At three o’clock, Amy removed the dish towel from her head and apron from around her waist. It was time to pick up the girls from school and take them to their dance class. Joellen Rubolotto was picking up the girls from dance class and giving them dinner since it was her turn. They wouldn’t be home until seven or seven-thirty. Arnie wouldn’t be home till eight or eight-thirty.

On her return, after dropping the girls off at dance class, Amy wrinkled her nose. The house reeked of Pine Sol and Clorox. She hated the smell. She looked down at her red hands with their short, bitten nails. The skin was cracking around her fingers. They felt raw from all the Clorox. She jammed them into her pockets as she walked from room to room.

“It’s not clean enough,” she muttered over and over. “It has to shine and sparkle. I have to wash it all away. I have to wash, too,” she muttered over and over. She stripped down and turned on the shower. Steam billowed out of the stall. She stepped inside, barely wincing as the hot water cascaded over her body. She cried, her hot tears mingling with the hot water pouring out of the showerhead.

Twenty minutes later, the hot, steamy water barely lukewarm, Amy looked at her arms and her legs. She still wasn’t clean. She had to keep scrubbing, but it hurt too bad. She tried to comprehend the blisters dotting her body. She continued to cry as the warm water turned cool and then cold. She hugged her arms around her chest, but she didn’t move. She was going to stand there until she was clean again. Clean and innocent like she was before that day.

Lola Jor Dan’s voice was fretful when she looked across the terrace at her two closest friends. It was almost four-thirty. An hour to go before the reenactment. “Do you think it will work? If it doesn’t, I guess the others are going to speak up and tell the truth. At least that’s what I’m hoping they’re going to do. What do you two think?”

Mandy reached down to pluck a yellow leaf from a bushy geranium plant next to her chair. “I don’t know, Lola. Cady has guts, I have to give her that. She’s absolutely petrified of water. She told me she would drive twenty miles out of her way so she wouldn’t have to go over a bridge. The fact that she’s willing to go for it tells me things will be okay. I’m not sure about the others speaking up. Good intentions or not, things like that tend to go awry at times.

“I think it’s going to rain. Clouds are moving in from the west. I hope it holds off till they make their run. I certainly don’t want to see them postpone it. I think I like that Boomer Ward. I think I like him a lot.”

“Do you now?” Lola drawled.