“Could he be paid off, do you think? Maybe I should offer to leave him my money instead.” Mrs. Orson took one look at Ruby’s face and laughed. “I’m not serious, dear. If you don’t want it, it’ll have to be the cancer kids.”

“I want the kids to have it,” Ruby replied without hesitation. With equal determination, she added, “I love a good romance. I wish you’d tell me about him.”

“Who? Norbert?” Mrs. Orson shook her head. Ruby thought she detected a note of sadness in the gesture, but the older woman pasted on a smile and refused to let it show. “Maybe another time, dear. All that’s important right now is that nothing would make me happier than to see Wheezy make his dog-show debut. And to have a nicely made bed for when I go to sleep tonight, but do what you feel is best.”

Ruby gave in and started to tug at the sheets. She wanted to know more about the person who’d once captured Mrs. Orson’s heart, but she knew better than to push.

Sometimes, when a woman didn’t want to talk about a man, it was for a good reason.

* * *

“I’ll give you twenty. No, fifty. No, a hundred.” Ruby sat across the table from Eva, doing quick mental calculations to figure out where she was going to find an extra hundred dollars lying around. She could always tell Mrs. Orson that it was a dog-show expense—which, technically, it was—but she felt bad enough about how much of the older woman’s money she’d already spent. Between the entrance fee and Caleb’s training costs, it was starting to add up.

Before Eva could respond to the offer, an earsplitting shriek rent the air, followed almost immediately by a thump and a bump. Then silence.

Eva, sublimely unfazed by either the scream or the ominous nothing that followed, grabbed the bottle of pinot grigio at her elbow and filled her glass to the top. Ruby had stopped by Eva’s house straight from making up Mrs. Orson’s bed, so it was still early, but Eva seemed to adhere to the “It’s five o’clock somewhere” rule of drinking.

“Um…” Ruby peered over her shoulder toward the next room, where they’d left Eva’s children playing a game of what looked like a mix of hide-and-seek and murder. Between the swords they’d been trying to stab each other with at the barbecue and today’s game, which seemed to involve sitting on the head of the boy nearest you, she was starting to feel seriously alarmed. “Shouldn’t we go see—?”

“No.”

“But don’t you think they might have—?”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“Then aren’t you worried—?”