“Mom, Dad, Aunt Tilley, I have something to say.”

“Oh my Lord, you are finally pregnant!” Aunt Tilley exclaimed.

Trina gasped excitedly beside me, but a quick shake of my head told her that this wasn’t good news. She made a pouty face and took my hand. I instantly felt better. This was why I loved Trina.

“Tilley, you know she can’t get pregnant,” Daddy had scolded.

“I know you don’t want to imagine all that, but just because her daddy doesn’t think she can doesn’t mean a girl can’t get pregnant.”

“Oh, good Lord, Tilley,” Daddy replied.

I had taken a deep breath and said, “It’s okay, Daddy.”

Mom interjected, “Why didn’t Thad come with you, anyway? Darlin’, that article you wrote about him…” She clutched her napkin to her chest, and I noticed a small hole in it. Certainly a hole in a hundred-year-old napkin was to be expected, but it bothered me that Mom hadn’t noticed it. “It was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.”

“And the New York Times,” Tilley said proudly. “Girly, you have made it.”

“Well, that’s sort of what I need to talk to you about.”

Trina hit Robby with her napkin. “Why don’t you write things like that about me? Does Amelia love Thad more than you love me?”

She stuck her lower lip out, and Tilley said, “She doesn’t love Robby more than I do.”

Mom rolled her eyes. Tilley’s boyfriend, who had died in a freak farming accident, had been named Robert. “Why in the world would you name your child Robby, Mother? It’s too confusing for her,” I’d scolded years ago.

“He’s my son, I named him after my father, and I can call him whatever the hell I want,” she’d retorted.

I had never heard my mother say “hell,” so, suffice it to say, I never brought it up again.

As I was readying myself to get this ship back on course, though, my nephews came tearing into the dining room, one of them hollering, “I did not take the last chicken leg!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

As Momma was saying, “Now, boys,” and Trina was saying, “William James, did you hide chicken legs in your pockets again so your brother couldn’t have any?” I decided I couldn’t take it a minute longer.

I cleared my throat and shouted, “I’m getting a divorce!”

The room was suddenly silent. Even the little boys knew this was more important than chicken. They ran back into the kitchen, the door between the two rooms swinging behind them.

“A divorce?” my mother said in a high, raised, outraged voice. I loved her, but she had this propensity to act so damn scandalized by every little thing. I mean, people got divorced. Constantly. Half the time. She acted like this was the first time she had ever heard the word. “A divorce?”

It was out now, and I couldn’t take it back. I almost took joy in saying, “Yes, Mom. Turns out Thad is a little more interested in men.”