Automatically, I glanced at the clock. Seven-oh-five. Court didn’t start till nine, and I’d showered last night, so I had plenty of time, but I was under the impression that April’s school day started at eight so why was she over here in stained shorts and sneakers, no makeup, and a ravaged face? After Minnie, April’s the sturdiest, most got-it-together of my sisters-in-law, but today even her short brown hair with its threads of gray stood up in un-combed tufts.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as my heart froze. “Daddy—?”

Well past eighty now, he’s always my first thought when someone obviously bearing bad news shows up at my door unexpectedly.

April shook her head mutely.

“The kids?”

“No, I sent them over to Seth and Minnie’s to spend the night and go on to school from there.” April was freckled all over, and now her face was red and splotchy as tears filled her hazel eyes and ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away with an impatient hand. “It’s Andrew.”

“What’s wrong? Is he hurt? Sick?”

“You tell me, Deborah. What happened over here Saturday?” she demanded. “He came back from seeing you and Mr. Kezzie and went straight to the bourbon. He’s been drunk ever since, cussing you and not too happy with Mr. Kezzie and sloppy maudlin over Ruth and A.K. He drinks till he passes out, then comes to just long enough to drink again. I haven’t seen him like this since before we were married and I’m scared, Deborah. What set him off?”

“He won’t talk to you?”

“No, and when I beg him to tell me what’s wrong, he just gets mad and starts cussing.”

Alarmed, I asked, “He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”

“Hit me, you mean?” Indignation stiffened her back. “No, of course not. He’ll never get that drunk.”

All this time, I’d been getting her seated, pouring two mugs of coffee, and pushing sugar and milk at her in hopes that small routines might calm her down. Suggesting that Andrew might knock her around seemed to have done the trick. As Andrew’s third wife, April’s only got a few years on me and there’s no submissiveness in that marriage. Not on her part anyhow.

I handed her a box of tissues and said, “April, you do know that Andrew was married before, don’t you?”

“To Lois McAdams. So?”

“Before Lois.”

Her brow furrowed. “Carol somebody. Carol Hatcher?”

“That’s right.”

“She claimed Andrew was the father of her baby and her father made them get married. But after the baby was born, she ran off with it and—oh my God!” Her face went white beneath her freckles. “She’s back, isn’t she? And the divorce was never legal, was it?”

“No, no, no,” I said before she could follow that train of thought right on into the station and start worrying that her children were bastards. “Carol’s dead. She died years ago. Before you and Andrew got married.”

Having never met the woman, I could speak easily of her death.