I’ve made so many bad choices in the last few years that I’ve started doubting my own judgment everywhere except in the courtroom. What if I’d already met the man who could have been perfect for me and bobbled my big chance? Gone chasing after the sexy one and missed out on the steady one?

Like Bradley Needham, for instance. Brad and his wife had stopped to speak to Portland and Avery, with nods for the rest of us. Janice is one of our better courtroom clerks and Brad’s director of marketing for Longleaf, a sausage and meat-packing company headquartered here in the county. I realized I hadn’t seen Janice in the courtroom since early summer.

“You haven’t been sick, have you?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said, plucking a stray hair from the collar of my shirt.

Janice is a picker—hair, threads, bits of lint. She can’t seem to help herself, and we either pretend not to notice or stay out of arm’s reach.

“Bradley had a temporary assignment with Longleaf’s West Coast distributor and we’ve been in California since the end of June. It was only supposed to be for a month, but everything was such a mess, it took twice as long as they thought for him to straighten everything out.” She picked a gnat off my bare arm. “We didn’t mind, though. Longleaf put us up in a residential hotel with a swimming pool, maid service, everything. Didn’t cost us a cent. It was like a second honeymoon.”

“Y’all been back long?” Portland asked politely.

“Tuesday.” Portland’s nubbly blue shirt had picked up so much fluff from Dwight and Sylvia’s plush dog that Janice didn’t seem to know where to start. Her thin fingers darted in and out. “We decided to take the rest of the week off, give us time to unpack and get the house in order. I really ought to be there right now—you wouldn’t believe the dust!—but Bradley just had to come see the carnival. Like we hadn’t been to Disneyland twice while we were out there in California. He doesn’t even enjoy it all that much. But he thought he ought to come out tonight to support the harvest festival, and as much as he has to travel, I don’t like him to have to go places here by himself. You know how husbands are.”

Her fingers moved compulsively toward Portland’s shirt.

“Yes, I know,” said Portland, and move out of reach.

If I’d been less choosy, I probably could have had Brad Needham for a husband. He called me at least a half-dozen times when I first came home to Colleton County several years ago, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm for sausage back then or for Brad, either, though he’d been considered a good catch. A little dull maybe, but cute, decent, hardworking, no bad habits. His best features were his dark brown hair and eyes. He had thick eyelashes and even thicker curly hair that still fell boyishly over his forehead and almost touched his collar in back. Probably made a comfortable living back then, too. But I was still getting over someone in New York in those days and I never even let Brad buy me a cup of coffee.