“Hello?”

A vaguely familiar voice says, “Hi. I’m looking for . . . BamaBelle? Is this you?”

“It’s me. Who is this?”

“It’s Jaycee. You know—PC BC. Hi.”

“Oh! Hi. I’m—I guess I should tell you my name. It’s Landry.”

“Landry? First, or last?”

“First. It’s Landry Wells.”

“That’s pretty. And unusual.”

She quickly explains that Landry was her mother’s maiden name; that last names as first are a southern tradition.

“I love that,” Jaycee tells her. “Did you follow it when you had your own kids?”

“Well, my own maiden name is Quackenbush, so . . .”

“No?” Jaycee laughs. “At least, I hope not.”

“Well, my husband used to joke that we could always call them Quack or Bush for short, but in the end we went with names from his side of the family,” Landry tells her.

Then her smile fades as she remembers the reason for the call, and she turns the subject to Meredith.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Jaycee tells her. “I’m shocked. This is horrible.”

As she talks on, Landry tries to focus on what she’s saying and not on why her voice had initially sounded so familiar. It’s low-pitched, with a distinct, husky note, and her words come at a measured cadence not very typical of New Yorkers. Not the ones Landry had known in college, anyway. She always had trouble decoding their rapid-fire speech and accents. Jaycee doesn’t even have one.

She mentions that she’s away on a business trip and just woke up a few minutes ago, so she wasn’t available when Landry was trying to IM her earlier.

“I’m just so stunned and sick about this. It was a robbery?”

“That’s what it sounds like. All I know is what’s in the newspaper. Someone must have broken in, and she must have woken up and confronted whoever it was.”

“She must have been so scared.”

“I know.” Landry shudders at the thought of the terror Meredith endured in her last moments alive. It happened late last Saturday night or early Sunday morning, while Landry and Rob were at a charity ball in Mobile with some of his colleagues.

To think that at the very moment Landry was blissfully sipping champagne or spinning around the dance floor in her husband’s arms, Meredith was—

“Have you been in touch with anyone else yet?” Jaycee’s question shatters the macabre vision taking shape in her brain.

“I chatted online with A-Okay . . . that sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“To refer to someone only by her screen name. But I don’t even know what her real name is, do you?”

“No. And by the way, I know I shouldn’t be saying it at a time like this, but your accent is so sweet.”

Taken aback by the abrupt shift, Landry says, “Well, thank you—I guess?”

“Oh, I meant it as a compliment for sure. I love southern drawls. Somehow it never occurred to me that you must have one, but of course it makes sense. You live in Alabama, right?”

“I sure do. And since you brought it up . . . I guess I’ll admit that I thought you would sound more like a New Yorker.”

“Yeah, well, I usually tawk like dis,” Jaycee replies with an exaggerated tough guy accent, “but I didn’t wanna, ya know, scare you awf.”

For the first time today, Landry laughs. “So what are you doing in L.A.?”

There’s a pause. “Did I mention I was in L.A.?”

“I think—no, you said you were away,” she remembers, “but I knew it was L.A. because of the 310 area code. I saw it on caller ID.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I’m calling from the phone in my hotel room, so . . .” Jaycee clears her throat. “Actually, you know what? This is probably costing a fortune, and it’s on my company’s bill, so . . . I should hang up.”

“Do you want me to call you back there from my phone? Or do you have a cell?”

“I do, but—what time is it? Oh, wow—I have a meeting to get to anyway. Let’s talk later, okay?”

“Sure. Do you want to give me your cell number?” She looks around for something to write on, and with, coming up with an old grocery receipt and a Sharpie.

Jaycee gives the number, then hurriedly hangs up after asking Landry to keep her posted if she hears anything else.

She didn’t even have a chance to get Jaycee’s last name or home phone number, or bring up the prospect of going to Meredith’s funeral.

That’s something that occurred to her earlier, when she was talking to Addison in the kitchen. Her daughter asked if she was going, and wanted to know why not when she said she probably wouldn’t.

“Because I have you and your brother to take care of, and—”

“Please, Mom, we’re old enough to take care of ourselves! Dad’s always going away on business and on those golf weekends with Grandpa and Uncle Will and Uncle Wade. Why shouldn’t you go away, too, for once in your life?”

“I don’t know . . . I’ve never met Meredith’s family—I haven’t even met her. I might feel like I was intruding.”

“That’s crazy. It’s a funeral, not some party y’all are crashing.”

True.

But the thought of confronting this loss head-on, in person, doesn’t sit well with her . . .

Which is precisely why she should force herself to do it.

Strength training, as Elena likes to call it.

This isn’t about herself, though. It’s about Meredith. About paying respects to a friend who met a tragic, violent death.

If something happened to me, Meredith is the type who’d rally the troops and come down here to see how she could help Rob and the kids. I owe her the same.

By the time Jaycee called her, she had decided it would be a good idea if they all went. Together. For Meredith. She was going to ask how Jaycee felt about it, but Jaycee was in such a hurry to get off the phone . . .

That was strange. One minute she was kidding around, the next she was abruptly ending the call. Why?

Maybe because I asked her what she was doing in L.A.

Jaycee seemed taken aback that she knew where she was, almost as if . . .

Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know.

But why not? What do I care where she travels on business?

Oh, well.

Maybe she’s paranoid about sharing too much with someone she doesn’t know very well. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t post a photo on her blog.

At least Landry now has a voice to go with Jaycee’s name . . . a familiar one, at that. Jaycee definitely reminds her of someone. She just can’t remember whom.

“Mom?”

Addison is in the doorway. She’s changed into a cornflower blue sundress and white sandals, sunglasses propped on her head and a purse over her shoulder. She’s added a necklace of blue and silver beads that complement the necklace and earrings she put on earlier. As always, she looks perfectly put together in an easy-breezy way, so that you’d never guess everything she’s wearing was carefully coordinated to create a very specific overall effect.

“I’m ready to go shopping. Can I have the car keys and . . .”

“Bathing suit money?” Landry smiles. “Sure. Come on downstairs and I’ll find my purse.”

About to shove her cell phone into a pocket, she realizes that the gym shorts she threw on earlier don’t have one. The battery is running low anyway—and she’s had enough, for now, of talking about Meredith’s death. She plugs the phone into the charger near her side of the bed and walks downstairs with Addison.

“Did you figure out what you’re going to do about your friend’s funeral?” her daughter asks.

“The arrangements haven’t been posted yet, but when they are, I’ll send out a group e-mail to the other bloggers to see if they want to meet in Cincinnati.”

“What if they don’t want to?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re still going either way, right?”

Landry hesitates. The last thing she wants is to give her teenage daughter the impression that you should reconsider whether to do something just because your friends aren’t doing it.