Better Lena than me. I’d avoided Sandy at the last Bluebonnet meeting, but the memory of calling her a bitch to her face made me warmer than the late-afternoon sun. We approached the drainage ditch we called the “bayou.” A sign warned that alligators might be present, but all I saw from the wooden bridge that spanned the water were cattle egrets, bright white even in the shadow, and the sun gleaming off the dark turtles that clustered at the shore.

“How do you have time for the Bluebonnets?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I go to the general meetings, drop our ad in the newsletter, and make sure I’m at the fund raiser. But you won’t find me choosing flowers for the fashion show or getting blitzed at book club.”

“Why do you go at all?” Lena didn’t seem like the kind of person who did anything she didn’t want to do. I tried to imagine her at a downtown restaurant, sipping cocktails and debating fund raiser themes, but I couldn’t. She was Carnival and those women were Easter Sunday.

“I’m waiting for them to need me. When they get back home and something goes wrong in their perfect little lives, I need them to think about me. Me and Brady.” Lena pulled her hair back off her neck and tilted her face up to the sun, all without slowing her stride. “Those bitches will gossip and backstab and God knows what all, but when they have to choose, they’ll pick one of their own. Especially the kind of work Brady does where people are all up in your home. They see me at a meeting, makes them think they can trust my people in their house. Like we’re friends.”

Practical. Almost chilling how practical it was. “Some of them are nice. Elizabeth—”

“You made a friend. Sweet.” The corner of her mouth twisted.

Okay, that sarcastic edge was weird. “You’d like her.”

“I know her.” Lena looked away from me, our steps in sync even as the long silence stretched out. “She’s fine. Uptight, but fine. It’s okay, honey, I’m not looking to make friends, but you do what you want. Just promise me one thing?”

“What?”

“Don’t go all Stepford on me.” She didn’t smile, and I couldn’t tell if she was kidding.

One day thunder rolled through the air, and it rained hard and fast, too much for the gutters, rain sheeting down over our back door.

My phone pinged: 2 wet 2 walk. Come hang out?