It was five o’clock. Ted and Archie were expected at six. I took the Jarlsberg out of the refrigerator, so it wouldn’t be as hard as a brick, and put it on a cutting board with a box of crackers. Then I lined up the wine bottles and a half dozen wineglasses and remembered I couldn’t find a corkscrew the last time I looked for one.

“Leslie? Please see if you can find a corkscrew, and if you can’t, ask the Scarecrow to bring one. Please? I’m going to go and change.”

The Scarecrow was the guy in The Wizard of Oz without a brain.

“Good one,” Momma said.

I stopped in my tracks and looked back. She gave me a thumbs-up.

I got to my room and stopped again. Something had changed in the house. I wondered what it was and finally, I realized what was different. Everyone was happy. That may seem to be an overly simplistic way to state the very complicated facts, but it was the truth. That happiness was so hard won. I had scars to prove it. We all did.

I took off my dirty gardening clothes, rinsed off in a fast shower, and put on a clean sundress and sandals. I couldn’t wait to see Ted. I could’ve waited a long time before I saw Archie, but if I guessed correctly, he was going to be here a lot, sniffing around for Leslie like an old hound dog. What can I say? It had always been this way. She was Brigitte Bardot to my Tammy Tell Me True. She was wired in a way that was the complete opposite of me. And did it really matter to me if Archie wanted Leslie and not me? Well, there was a smidgen of a sting to it, but I had Ted, and I didn’t have to change myself for him to like me. In the cool of the afternoon, that matters just a whole lot more to me.

Ted and Archie were prompt. Leslie answered the door and I remembered she had not really been introduced to Ted. Although Ted knew Archie, because of Sharon’s hysteria and, ultimately, her death. So I hurried out to meet them to make sure that Ted was introduced to Suzanne as well.

“Hey!” I said to Ted. “Don’t you look nice? Hey, Archie.”

“Hi, Holly. It’s nice of y’all to have me.”

Leslie smiled at Archie like a large, slinky, satisfied feline. Archie gave her kind of a lascivious look. Ted caught it, raised his eyebrows, looked at me, and handed me his Ella Fitzgerald album.

“There you go!” I said. “Y’all come on in!”