John closed his eyes in the hope that it would keep him from laughing out loud, but curiosity got the better of him, and he opened one of them to see a thoughtful look on Angie’s face.

She said, “Harriet, if you dislike Tab so much, why don’t you divorce him?”

“Why, I’m surprised at you,” Pearl said, drawing back a little. “You know Roman Catholics don’t get divorced. Once the knot is tied, it’s tied good and tight.” She shot John a look that was impossible to misinterpret: it said, Marry my sister and you marry all of us. What it didn’t say, what she didn’t think to say even with Angie Mangiamele sitting right there, was Behave yourself. Because they knew him, reliable and trustworthy and predictable John Grant.

The Rose girls were as sure of him as they were of all the men they had married: Tab Darling and Pete McCarthy and George Shaw and Len Holmes. The Rose boys, as they were called sometimes when none of them was within hearing, not so much out of respect but because George was still built like the quarterback he had been in college, and Pete was a serious weight lifter.

“And anyway,” said Harriet. “Money’s tight, what with Tab Junior at college and all.” She let out a soft sigh, and then she smiled. “But tomorrow is the first of July, and I am ever hopeful.”

TEN

There’s a program on OP-TV you should watch, Neighbors and Friends. Next week, in conjunction with the reunions on campus, we will be interviewing members of the community who are also graduates of Ogilvie College. We do this every year, and almost every time some new story about Miss Zula comes out. Neighbors and Friends, which I produce, comes on right after Financial Planning with Will and before Book Talk with Miss Annie, at 6:00 p.m. on channel twelve.

Your name: T. B. James, retired Postmaster

The way Angie ended giving John a ride home was simple: neither his brother nor Caroline Rose answered when he called, and Pearl’s husband, Pete McCarthy, who had come to pick up the Rose girls with two of his sons in the car, had no more room. And so Angie and John walked through the parking lot toward the Tied to the Tracks van, Angie weighed down with camera equipment and John with his suitcase and briefcase. They said next to nothing, but the early-evening air—cool and clean after the storm—was electric enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up.