Ben and Justine were staring daggers at each other. Justine was too proper to have any more of the fight here in church, but she’d certainly be dragging the family out the door ASAP to get her licks in.

There was nothing left for me here this week. Feeling sad and angry, I murmured an excuse about having coffee with Suzanne and left.

My hands were still shaking as I stirred a fourth sugar into my coffee. I wasn’t sure why Justine’s outburst had thrown me so badly. It’s not like I wasn’t used to her craziness. I’d been on the receiving end of it since I was a kid. I guess this time it had taken me by surprise. I’d thought we were in strained-but-cordial mode, and I got blindsided.

I looked up to see Suzanne studying me a bit too attentively as she stroked her pretty silver hair. I smiled sweetly and asked her what she’d thought of Pastor Ezra’s focus on the metaphor of rebirth in that morning’s sermon. Suzanne blinked at me, jolted out of the gossipy tidbit she’d probably been cooking up about how upset I looked after my fight with my sister-in-law.

Gossip about me generally dredged up my mental illness, dead mother, pathetic dating life, or failed try at college — or all four — so diverting Suzanne during her moments of creation was pretty important. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me — care about me, even. But for Suzanne, all things bowed before the god of gossip.

I reached for the creamer. Dorf wasn’t sophisticated enough to have an actual coffee shop, but the ownership of Pete’s Eats didn’t mind if you sat and talked over a beverage. Unfortunately, Pete’s coffee wasn’t good — especially the decaf. At home I drank my coffee black. At Pete’s I added enough cream and sugar to make it taste like coffee-flavored ice cream. Otherwise, it was too bitter to get down.

Suzanne and I chatted about the weather, which is where Wisconsin small talk almost always starts. From there we moved to the exploits of her son, Tommie, who was a forty-something Milwaukee lawyer and who probably hadn’t wanted to be called “Tommie” in several decades. We talked a bit about my work, but since I was always careful not to spread gossip about Dr. Nielsen or my best friend, Janie, who was his accounts manager, that part of the conversation didn’t last long.

Suzanne then filled me in on the latest goings-on about town. Samantha Werthauser had left her husband over his affair with Sandy Foley. Josh Smith was thinking of becoming a Catholic. Johnny Cooper, who read meters for the electric co-op, had been caught red-handed trying to steal Godfrey Dingle’s best hunting dog. Its collar had gotten caught on the fence Johnny was trying to stuff it over.