The problem was, Sara knew perfectly well how Jo had managed to snatch him away. It had to have been a game for Jeffrey, a challenge. Jolene was much more experienced at this kind of thing than Sara. She had probably known to play hard to get, balancing just the right amount of flirting and teasing to get him on the line, then reeling him in slowly like a prize fish. Certainly, she had not ended up at the end of their first date with the balls of her feet braced against the edge of the kitchen sink as she writhed in ecstasy on the floor, biting her tongue so that she would not scream his name.

Tessa asked, “Why are you smiling at the sink?”

Sara shook her head, taking a drink of wine. “I just hate this. I hate all of this. And Jimmy Powell is sick again.”

“That kid with leukemia?”

Sara nodded. “It doesn’t look good. I’ve got to go see him at the hospital tomorrow.”

“How was Macon?”

Unbidden, Sara’s mind flashed onto the image of the girl on the table, her body flayed open, the doctor reaching into the womb to extract the fetus. Another child lost. Another family devastated. Sara did not know how many more times she could witness this sort of thing without cracking.

“Sara?” Tessa asked.

“It was as awful as I thought it would be.” Sara used her finger to swirl what remained of the chocolate sauce. Somewhere in all of this, she had eaten the entire piece of cake.

Tessa walked to the refrigerator and took out a tub of ice cream, returning to the original subject. “You have to let this go, Sara. Jeffrey did what he did, and nothing’s going to change that. Either he’s back in your life or he’s not, but you can’t keep yo-yoing him back and forth.” She pried off the top to the ice cream. “You want some?”

“I shouldn’t,” Sara told her, holding out her plate.

“I’ve always been the cheater, not the cheatee,” Tessa pointed out, taking two spoons from the drawer, closing it with her hip. “ Devon just left. He didn’t cheat. At least I don’t think he cheated.” She dropped several spoonfuls of Blue Bell onto Sara’s plate. “Maybe he cheated.”

Sara held her other hand under the paper plate so that it wouldn’t fold from the weight. “I don’t think so.”

“No,” she agreed. “He barely had time for me, let alone another woman. Did I tell you about the time he fell asleep right in the middle of it?” Sara nodded. “Jesus, how do people stay interested in each other for fifty years?”

Sara shrugged. She was hardly an expert.

“God, but he was good in bed when he was awake.” Tessa sighed, holding the spoon in her mouth. “That’s one thing you have to keep in mind with Jeffrey. Never underestimate the value of sexual chemistry.” She scooped more ice cream onto Sara’s plate. “ Devon was bored with me.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I mean it,” she said. “He was bored. He didn’t want to do things anymore.”

“Like go out?”

“Like, the only way I could get him to go down on me was put a television on my stomach and wire the remote control to my-”

“Tess!”

She chuckled, taking a big bite of ice cream. Sara could remember the last time they’d eaten ice cream together. The day that Tessa had been attacked, they had gone to the Dairy Queen for milk shakes. Two hours later, Tessa was lying on the ground with her head split open, her child dead inside of her.

Tessa braced her hands on the counter and squeezed her eyes shut. Sara bolted from her chair, alarmed, until Tessa explained, “Ice cream headache.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“I got it.” She put her head under the kitchen faucet and took a swig. She wiped her mouth, asking, “Yeesh, why does that happen?”

“The trigeminal nerve in the-”

Tessa cut her off with a look. “You don’t have to answer every question, Sara.”

Sara took this as a rebuke, and looked down at her plate.

Tessa took a less generous bite of ice cream before going back to the subject of Devon. “I just miss him.”

“I know, sweetie.”

There was nothing more to say on the matter. In Sara’s opinion, Devon had shown his true colors at the end, slinking out when things got tough. Her sister was well rid of him, though Sara understood that was hard for Tessa to grasp at this point. For Sara’s part, the one time she had seen Devon downtown, she had crossed the street so that she would not have to pass him on the sidewalk. Jeffrey had been with her, and she had practically ripped his arm off in order to keep him from going over and saying something to the other man.

Out of the blue, Tessa said, “I’m not going to have sex anymore.”

Sara barked out a laugh.

“I’m serious.”

“Why?”

“Do you have any Cheetos?”

Sara went to the cabinet to fetch the bag. She tried to tread cautiously when she asked, “Is it this new church?”

“No.” Tessa took the bag. “Maybe.” She used her teeth to open the package. “It’s just that what I’ve been doing so far isn’t working. I’d be pretty stupid to keep on doing it.”

“What isn’t working?”

Tessa just shook her head. “Everything.” She offered the bag of Cheetos to Sara, but she refused, instead tugging open the zipper of her skirt so she could breathe.

Tessa asked, “Has anyone told you why Bella is here?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“They won’t tell me anything. Every time I walk into the room, they stop talking. I’m like a walking mute button.”

“Me, too,” Sara realized.

“Will you do me a favor?” Tessa asked.

“Of course,” Sara offered, noting the change in Tessa’s tone.

“Come to church with me Wednesday night.”

Sara felt like a fish that had just been thrown from its tank, her mouth gaping open as she tried to think of an excuse.

“It’s not even church,” Tessa said. “It’s more like a fellowship meeting. Just people hanging around, talking. They’ve even got honey buns.”

“Tess…”

“I know you don’t want to go, but I want you there.” Tessa shrugged. “Do it for me.”

This had been Cathy’s device for guilting her two daughters into attending Easter and Christmas services for the last twenty years.

“Tessie,” Sara began, “you know I don’t believe-”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” Tessa interrupted. “But it feels good to be there.”

Sara stood to put the roast in the refrigerator.

“I met Thomas in physical therapy a few months ago.”

“Who’s Thomas?”

“He’s kind of the leader of the church,” Tessa answered. “He had a stroke a while back. It was pretty bad. He’s really hard to understand, but there’s this way he has of talking to you without saying a word.”

The dishwasher had clean dishes from several days ago, and Sara started to empty it just to give herself something to do.

“It was weird,” Tessa continued. “I was doing my stupid motor exercises, putting the pegs in the right holes, when I felt like someone was staring at me, and I looked up and it was this old guy in a wheelchair. He called me Cathy.”

“Cathy?” Sara repeated.

“Yeah, he knows Mama.”

“How does he know Mama?” Sara asked, certain that she knew all her mother’s friends.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I tried to, but she was busy.”

Sara closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter. “What happened then?”

“He asked if I wanted to come to church.” Tessa paused a beat. “Being up there in physical therapy, seeing all these people who are so much worse off than I am…” She shrugged. “It really put things into perspective, you know? Like how much I’ve been wasting my life.”

“You haven’t been wasting your life.”

“I’m thirty-four years old and I still live with my parents.”

“Over the garage.”

Tessa sighed. “I just think what happened to me shouldn’t go to waste.”

“It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

“I was lying in that hospital bed feeling so sorry for myself, so pissed at the world for what happened. And then it hit me. I’ve been selfish all my life.”