He smirked. "It wouldn't do any good. I'm a lawyer, and I'll.."

"Don't threaten me, Drew. I didn't even want my clothes, so why would I want anything more? Besides, it'll take more and more money each time you get involved with a younger woman, so you'll need it all just to keep up"

He drew back a fist, and I got right into his face. "Take your best shot, and give it all you've got, and then I'm going to wipe up this porch with you. There's enough mad in me right now that you don't really want to take the chance. But if you are idiot enough to do it to soothe your damaged pride, then hit me"

He dropped his hand and stomped off the porch. "The papers will be here tomorrow. Sign them, and stay away from me"

"Signing them will be the highlight of my day. Staying away from you will be the easiest thing I've ever done"

I watched him drive away, and a nervous giggle bubbled up from my chest. By the time he pulled out of my driveway, I was sitting on a porch step, tears running down my face and laughter echoing up and down Broadway Street.

He shook a fist at me as he drove away. I wished for my digital camera to take a picture of that sight, but it was back at Drew's house, lying in the nightstand drawer beside my little pistol.

Billy Lee sat down on the top step a few feet from me. "You okay?"

"You didn't rush right out to my rescue, did you? Some neighbor you are, and after I took up for you too. Left me to fight the battle all by myself."

"You are a strong woman. You just proved it. I was standing in the doorway. If he'd tried to hit you, I'd have been there"

I didn't know whether to thank him for all that confidence or to slap him for getting out of helping me. "Okay, that's over and finished. Let's go back up to the bedroom. I hate white woodwork. What's it going to take to get it all stripped and stained, and is it worth the effort, or do we just buy new?"

I went back inside the house, and he followed me up the stairs.

Halfway up he said, "Thanks for taking up for me"

"Who said I was taking up for you?"

"You did. And you told him not to call me a nitwit."

I turned and looked back at him a few steps behind me. "Maybe I was taking up for me. I don't befriend nitwits. My friends are all first-class people. Maybe I thought he was questioning my judgment"

Billy Lee grinned. "Thanks, anyway."

By then we were in the bedroom, and he went right back to talking about the job. "Refinishing or buying new depends on how much work you want to do. I chipped a chunk of paint away in a corner of your bedroom. Looks to me like the woodwork is burled oak, so it's worth the time and effort."

"Then let's move the furniture out of the room, tear up the carpet, and get started"

"Right now?"

"You got somewhere else you have to be?"

"No, ma'am. It's Billy Lee at your service until we get this old place into shape, but we'll need to make a trip to the lumberyard for supplies after we tear up the carpet. I imagine there's oak hardwood under it."

"Then let's go to the lumberyard right now before we get al l sweaty and hot."

"I'll go get my truck and pick you up on the corner," he said enthusiastically.

"Me and my fat rear end will be waiting."

"I don't listen to derogatory remarks about my friends, either. And you look just fine to me, Trudy."

He walked across the back lawns and returned in minutes with his pickup truck. He got out and opened the passenger's door for me. I felt like Cinderella in the pumpkin-chariot in that beat-up Chevy truck that had to be at least twenty years old. It had been red at one time, but now it had rust spots and splotches of primer gray where Billy Lee had tried to keep it together with putty and paint.

We bought paint stripper, varnish, and two kinds of wipeon stain for the woodwork, but we held off on lumber, just in case we lucked out with the flooring under the carpets. By noon we'd moved the furniture from the guest room I was using to Uncle Lonnie's old room. I'd be sleeping in Aunt Gert's room until mine was finished. I wasn't looking forward to the possibility of sharing the room with her spirit if it hadn't gone on to rearrange heaven. But the other option was Uncle Lonnie's old room. I wasn't about to stretch out on the bed where lousy Lonnie had slept.

Sweat had slicked up every inch of my overweight, overforty body by the time we pulled up the carpet, but I danced a jig when we found oak hardwood floor, the movement of my feet sending dirt flying up around my sneakers and settling into the grooves of my turned-down bobby socks. Suddenly I could see the house in all its potential glory, just waiting to be turned from the girl in ugly rags to a princess, the belle of the ball.

"Don't take much to make you happy, does it?" Billy Lee chuckled.

"It's going to be a grand house when we get done"

"I've wanted to do this for years, but Gert wouldn't have any part of it. She said she was too old to be in the middle of remodeling, and she'd grown to like her life the way it was."

"I can see a vision of it finished, and you can too. It's plain as day in your eyes. Speaking of which, when did you stop wearing glasses? Did you get that new surgery?"

"No, just contacts. The doctor says I'm not a candidate for the surgery, or I'd have it."

"Not me. If I was nearsighted, I wouldn't have it."

"Why not?" he asked.

"If I was nearsighted, then I could choose what to see or not see"

"Trust me, it doesn't work that way," he said. "If I don't have my contacts in, I stumble around like a drunk."

My stomach growled loudly. I hadn't had food since breakfast, which was something new for me. I always had tea and cookies midmorning.

"Sounds like you're about to starve," he said.

"Let's go up to the SONIC and get some lunch before we clean the dust away and start to work for real."

"Want to go over to the park across Pennington Creek to eat?"

My stomach set up an unladylike howl. "I'd eat in the truck"

"Truck's hot. We might catch a breeze in the park."

I smiled, and it felt good. "I wouldn't waste a breeze"

We ordered foot-long cheese Coneys with extra onions, Tater Tots, and one of those big drinks that hold a quart of Coke. While we waited for the waitress to bring our food, Daisy Black and her daughter pulled up beside us in a late-model Cadillac. From the passenger seat, Daisy looked at me as if I was something she had tracked in from a pig lot.

She was the one who'd gone to church with Aunt Gert and had slept with Uncle Lonnie. But then, maybe she'd had a come-to-Jesus experience and repented of her sins. Jesus might instantly forgive her, but it was going to take me a while longer.

"How you doin', Miz Daisy?" I asked.

"I'm doin' just fine. I heard you moved into Gert's house and that you and Drew had a big argument on the porch this mornin'. It's not too late to undo what you're doin' and go on back to Drew."

"No, thank you"

"Think about it before you make a bad decision. How's your momma doin'? I been meanin' to get out to the nursing home to check on her, but I don't drive since I had my knee replaced."