“No. But I will be. I’m sorry I had to do it. So sorry to have to tell you.”

“I’m sorry too. Wait a minute. Here’s Hilton. It’s Rhoda Martin, Hilton. She wants to talk to you. We’ll come and visit you sometime, Rhoda. Or you come here. Come to see us. Is Malcolm in town? I heard he was leaving.”

“He hasn’t called me. He said he was going back to South Carolina. Is he there? Have you seen him?”

“No, but Hilton has. Here, I’ll put her on.”

“Rhoda, it’s Hilton. I saw Malcolm last week at the grocery store. He’s still here. Is it all over then? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I guess I am.” I was starting to cry. “Oh, God, he was so cold. He drove me crazy. He didn’t even love me.”

“I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do? Do you want to come and see us and talk to him?”

I cried while Hilton listened for a while. Then Robert got back on the phone and said he’d call me in the morning and then I hung up and fixed myself another drink and ate some potato chips. Then I called Karla and Speed McVee. “I had an abortion,” I told Karla. “It was wonderful. I saved my life. If you ever need the name, call me up. It’s Doctor Van Zandt in Houston, Texas. He didn’t kill me. Don’t tell anybody, Karla. Swear you won’t tell anyone. Don’t tell Speed.”

“I won’t, honey. Don’t worry about that. I won’t tell anyone. I can keep a secret.”

“You know whose baby it was, don’t you? It was Robert’s.”

“Oh, my God.”

“You can’t tell anyone. Don’t tell anyone, not even Speed.”

“I won’t. You know I won’t. I won’t breathe a word.”

A week later, on a Saturday night in Alexandria, very late at night from what I could piece together afterward from the stories, Speed ran into Malcolm in a bar and they had a few drinks together and Speed told him that Robert Haverty and I had had an affair and that I had aborted Robert’s baby.

Then Malcolm had left the bar and gone home and gotten a loaded Ruger he kept in a case in a locked drawer. It had hand-carved walnut handles he had made for it the last time I had left him. Then he called the Havertys’ about three in the morning but luckily for everyone they were in the Caribbean scuba diving so he couldn’t kill anyone that night. Then he called me.

“It’s Malcolm, Rhoda.”

“Jesus Christ, it’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“I know what you did, you bitch. I know all about it. Speed told me.”