I restrained myself from calling April to see if Andrew had talked to her about Tally yet. If he hadn’t, how would I broach it? If he had, surely she’d call me if she wanted to talk? Better to leave it for now.

I checked my e-mail, deleted the three inspirational messages forwarded by Robert’s wife Doris without reading them, chuckled at a bawdy joke from Isabel, answered the most urgent messages, then surfed the Net for a while. Out of curiosity, I went to my favorite search engine and keyed in “carnival.” Most of the results either had to do with Mardi Gras-type carnivals or cruise ships, so I reset the parameters to exclude those. As I followed the links from one site to the next, an interesting picture of carnival life and carnival culture emerged from the electronic ether. I found myself wishing I could call Tally and ask her at least a dozen frivolous questions based on what I was finding.

When I eventually surfaced, it was almost three o’clock. I put on my bathing suit, pulled an old T-shirt on over it and, since boys are always hungry, laid out a bag of nachos to go with a jar of salsa I’d unearthed from the back of my refrigerator. (There was just the teensiest bit of mold around the lid, which wiped right off. And don’t tell me you’ve never done that yourself.)

Three o’clock came. The boys didn’t.

At three-thirty, I started calling. Isabel answered the phone, sounding sleepy. “Stevie? He went on back to Chapel Hill right after dinner.”

“Didn’t he get my message?”

“Yes, but he said he had a paper to work on or something. Didn’t he call you?”

I punched the speed-dial button for Maidie and it rang eight times before she answered. “Sorry, Deb’rah. Him and Stevie left here before two o’clock. They said they had to get up with a friend or something before going back to school. Eric did tell him you was hoping to spend a little time with ‘em, but Stevie said you’d understand. Maybe next time, honey.”

Understand? Oh, yes. I understood all too well. Question was, what could I do about it?

Since coming to the bench, I’ve gotten a little spoiled. If I want someone in my courtroom at a certain hour on a certain day, they damn well show up or risk a contempt of court. And if that doesn’t scare them into appearing, there are bailiffs and deputies to go out and find them for me, whether in jail or at large.

Unfortunately, bad as I wanted to at that moment, I couldn’t sic a bailiff or a deputy on either of those two boys.

To cool off, I walked out on my pier, stripped off the T-shirt, and jumped in. It took a few minutes of serious swimming before the water did its job and let me look at the situation objectively.

There was a reason they hadn’t left their names with either deputy Friday night, a reason they were deliberately avoiding me now. All the same, Stevie and Eric arc two of the most laid-back kids I know. Did I honestly think that either of them would let a carny’s casual trash talk get under their skin?