While the women clustered around Bonnie, peppering her with questions about what it was like to have twins, Lucy slipped into the kitchen to get the coffee. She was returning with the tray when the doorbell rang once more and Frankie LaChance breezed in. She hadn’t waited for Lucy to open the door; she’d opened it herself.

“Hi! I’m Françoise LaChance but everybody calls me Frankie!” she said, introducing herself.

Conversation stopped as everyone turned to greet Frankie, who was wearing a figure-hugging striped top and a pair of equally tight short-shorts. Her shapely tan legs ended in a pair of espadrilles with long laces that wrapped around her ankles.

“Coffee?” said Lucy, breaking the awkward silence.

As the women took coffee and helped themselves to baked goods they fell into two distinct groups. Lucy’s friends were clustered at one end of the living room sofa while the Prudence Path women had formed a loose circle at the refreshment table. Frankie was out in the cold until Sue noticed and drew her into the conversation. Lucy, taking her role as hostess seriously, joined the Prudence Path group.

“It’s too bad Mimi couldn’t make it,” said Bonnie, biting into a piece of blueberry cake.

“I can’t say I miss her much,” said Willie, who was working her way through four of Sue’s tiny cream puffs. “Gosh, these are good.”

“I heard she complained about your pig,” said Chris.

Lucy saw her opportunity to enter the conversation. “You’ve got a pig?”

“Just a tiny little pot-bellied one. Her name is Lily. She’s awfully cute but Mimi doesn’t seem to appreciate her. She thinks she’s a farm animal instead of a pet and she reported us to the zoning board.”

“She’s after me to cut my lilacs,” confessed Lucy. “I think she’s got a lot of nerve to complain about my bushes, considering what a nuisance her son is with that noisy motorcycle of his. Now that’s what I call annoying.”

“I think he’s just trying to get away from his father,” said Chris, who was sticking to black coffee. “I hear him yelling all the time, and not just at the boys. Mimi gets her share of abuse, too.”

“He’s a piece of work,” said Willie, polishing off her last cream puff and moving on to the blueberry cake. “I can’t believe the problems we’re having with our house. Half the doors don’t close because they’re hung crooked.”

“My bathroom looked great when we first looked at the house but now I realize I was fooled by the mirror,” said Bonnie, patting her lips with a napkin. “It’s really tiny. You can’t turn around in it unless the door’s closed.”