I turned and looked at her. “Surely you jest.”

“Well, you know what I mean.” Haley dipped another shrimp into the bowl of red sauce in the middle of the table.

“He’s a retired insurance executive,” Mary Alice said.

Haley grinned. “Well, that explains it.” She popped the shrimp into her mouth. “How come I get the impression,” she said as soon as she finished chewing, “that he could eat you with a spoon, Aunt Sister?”

“Because it’s true.” Mary Alice picked up a shrimp and examined it. “He says I’m a luscious Southern peach.”

I spluttered into my iced tea. “Fairchild Weatherby said that? My, my, what would Millicent say?”

“She’s not worried. She knows they don’t make a spoon with a handle that long.” She held the shrimp toward me. “What’s this?”

“The black thing? Looks like part of a bay leaf.”

“Good. I knew if it was a fly it was boiled, but even so—” Sister peeled the shrimp and dipped it into the sauce. Haley opened another package of crackers.

“Fairchild says Millicent’s making tons of money in that development over on the bay. Remember, Mouse, when her first husband bought a lot of that land for something like ten dollars an acre and everybody thought he was crazy? Paying ten dollars an acre, for worthless piney woods. I’m sure it’s the one Berry’s coming down to see. Fairchild says lots are selling like hotcakes over there.” Sister motioned for the waitress to bring her another beer.

“I hate to see them develop all the land around here,” Haley said. “We’re running all the poor animals out, the bears and foxes. The butterflies. There weren’t nearly as many monarchs here last fall. Did you notice?”

“Bears? I’ve never seen a bear down here, not even when we were children. Have you, Mouse?”

“There used to be some raccoons that came up and got in the garbage at Wilhite Apartments in Panama City. That’s where we usually spent our vacations,” I explained to Haley.

“Raccoons are not bears. Besides, that was during World War II. German submarines used to come right up in the Gulf. You could see them firing on ships at night. Or being fired on. Daddy told us it was fireworks.”

I quit peeling a shrimp and looked up, startled. “It wasn’t fireworks?”

“It was ships firing at each other. It was the war, Patricia Anne. For heaven’s sake! Daddy just didn’t want us to know it.” Sister took a long swig from her bottle of beer. “There were more mosquitoes then, too.”