’s outburst.
    â€œYou come over plenty.” I fiddled with the silverware bundle on the table. “I just miss campus life.”
    Ruthie raised an eyebrow. “Partying and spending money?”
    â€œDon’t be ugly.” The older woman’s chin jutted, and I got the impression she expected Ruthie to apologize then and there.
    â€œShe’s a Blaylock, Aunt Velma. She can’t help it.”
    â€œFor crying out loud, Ruth Ann.”
    But Ruthie hit the target. I missed my right-side-up world, and my stubborn will was bucking the changes. “I’m not like my parents … I mean I’m not like my father.”
    â€œOh, Fawn.” Ruthie rubbed her palms over her face. “It’s not your dad that has Momma upset. It’s you.”
    Velma chuckled. “My sister might not show it, but she cares.”
    I almost laughed out loud. Lynda Turner cared for me about as much as a hawk cares for a field mouse. “Yeah, right. It’s obvious from the kindness she’s shown over the years.”
    â€œThat’s Lynda, darlin’,” Velma soothed. “Her love’s prickly, but it doesn’t make it any less real.”
    A tractor rumbled down Main Street, and I gazed at it blindly, lost in thought. A person like me, with only one friend—two if I counted Velma—had no room to be picky when it came to affection.
    â€œWell, at least your mother speaks to me,” I said. “That’s more than I can say for mine.” I took a sip of ice water, and as its cool wetness washed the soot of bitterness from my lungs, I said a silent prayer, thanking God for these women He placed in my life. It was true Ruthie looked down on my sorority sisters, her aunt Velma naturally upstaged me and my sinful ways, and her mother resented my father so much she could never forgive, but the three of them cared about me.
    Certainly they weren’t the people I would have chosen for the job, but nevertheless, they were all I had. And