She burst into tears.

“Girls, the wedding is off!”

Marty couldn’t help it. She giggled. She does that sometimes when she’s nervous. Looking horrified, she clamped a hand over her mouth. But the more she tried to hold back, the harder her shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

“Sorry, Mama,” she managed to squeak out.

The look Maddie aimed at our little sister could have formed icebergs on Lake Okeechobee. “I don’t see what’s so funny, Marty.”

Marty couldn’t speak. Her knees had gone weak. She propped herself against the frame of the front door and simply pointed into the foyer at Mama and Teensy. The harder Mama cried, the louder the little dog yowled. The two of them sounded like the most talentless duo ever kicked off America’s Got Talent.

“S-s-so glad I could a-a-amuse you, Marty.” Mama hiccupped accusingly. “Maybe when the remainder of my life falls apart, you can get your sisters in on the joke, too.”

Mama plastered a haughty look on her face and pulled herself up to her full height, four-foot-eleven inches. But it’s kind of hard to project dignity when you’re absent one shoe, your mascara has melted into raccoon eyes, and a Pomeranian is trying to wriggle out from the armpit of your raspberry-hued jacket. I felt a chuckle coming on, too.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Maddie pushed past us through Mama’s front door. “The both of you are completely useless.”

“Are not!” Marty and I said at the same time, which kicked my chuckle into all-out laughter.

Maddie wrapped a protective arm around Mama’s slender shoulders, and then glared at us over the top of our mother’s smooshed ’do. Marty and I only laughed harder.

The next thing we knew, Mama and Maddie had turned their backs on us. The foot with the raspberry shoe kicked out to the door, slamming it in our faces. I heard the deadbolt lock rotate with force.

“You can join us when you learn some manners,” Maddie called out through the open window.

I raised my eyes to Marty’s. The guilty look on her face probably mirrored my own. Our ill-timed guffaws had run their course. Like school kids sensing real trouble on the bench outside the office, we took a few moments to compose ourselves. Then I knocked at the door.

“May we come in now?” I tried to make my voice sound serious. Mature.

Marty leaned to the window and added, “We promise to be good.”

Heavy steps vibrated on the other side of the door. Maddie. I didn’t hear the dog’s paws scrabbling over the floor, though. Teensy was probably with Mama in the kitchen, sulking.

“Beautiful timing, sisters,” Maddie hissed as she opened the door. “Now Mama is sad and mad. She’s furious at you two.”

Mad was good, I thought. I’d rather see her angry than moping and beaten down like she became in that last year of her marriage to No. 2. Marty and I arranged our faces into appropriately chastened expressions. We slunk in behind Maddie as she led the way into Mama’s kitchen.

“Good evening, girls.” Mama’s tone was frosty.

“Evening, Mama.” We tried to sound contrite.

Marty and I silently took our seats. A box of pink wine sat on the kitchen table. The glass in front of Mama was half full. Maddie was busy, putting out gingham-checked placemats, and pulling more glasses from the cabinets. I waited as she poured our wine, and drew a tumbler of tap water for herself. Mama kept her eyes on the table, fiddling with a ceramic salt shaker shaped like a duck. Still sniffling a bit, she traced the line of the duck’s yellow-gingham collar.

I caught Maddie’s eye and gave a slight nod toward Mama’s wine glass. Maddie slid it under the box’s pour spout and filled it to the brim. When the rest of us had taken our first sips, I broke the silence.

“Mama, you can’t possibly mean you’re backing out of the wedding. Surely this is something we can work out?”

Silently, she lifted the tail end of a raspberry-sherbet scarf she wore around her neck and dabbed at her mascara-muddied eyes. I hoped the scarf wasn’t Dry Clean Only.

Marty tore off a piece of paper towel from the roll on the table. Maddie fished a compact out of her purse and handed it to Mama. Never one to ignore the presence of a mirror, she popped it open to take a peek.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.” Mama snapped the compact shut like it caught fire. “I look a fright.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said loyally.

“It’s mainly the mascara,” Marty added.

“That and your hair,” Maddie pointed out helpfully.

Mama opened the mirror again. “I always said I’d never cry over another man, girls. And here I am.” Examining the damage, she fluffed her hair’s flattest side and picked off mascara clumps with the paper towel. She extracted her Apricot Ice lipstick from her pantsuit pocket, and swiped it twice across her lips.

Then she handed the compact back to Maddie, took a big swallow of wine, and squared her shoulders. “Enough is enough,” she said.

I didn’t like the final sound of that.

“What happened, Mama?” I glanced at the swiveling hips on her Elvis wall clock. “It’s barely been an hour-and-a-half since we talked. How could Sal go from the love of your life to the scum of the earth in such a short time?”

She took another big swig of wine, not even bothering to blot the lipstick stain off the glass. “Plain and simple, girls,” Mama said. “He’s a liar.”

My sisters and I looked at each other. When Mama gets that made-up-her-mind tone, it’s easier to push a Brahma bull up a steep hill than it is to get her to see any alternatives.

Marty shook her head. “I’ve never known Sal to lie.”

“Well, then, you don’t know him very well, Marty, because he flat-out lied to me about that woman Mace saw him parking with.”

“They were just standing there. They weren’t ‘parking,’ Mama.”

An imaginary picture immediately popped into my head of Sal and Ms. Sunglasses wrestling like horny teenagers on the roomy seat of his Cadillac. Now I’d have to recite the first several stanzas of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to banish the image from my mind.

“Well, whatever they were doing, he denied even being out there at all. And he kept trying to get me off the phone, like I was annoying him for even asking.”

She swallowed more wine, and stared out the window into the night. When Mama spoke again, her voice was soft and distant. “I’m telling you, girls, Sal sounded just like Husband No. 2. I remember it so well, this one time when I called to check on him when he was home sick from work. That lying S.O.B. couldn’t get me off the phone fast enough. I found out later he wasn’t sick at all that day. Number 2 had some hoochie-mama from an Orlando strip club in my bed at the exact moment I called.”

My heart went out to her. We’d all known No. 2 was a rat. But we were still young when they were married. She’d never shared those kinds of carnal details.

“That’s awful.” Marty put a hand over Mama’s on the table.

Mama shrugged. “That wasn’t the first time. Wouldn’t be the last.”

Maddie topped off her glass of wine.

“Maybe it wasn’t Sal out on the road,” Marty said, but even she sounded doubtful. “Are you certain you saw them, Mace?”

Maddie snorted. “Mace can pick out a hawk on a pine branch at fifty yards and tell you if it’s a red-tailed or a red-shouldered. And Sal is a lot bigger than a hawk.”