What she had to tell me should come as no great surprise. Such things happen to so many young women—even girls like Vanessa, who, as I had once suggested, should be too smart for such a thing to happen. I remembered what Aunt Sunny had said to me at the reception in the Lighthouse Church fellowship hall after Louella’s funeral. “What do you think that Haltom girl’s folks would do if she got knocked up?” she’d said. “Do you think Big Jim Moneybags would order up a ticker-tape parade? Would the Swan Ball queen call up the Tennessean to make sure the news got into the society pages?”

Vanessa told me how she’d found out, what she’d done. How she’d kept it a secret from everyone, even Arch; even Alice. There was a clinic in Nashville, but she couldn’t risk being seen there. So she’d gone to Memphis, alone. The procedure had taken only a few hours. The hardest part, she said, was getting in and out of the building, past the protesters. On her way in, they begged her to reconsider. On the way out, someone had spit on her.

By the time she finished, we were up on the parkway. I felt weightless, as if the car were floating above the road.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s the right thing to say.”

“Just don’t judge me,” she said.

“Never,” I said.

I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“What about Arch?” I asked.

Her head snapped up.

“Arch can never know anything about this.”

“I didn’t mean anything. I just thought—”

“You promised,” she said.

Her grip became so tight that I winced. She glanced over and saw my pained expression and relaxed her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“I know how this must seem to you, of all people. I should have been like your mother. It would have been the right thing to do. It was my fault, after all. But I can’t do that to my parents. Can you imagine how my mother would react? With everything my father’s been preparing for the past year, with all of those late-night meetings.”

“Huh?”

“I guess that’s what you have to do,” she continued, “if you’re running for governor.”

“Your dad’s running for governor?” I asked.

“How could you not know?” she said. “Arch has known for months. He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, he is.”

“Wow,” I said.

We were on our way back now. In the foreground, the lights of Bellevue became visible, shining in the rippled surface of the Harpeth River like quivering fireflies.

“What about Arch?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“I thought you two were . . . I don’t know . . .”

“What?” she asked. “In love? Arch doesn’t love anyone as much as he loves being loved.”