“It isn’t your problem.”

She leaned back, glaring and speaking. “Yeah. That’s the part that makes me want to slap you upside your head.”

“I’m tellin’ you now,” I pointed out.

“You know,” she started conversationally, then hit me with her best shot, and it was a doozy. “It doesn’t feel real good when I got a BFF who’d race to my side at the drop of a hat if she got even the inkling that I need her—and I know this because she’s done that— and she doesn’t let me do the same for her. Of anyone, Cher, in all the shit that’s gone down in this ’burg with people who mean something to you, you know, bein’ a mom, you freakin’ know it’s no hardship when you’re called on to look after somebody. It’s an honor. I cannot imagine why you’d take that privilege from me.”

I sat back in my chair like she’d slapped me.

“And yeah,” she went on, “everyone’s talkin’ about you and Merry. Everyone. But we’re not all sittin’ around gabbin’ about how Cher’s caught herself up with a man who’s in love with another woman or how Merry picked the one woman in the ’burg who he’s gotta handle with care and no one knows if he’s got that in him. We’re worried. About both of you.”

Before I could race out and buy a cat o’ nine tails which I could use during my five-hour-long session of self-flagellation, she kept going.

“But Merry was right. You should tell Ethan about that crap his dad and stepmom are pulling. You should tell your mom. You should tell everybody. I can’t believe you haven’t done that already. He needs looked after and he’s your kid. In anything, it’s all hands on deck. This crazy lady thinks she can be a better mom and has got no problem taking your boy away from you all the way down to Missouri, that bitch needs to think again. Bottom line, Cher, any woman who thinks that way about another woman’s kid is sketchy. I wouldn’t let Ethan anywhere near her.”

“Right,” I whispered, though I’d come to that same conclusion myself already.

“And if her husband doesn’t have the balls to set her right, he shouldn’t get anywhere near Ethan either.”

I pressed my lips together.

“As for Merry, you fucked up this morning, big time.”

I looked out the window, my eyes so dry they hurt. “Yeah I did.”

“And I hate to say this, because I want good things for you any way you can get them, but that might not be bad.”

The change in her tone, her voice quieting, made me look back to her.

She put her hand on the table and slid it a couple of inches toward me.

“He never got over her,” she said softly.

“I know,” I replied.

“It’s too soon after her getting engaged. Merry should have known better.”

“I should have too, Vi. But this is far from a perfect world. Shit happens.”