"I don't care which or one of each. It's been a long time since I've been around a baby. I'm looking forward to being a grandma."

"You sure don't look old enough for that title," he said.

"You are blind."

"I wear contacts, and they make my sight perfect. I'm excited about the baby. I looked at plans for building cribs this past week."

"You do too much"

He gave me another crooked grin and said, "I'll be the judge of that, Trudy."

"Today, I'll let you be the judge," I said.

"Be careful. What happens on New Year's is what happens all year long."

The kiss came to my mind immediately. I sure hoped he was right.

By the time we ate supper and got back to Tishomingo, it was fully dark. Crystal had left a note on the refrigerator that she'd gone to the nursing home to visit Momma. With luck she wouldn't be the cleaning lady that day or, worse yet, Marty or Betsy. Billy Lee said he had to check on his cat and headed out, leaving me to ponder the past two days over a cup of hot chocolate.

Men are so frustrating; sometimes I think they really do come from Mars. That's the planet where they take boy babies' souls at birth to raise them with no feminine influence of any kind. They use John Wayne as the primary role model and make them mean and tough. Then they return their souls to them when they start puberty. That's why they are so obsessed with the female species at that time. After all, they've been living on Mars, where no such things exist.

For a whole month we went on with our routine. Billy Lee started breakfast every morning. Crystal and I meandered in when the aroma of coffee and bacon wafted up the stairs and into our bedrooms. She set the table for three. I helped Billy Lee finish cooking, and we ate together. He never mentioned that earth-shattering kiss on New Year's Day, so it must not have affected him the way it did me. I wasn't about to tell anyone that I dreamed every night of him kissing me again, or that when we were working side by side, I stared at his lips.

On the first day of February I awoke to nothing. No coffee. No rattle of pots and pans. I sat straight up in bed, my eyes open so wide, my face hurt.

Billy Lee was dead. I was sure of it.

Tears welled up behind my eyes and spilled over the dam into rivers down my cheeks. I brushed them away with the edge of the bedsheet. What would I do without him, and why hadn't I told him how much that kiss meant to me? I sniffed the air. Maybe I was getting a cold and couldn't smell the coffee or the breakfast.

Nothing.

Not one thing could keep Billy Lee out of the kitchen other than death, so that was proof of my suspicion. I grabbed a chenille robe from the closet. The only socks I could find were two mismatched ones: a blue with navy stripes and a black with red hearts. I grabbed two house shoes from the floor of the closet: a Clifford the Big Red Dog and a Minnie Mouse.

Peter, Paul, and Mary were all meowing in the utility room: further proof that Billy Lee was in his shop, graveyard dead. He always fed them first thing in the morning. I ran across the yard, through the hedge, and to the workshop. It was locked uptight.

I'd lived next door to him for months, and not once had I been in his house, but desperate times called for desperate measures. If he didn't answer the back door, I had every intention of breaking and entering. If he pressed charges against me, I'd pay the fine or sit it out in jail. Surely they'd seen women in worse attire than mine down at that place.

I knocked.

No answer.

I tried the knob.

It was locked.

The windows were covered on the inside with miniblinds and curtains, so I couldn't see a thing. That didn't keep me from trying. Concerned neighbor? Peeping Tom-ette? Who cared what they called it when they came to haul me down to the slammer?

I leaned on the front doorbell until the cat set up a howl, and still not a human sound came from within. I tried the storm door, and it opened, but the main door was locked. It was either kick it in, or the cat would begin eating Billy Lee by nightfall. Clifford the Big Red Dog was on the way to the first attempt when the door opened suddenly. I overbalanced, fell into the living room, and looked up at Billy Lee Tucker, alive and in the flesh.

His voice came out nasal and almost whiny. "What are you doing?"

He wore faded red flannel pajama bottoms and a long sleeved gray shirt. His face was flushed, his nose red, and his eyes bleary. He might not be dead yet, but the devil was knocking on-the- door.

I pulled the robe around my naked legs and stood up, tightening the makeshift sash. "You look like the devil."

"So do you," he said right back at me.

"Yes, but I could get dressed and look better. You could put on a tux and still look horrid."

He headed toward what I assumed was his bedroom. "Go away. I'm sick, and I don't want you to catch it."

He slammed the door.

I heard a moan and bedsprings.

Standing just inside the living room, I took stock of the house. The living room was long and rectangular-with outdated furniture. The orange floral sofa with a coffee table and end tables were definitely not of Billy Lee Tucker quality. A matching chair with a side table and lamp seemed to date from the sixties. The only redeeming piece in the room was a nice, big, leather recliner facing a small television set.

Meandering toward the back of the house, I found a kitchen with a U of cabinets-still not made or produced by Billy Lee-an old chrome table with a yellow top, and four matching chairs. The window above the sink looked out over the sidewalk to his shop.

When I went back through the living room, I discovered a short hallway with a bathroom and two bedrooms opening from it. The bathroom door was open, and I love to snoop, so I stepped inside to find light green fixtures, a wall-hung sink, and curling, green-flecked linoleum on the floor. The spare bedroom invited me right in, where I found a bed covered with a white chenille bedspread, every inch of a dresser crammed with family pictures, chest of drawers with a brush and comb set, and nightstands with a Bible on each. Billy Lee's grandparents had slept in this room, no doubt.

I slung open his bedroom door without even knocking. "When did you get sick?"

He pulled the covers over his head. "I told you to go away. I thought you'd left."

"Humph," I snorted. "I was snooping around your house. Now I'm going to make you some toast and hot tea. I'm not ready for you to die."

"Trudy, trust me, you don't want to catch this. It's miserable, and it comes on fast" His voice came out muffled from beneath the quilt.

I jerked the covers back and touched his forehead. "If I get it, you can take care of me. What have you taken? Tylenol? Advil?"

"Not a thing. I hate medicine. As it is, one minute I'm burning up, and the next I'm freezing. Add a bunch of medicine to that, and I'll be dizzy and disoriented too."

"Stop acting like a baby, Billy Lee"

"Please, Trudy," he said.

"No. Even `please' won't work. I'm staying and taking care of you"

I called Crystal, who was in the kitchen wondering where we were. I told her to look in the medicine cabinet and bring me a bottle of Tylenol and the vitamin C and leave both on the front porch. Then I told her to pack me a bag and to toss in a couple of books from the pile on my dresser.