“I almost got to meet him,” Sister said. “Roger was Catholic, remember?” (Actually, I didn’t. But who could keep up?) “And he was saying on the plane right before he died, you know, when we were coming back from Europe, that the next time we went he was going to arrange for an audience with the pope, that he should have done it this time.” She paused. “I guess maybe his chest hurting made him think of it.”

A red pickup truck passed us. The driver waved and we waved back.

“And not a single priest on that plane,” Sister continued. “There we were, halfway across the Atlantic and Roger turning blue and not a single priest. Some nun, said she was a nun, anyway, didn’t even have on nun clothes, just a red knit dress, read him his last rites.”

“That was Terry Mahall,” I said.

“You know who the nun was?”

“The guy in the red truck that just passed. That was Betsy’s husband. We’re not lost.”

“Oh. Well, they sure as hell live out in the woods,” Sister grumbled.

Actually Three Fork Road wound through a valley below Chandler Mountain, a valley that was lying fallow in January, but that was crisscrossed with fields that had yielded a harvest in the fall. Dead stalky plants marching down rows attested to that. Cotton? Soy beans? Any woods that might have been here once were only a memory. This was farm country.

“There’s a mailbox,” I pointed.

Mary Alice slowed down and we turned onto an asphalt driveway, a long driveway that led to a beautiful, large house, the type of house that Mary Alice has always wanted, a Tara with six columns across the front. The driveway circled around a grassy area that had in its center a fountain (a voluptuous woman pouring water from a jug into a small pool) encircled by pansies.

“This has got to be the wrong place,” I said. “This isn’t somebody who works for the telephone company’s house unless he’s the CEO.”

“It said Mahall on the mailbox.” Sister pointed. “Look at those columns, Mouse. Those aren’t that drivet stuff. I think this is a sure-enough antebellum house. One the Yankees missed.”

“It’s money’s what it is. And I don’t think it belongs to Betsy and Terry. But I’ll see.”

“See if whoever lives there will let us in, anyway,” Sister said as I got out. “I want to see the inside. I’ll bet it’s got those wonderful old Thomas Jefferson floors. You know, like at Monticello.”