Paula picked up one of the biscuits. “I’m positive. He’s experiencing it with his wife, and I don’t want to share other than with y’all. It might be selfish, but he lied to me about his marriage. Mama’s right about at least one thing that she preaches all the time. Every choice has consequences. Mine is this baby for having sex with a guy without checking out his story. His is that he’ll never know he has this child because he lied to me.”

“I’d feel the same way—my mama said that same thing so often that I felt like it was branded on my brain.” Mitzi opened her biscuit, added grape jelly to it, and then passed the spoon and jar over to Jody.

“Mine, too, only she had it cross-stitched on a pillow she insisted on keeping in my bedroom,” Jody said. “Maybe I should’ve paid more attention to that pillow, but I never thought Lyle could do something like this.”

“We were both pretty gullible,” Paula said. “It just took you years to figure it out. I didn’t get but a few months.”

“Count it as a blessing.” Jody finished off her first biscuit and unwrapped the second one. “I didn’t know how much I missed having meat in my diet. I wonder if the new wife is vegetarian.”

“I hope that she eats meat six times a day and she makes him cook it,” Mitzi said. “Whatever made y’all decide to go vegetarian anyway?”

“Lyle wanted us to live off the land,” Jody explained. “We didn’t abuse our bodies with liquor or with tobacco, and we didn’t eat anything that had a face. I loved him enough that I went along with it. Truth is, I was so tickled to have a boyfriend in high school and to move in with him that I would have stood on my head in hot ashes to please him.”

“Well, I supported you and the way you wanted to live, but if I had to give up my double-bacon cheeseburgers, I could get real bitchy real fast,” Paula said.

“Are we tellin’ your mama tonight?” Mitzi asked. “And when are you tellin’ Selena?”

“Might as well get it over with,” Paula said. “My appointment is at four thirty and it’s only for the ultrasound, so it won’t take long. Why don’t y’all close up shop and then meet me at her place? I think I’ll call Selena and have her meet us there. That way I can kill two birds with one stone. Then we’ll celebrate.”

“Celebrate what? That we know if it’s a boy or girl or that we were there when you told your mama?” Jody asked.

“Both,” Paula replied. “Will y’all please be my birthing coaches? Classes start in a few weeks.”

“Of course,” Jody and Mitzi answered at the same time.