Chapter 20: Open on Saturday

By ten that night, a stranger had posted the photos.

Not the ones Keith had laid on my counter.

These were older, with Preston's arm around me outside a hotel.

The caption said, FLORIST CHEATED ON HER HUSBAND FOR THREE YEARS. NOW SHE'S "SURPRISED" HER KIDS ARE FAMOUS.

Under it there were six thousand comments.

I read twelve of them and put the phone in the glove box.

"Don't," Keith said, and drove.

"They're right about the first part."

"They're right about one thing," he said, "and they've got the rest wrong."

We were on our way to Connie's, where the twins had been asleep since five.

She had called twice in a voice I didn't like.

Her porch light was on.

So were the lights of a white van parked on her lawn.

A woman in a red coat stood on Connie's front walk with a microphone.

A man behind her held a lamp on a pole.

"Mrs. MacGowan!" the woman called. "Mrs. MacGowan, did you know your daughter-in-law's children weren't your son's?"

The front door opened.

Connie stood on the step in her bathrobe and her reading glasses on their chain.

She was holding a rolling pin, which I think she had picked up by accident.

"I know exactly whose grandchildren they are," she said.

"Ma'am, the chef has publicly claimed them."

"I diapered one of them in that kitchen and I taught the other to hold a spoon."

Her voice carried down the whole block.

"Now you've woken the neighbors, and you've shone a light on my azaleas."

She pointed the rolling pin at the grass.

"You're standing on my lawn with a microphone at ten at night."

"We're only asking for a comment."

"I'll tell you what I'm asking. Off my lawn."

She went inside and slammed the door.

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