"Any progress on getting your business reopened?" Eileen asked, once we'd set up the ingredients so they didn't obscure the large portable screen where I watched the camera's movements. The babble of voices from the telephone bank almost drowned her out.

I mumbled, "Not yet," and scanned the row of chairs set up behind the two cameras. I was startled to see the face and shoulders of Rorry Bullock emerge from just behind the screen. Now that I saw her, what should I say? I didn't know.

I sighed and turned my attention back to my work. Fifteen minutes to showtime. I still needed to be wired. A bubble of panic rose in my throat. Arthur nodded to me, then in Rorry's direction. While Jack and Eileen leafed through the script to make sure I had every single ingredient, I hurried over to the screen.

"Rorry?" I asked nervously. "Remember me? Goldy? Fellow church school teacher? Supervisor of kids carving clay tablets of the Ten Commandments?" One of our more memorable projects, the tablet-making had been surpassed only by the blowing of horns to bring down the Sunday school walls, a la Jericho.

Rorry turned and faced me. She was wearing a sagging gray sweatshirt, and looked uneasy and out of place. She was dunking a tea bag into hot water. Her look was unexpectedly defiant.

"I'm sorry," I stumbled on, wishing I hadn't tried to be funny. "This day must remind you of Nate - "

"Long time no see, Goldy." Rorry's face was unreadable, her tone bitter. She slurped some tea. "Don't feel sorry for me."

"I'm so sorry," I repeated, in spite of what she'd said. "Didn't mean to upset you - "

"I'm not upset," she interrupted. "Just puzzled."

. "About what?" My question sounded stupid, even to me. I shakily wired the microphone Arthur handed me through my double-breasted chef's jacket.

"Two minutes," he warned. "Mrs. Bullock, I don't suppose we could convince you to say a few words for PBS - "

"No!" Rorry's reply was nearly a shout. The hand holding the plastic cup trembled; pale green tea slopped out. Arthur rushed away.

"Rorry," I murmured. "I just heard about the, your, other loss. I didn't know about the baby, and I know you loved Nate - "

"Nate is the only man I've ever loved," she cut in fiercely.

Why the rudeness? I didn't get it. My cheeks reddened. Why did I always make things worse when I was nervous? "I know you did - "

Rorry lifted her chin. "You don't know a thing, Goldy."

She walked away from the screen, toward the spectators' seats. Slowly, she seated herself. I gasped, stunned. During my years of marriage to my first husband, Doctor John Richard Korman, a.k.a. The Jerk, I'd seen plenty of his ob-gyn patients. I could read them pretty well. Why had no one told me about Rorry?

Three years after the death of the only man she swore she'd ever loved, Rorry Bullock was nine months pregnant.