I hugged her tightly. I didn't want to let her go or for the day to end. "I love you, Momma"

"I've loved you your whole life. Now I'm tired and ready for bed, so you run along home and get a good night's rest."

"How about I just sit with you for a while until you go to sleep? Then if you remember anything else you want to tell me, I'll be here," I said.

I stayed with her until she fell asleep, but she didn't say anything more.

Billy Lee was sitting on the porch when I pulled into the driveway. He brushed at his pants legs, but he still looked like he'd walked through a sawdust tornado. He held up a sweating can of Coke, and I took it without hesitation. If it got any hotter, the devil would be moving his furnace to Tishomingo.

"Have a good visit with your momma?" he asked.

"She had a good day. I treasure each and every one when she knows me." I rolled the cool can over my forehead and face before I pulled the tab and sucked in the first cool foam.

He sipped his. "I'm glad she was good today."

"So what did you do this evening?"

"Worked in my shop. Painters are coming tomorrow to start scraping and painting. You sure you want the house yellow? This is your last chance to change your mind."

I nodded. "Original as I can get it, so no plastic siding, thank you. Think they can save all the gingerbread?"

"What they can't, I'll duplicate. They'll be taking it down and stripping it. Take a while, but it'll look better. You want to start in Lonnie's room next?"

"Guess we might as well. Gives me hives."

Billy Lee set his empty can on the porch. "Lonnie died, and he's gone. Ghosts don't live in houses"

"Why not? There's a ghost in the haunted hotel at Jefferson. If one can live there, why can't one live in Lonnie's bedroom?"

Billy Lee chuckled. I prized the times when he laughed as much as I did Momma's good days. He was pretty serious by nature. Maybe that's why folks thought he was odd. I wanted to lean across the distance between us and kiss him. I blinked a dozen times to erase that crazy notion. What was I thinking? Billy Lee Tucker was my friend, and one kiss could spook him and ruin our friendship.

"You ever miss your momma?" I thought it was a good, neutral question to get my mind off his lips.

He looked away, and I wished I could call the words back.

"I didn't know her. She died when I was just a little kid. Grandma and Gramps adopted me and raised me as their child. I didn't know my father, either. He died before I was born. He and my mother were only married a few weeks. I miss my grandmother the way a person would miss a mother."

I changed the subject. "Sometimes I worry that I'll get Alzheimer's."

"Trudy, don't worry about tomorrow or let the past ruin today. If you get Alzheimer's, we'll deal with it then. Don't fret about it today."

"You're right, Billy Lee. Life's too short for fretting." I didn't miss the "we" he'd mentioned. He was promising to stand beside me in friendship through thick and thin, and I appreciated it.

"Guess we'd best call it a day. Plumbers, scrapers, and painters will be crawling all over the house while we strip woodwork and start on another room. At least you can see what the landing and stairs look like for inspiration."

"See you in the morning, then," I said.

He didn't whistle that evening, and I missed it.

I unlocked the padlock on Uncle Lonnie's room that morning. If there had been even a faint rustle of the old lace window curtains or a squeak of the ancient metal bedsprings, I would have lit a shuck for Billy Lee's house. But the room was empty of ghosts, and a sliver of orange peeked through the lace curtains. I went down to the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. Sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of black coffee in one hand, a piece of toast in the other, I flipped through magazines. It was time to think about furniture.

When I was younger, magazines had had glorious pictures of the inside of houses. Now every magazine had sixty ways to keep a man happy: been there, done that, failed in the long run. Forty-nine ways to lose weight: remodel an old house and be too tired to eat. Dozens of tests to see if you were compatible with the man of your dreams: didn't have one. Billy Lee Tucker was my only friend these days.

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Billy Lee rapped once on the back door and poked his head in. "You're up early. Not sick, are you?"

I shook my head. "No, just trying to decide what to do with my bedroom. It's so pretty, I can't decide for sure what to put in there, and these magazines aren't a bit of help. Pour yourself some coffee, and help me make some decisions. I don't even know where to start to find something good enough to go in there"

"I ... I ... ," he stammered. "Well ... I've got something I want to show you before the workers get here this morning."

"You're being nice again."

"I am not. I'm just afraid you'll be nice and say you like what I've got to show you even if you don't, just because we're friends."

"I'm all through being nice. If I don't like it, I'll tell you."

"Promise?"

"You've got my word"

"Then follow me. And remember you promised."

I slipped my feet into a pair of rubber flip-flops at the back door and followed him across the yard, through the hole in the hedge, and into his yard. I'd crossed into the inner sanctum by invitation. I'm not sure anyone in town had ever been to Billy Lee's house. When we were kids, he'd always come to Aunt Gert's yard when we visited.

He didn't go to his house but made a turn to the left when we reached the gravel driveway, and he proceeded to that big metal building set down against the tree line at the back of his property. So much for thinking maybe he had biscuits and gravy on the table for breakfast.

He fished a remote-control device out of his pocket, opened one of the huge double doors, and stood to one side to let me enter first. Was this where a secret organization took fortyyear-old divorcees to offer them up to some pagan god? Was that why he'd been so nice to me on my fortieth birthday? Like the last-supper request of a person on death row, I'd been given a couple of amazing days before being stretched out on a stone altar and a fire started under my chubby body.

If I'd realized I was going to be the guest of honor, I would have dressed better. Maybe worn the Capri set I'd gotten in Dallas. No time to run home and change, though. Billy Lee and his overall buddies would have to take me as I was. Hair a curly, tangled mess, paint-splotched stretch-denim jeans, and a shirt that looked like it had been around since Noah crawled off the ark.

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared wide-eyed at the biggest Harley motorcycle I'd ever seen. I couldn't see him sitting on that thing, much less riding it around town.

"Is that yours?" I asked.

He stopped and let me look my fill of the cycle. "Yes, it's mine. Do you like to ride?"

I reached out to touch it but drew my hand back. "I've never been on one but always thought it might be fun."

"You can touch it, Trudy. Your fingerprints won't ruin the paint. We'll go for a ride anytime you want to, but that's not what I wanted to show you."