“I’ll see you then,” I said and pressed the end button. I must’ve been smiling in a way that Leslie was unfamiliar with, because she still had this very weird look on her face.

“This is your guy,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. I blushed and broke a sweat. “I don’t have a guy, and I don’t need one, either.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You’re not the only one in this family who can predict things, you know.”

“I know that.”

The fact was that most of the women in our family on my mother’s side had some kind of weird gift. My grandmother used to dream about hearses driving by and she’d know someone was about to drop dead. If the dream was accompanied by a death knock the next day—that is, a loud knocking on your door but no one’s there—then she knew it was a family member. My aunt, the QB’s sister, who’d gone to her reward years ago, could tell you who was calling before the telephone rang. And she could predict rain by the shape of the crescent moon, and the gender of unborn babies. And me? I knew that eventually I’d be teaching at Sullivan’s Island Elementary School because I could see myself in the classroom there. And I knew my bees heard me. And a few other oddities. But I couldn’t see myself married to anyone. I sort of hoped Leslie was right.

Suzanne and the queen arrived home about ten minutes before I was to go out. They had been gone all afternoon.

“Hey! Did y’all have fun?” I asked.

“It was fabulous,” Momma said.

She was literally beaming. So was Suzanne. My antenna went up. Leslie wandered in.

“How was lunch?” she said.

“Shockingly delicious!” Suzanne said.

“We ate so much we decided to walk it off. So we walked out to the beach and down the island.”

“Then we crossed the dunes at Fort Moultrie, and I learned all about cannonballs bouncing off the palmetto logs of the original fort during the Revolution.”

“And about Osceola and the Seminoles!” Momma said.

“And about Fort Sumter. Don’t forget the Hunley!” Suzanne said.

“It sounds like y’all had a perfectly marvelous afternoon!” Leslie said.

“We did,” Suzanne said. “And I asked the queen to marry me.”

“And I said yes!” Momma said. “I’m going to make Suzanne my king!”

Hmmm, I thought. Really? How’s that going to work? Then I thought, Why not?

“Jesus!” Leslie said and staggered backward as though she might faint. “I sure didn’t see that one coming!”

After a moment’s pause, I thought it was just about the coolest thing I’d ever heard.