Then Charlotte winced, wondering how many hours it would take before every living soul in Minton knew that the Widow Tasker had taken a lover. She imagined facing everyone, knowing that they knew. The Noonans. The Rickmans. Old Mrs. Watson. Everyone on the Little League Board. Everyone in Troop 492. Everyone at the William Howard Taft Elementary PTA meeting.

The Bettmyers. Bonnie and Ned.

Hank and Matt.

Kurt up in heaven.

"Ohmigod." She flopped over again on the couch, angry that the sun would be coming up in a couple hours, still feeling Joe's arms around her and his mouth on hers, aware that his presence was dragging to the surface everything she'd spent her whole adult life trying to ignore.

She'd brought her poetry journal downstairs earlier, just in case she felt the urge to write. She was sure feeling it how. She turned on the lamp and picked up her pen.

Slut

When did she appear, the slut in me?

At the spark of creation, when I was two cells,

The way we all start?

Sex from sex?

(Though my mother would never admit to this)

Does she have a name, this wanton?

I'll call her Charlotte-for she is me, one and the same

I've just always insisted she have an early curfew

Because she can't be trusted

And she would like to dress provocatively

That slut

So the answer may be zero-it took zero encounters

To make me all I am

Because she was always there

Just laying in wait

For Joe's touch

To set her free

The slut in me.

Charlotte closed the journal. Turned off the light And wondered how it would feel to go through life comfortable with who she was-everything she was.

Maybe she'd soon find out.

LoriSue didn't feel one lick of guilt about asking Jolene to open her beauty salon early on a Sunday morning, because she'd made the woman an offer she couldn't refuse. Jolene had four kids to support and a house LoriSue knew very well cost a good $1,700 a month.

She'd sold it to her.

Jolene appeared slightly stunned when she unlocked the doors to the Hair You Are salon on Main Street. She looked LoriSue up and down. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Absolutely certain."

"Well, okay." Jolene shrugged, getting out a plastic cape. "Have a seat. You look real nice today by the way."

She sure as hell hoped so. This was the first public outing of her new look, the first of nine outfits she'd hauled away from that boutique in Mount Adams that promised that style was an attitude, not an age.

And that morning she was wearing three hundred bucks' worth of attitude-cream yellow linen crop pants and a little matching jacket with retro buttons. The low-heeled slides were ninety. The earrings-simple little things that didn't even dangle, for God's sake-had been sixty-five.

She had no idea it cost so freakin' much to be subtle.

"I like the way you've toned down your makeup, too," Jolene said, quickly adding, "Not that it didn't look good before."

"Let's talk cut." LoriSue whipped out the folded page from a magazine and pointed. "That one."

Jolene's eyes bugged out. "But that's a layered shag! You've got a long page boy! This will take a lot of cutting, probably five inches on top!"

"I realize that," LoriSue snapped. "I'm going for the no-fuss, casual chic look-something classy and low-key. Something totally different."

"No shit," Jolene said under her breath. She put the magazine page on the surface of her styling station and smoothed it out. "I guess I can do something like that."

"Great." LoriSue was feeling more empowered by the minute.

"Now. What about color?" Jolene snapped the cape around LoriSue's neck and combed her fingers through the pale blond locks. "You said you wanted to go a couple shades darker than usual."

LoriSue spun around in the salon chair and looked Jolene right in the eye.

"I said I want to go back to my natural color."

Jolene's mouth fell open. "Uh," she said, looking worried. "I don't think I even know what your natural color is, LoriSue."

She probably wasn't exaggerating. Jolene had opened this shop ten years ago, and every four weeks, like clockwork, for a decade, she'd been helping LoriSue disguise the fact that she was born with a head of medium brown hair.

LoriSue sighed. "Then go get those sample hunks of dyed hair you have in the back and we'll figure something out. I want to get this over with. Oh, and don't forget my eyebrows."

"Why are we going to the lake, Mama?" Hank asked.

Matt yawned. "And how come you woke us up so early?"

Charlotte wasn't proud of herself, but after tossing and turning on the couch all night she'd greeted the day with a plan: avoid Joe at all costs.

So she'd called all the parents to pick up their boys by 9:00 a.m., packed the van with lunch and supper picnics, a change of clothes, rafts, beach blankets, towels, books, sunscreen, beach chairs, and drinks and snacks, then told the kids to put on their swimsuits and get in the car. They were going to Pike Lake for the day-the whole day.

"I just realized we haven't been in a while, that's all. I thought it would be a nice treat"

"I guess," Matt said, unconvinced "But I'm kinda sleepy."

"You can sleep in the sand."

The lake wasn't crowded, possibly because it was still early when they got there and many families didn't arrive until after church. Charlotte hadn't been to church since Kurt died, much to her parents' horror. The last longdistance conversation she'd had with her mother, which was several weeks ago now, had ended when she reminded Charlotte about the eternal fire pit of hell. She'd thanked her mother and hung up.

Charlotte took a deep breath of the mild morning air and smiled. This would be her church today-the soft roll of Ohio earth, the sun, and the happy voices of her kids.

From behind her gray-tinted sunglasses and from her comfortable perch in her beach chair, Charlotte watched Hank and Matt swim and splash. She wiggled her toes in the light brown sand. This lake would always remind her of Kurt. They had taken the kids here often. She could almost see him now, his burly body bursting through the water, roaring in his best impersonation of a grizzly bear, making the kids scream with delight.

She scanned the horizon of blue-green water and the uneven line of tall sycamores, maples, and oaks that rimmed the lake. There was no Kurt and there never would be again. Life was so much quieter without him.

How could she have ever wished him away?

By six, everyone was pink from the sun, worn-out, and waterlogged. Charlotte opened the cooler to pull out the food she'd packed for supper-rather limp-looking veggie roll-ups, fruit and flaxseed salad, and oatmeal-raisin bars-arid sighed. The resigned looks of suffering on Hank's and Matt's faces sealed the deal.

"We're going to Fritz's," she announced, slamming the cooler lid shut. Hank and Matt cheered and gave each other high fives.

They drove down the state highway to Fritz's Snack Shack and Driving Range, where they sat at an outdoor picnic table under the eaves and gorged on greasy fried cod and chicken planks, French fries, coleslaw, and soft drinks, the way they used to do when Kurt was alive. Then they played a round of cutthroat putt-putt.