Presently, a rap on the front door, where Daddy had rigged up a homemade knocker. Charlotte’s heart was kicking up again, beating far too fast. Daddy opened the door—

—the beaming face of Mr. Thoms (the way he smiled at her at graduation as she mounted the stage!). As he shook hands with Daddy, you could see the plaid liner of his raincoat, his navy blazer and necktie, his dark wool pants—the thought flashed through Charlotte’s mind: how unusual wool pants were—you could go for weeks at Dupont without laying eyes on a pair—and he backed up against the doorway to usher his wife in—very pretty she was, a brunette, beautiful in a way, a strong but perfectly formed nose, lips that seemed to be curved into a continual flirtatious smile, drowsy eyes, rather heavily made up for Sparta, but she had a chilly look about her, a lean, grim set to her jaws and the faint vertical line of an ever-incipient frown in her forehead. Her clothes were not at all unusual or fashionable, a plain slate-blue dress and a magenta cardigan sweater with a somewhat prissy line of pearl buttons down the front. Momma was greeting the Thomses with great animation.

“Well, hel-lo, Sarah!” she sang out. She obviously had been fixing that Sarah into her memory…to last.

Mrs. Thoms took a deep breath and quickly scanned the room. Charlotte was sure the funk of coal and gas fumes had shocked her and made her look about the poor little room in a judgmental fashion.

Charlotte had instinctively hung back. So Momma introduced Mrs. Thoms to Buddy and Sam first. The boys shook her hand and said “Yes, ma’am” to whatever it was she had asked them. Meantime, Momma was busy making a fuss over Mr. Thoms, who was too polite to take a deep breath and investigate the premises, even though he had never been here before, either.

“Oh, Land o’ Goshen, Mr. Thoms, you’re so nice to come!” She called him, whom she knew fairly well, Mr. Thoms, and her, whom she barely knew at all, Sarah. Charlotte started to try to figure that out—but for what earthly reason did it matter? All that mattered was—when would they leave?

Mrs. Thoms approached by herself. “Charlotte,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you since graduation last spring. I never did get a chance to tell you what a wonderful speech you gave.”

Charlotte could feel herself blushing. It wasn’t from modesty in the face of praise. “Thank you, ma’am,” said Charlotte. Then she tensed and blushed, expecting the next words out of her mouth to be about Dupont.

“Right after your speech, I told Zach”—it seemed so strange, this Zach—Charlotte had a recollection that Mr. Thoms’s full name was Zachary M. Thoms, but it had never occurred to her that there might be people who called him Zach—“he ought to have a public speaking program at the high school. I think every student ought to be able to do what you did—maybe not as well, but they ought to not be afraid to. You didn’t even look at a note.”

Charlotte felt herself turning crimson all over again, not so much because of Modesty’s proper embarrassment as because she couldn’t think of any appropriate reply. Should she say thank you again? Somehow it didn’t fit. She just wanted this whole evening to be over.

Seeing Charlotte stuck, Mrs. Thoms filled the conversation vacuum. “Oh, I wanted to ask you, Charlotte. My brother married a girl from Suffield, Connecticut, and one of her sister’s daughter’s best friends—she met her when they both went to Saint Paul’s School in New Hampshire—you know Saint Paul’s?”

Charlotte hadn’t followed any of this genealogical excursion, but she did get the part about Saint Paul’s, and she said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, her friend goes to Dupont—I think she wanted to go to Dupont, too, but she ended up at Brown. I shouldn’t say ‘ended up,’ I guess—she’s a senior now, and she can’t say enough good things about Brown. Anyway, her friend is a senior at Dupont—”

This conversation, innocuous though it was, was already weighing down on Charlotte, already an immensely heavy burden for a depressed girl. The last thing in the world she wanted to chitchat about was somebody’s daughter at Brown’s former friend at Saint Paul’s who is now a senior at Dupont.

“—and she—I’m talking about my brother’s wife’s…sister’s…daughter’s friend”—she started laughing at herself—“What does that make her? If my brother’s wife is my sister-in-law, then what does that make her sister—also my sister-in-law?—or my sister-in-law once removed—” She laughed again. “I think I’ve been in the South too long! I can’t believe I actually said that, ‘brother’s wife’s sister’s daughter’s friend’—anyway, she’s a senior at Dupont and she says she knows you.”

“Knows me?” Charlotte was startled—frightened. Her amygdala had removed the safety and was primed in the fight-or-flight mode.

“That’s what she said. The girl’s name is Lucy Page Tucker.”

The blood began draining from Charlotte’s face. She stared at Mrs. Thoms with a ferocious intensity, looking for…even the slightest tip-off to—

“You know her?” said Mrs. Thoms.

“No! Not at all…” Charlotte realized that her voice was weak and shaky and terribly wary, but she had no control over it. “I mean, I think I like…know who she is. But I’ve never met her? Golly, I don’t think I’d know her if I saw her. And she says she knows me?”

I’m being too defensive! she thought. Now she’ll know she’s onto something! Charlotte’s brain was boiling, and the steam rose.

“That’s what my sister-in-law said. I just talked to her this afternoon. I got the impression that you and this girl were in the same crowd.”

Now Mrs. Thoms seemed to be studying her face for…any little giveaway. Charlotte knew she should be…cool…but it wasn’t in her.

“Oh, not at all!” she said. “I mean, I think she’s like…president of a sorority or something! I don’t even have any crowd. I’m just a freshman. I’m not even—” She didn’t try to complete the sentence. She shrugged.

“Well,” said Mrs. Thoms with a cheery smile, “maybe she’s considering you as a candidate!”

Was that smile fake…ironic? How much did she know? All of it? Gloria talking to Lucy Page at Mr. Rayon…the lioness…She wouldn’t forget that big face and its mane of blond hair in a thousand years.

“Oh, she wouldn’t be considering me. I’m just—I mean, nobody’s ever even heard of Sparta or Alleghany County or the Blue Ridge Mountains, most of them. They went to private schools? I mean, like…we’re completely different? I’d never join a sorority. I mean, I might as well like…join the…uh…uh…Afghanistan army or something—”

Mrs. Thoms laughed at that, but Charlotte didn’t even have it in her to laugh along with her. She hadn’t even meant it as funny. Nothing is funny to a depressed girl. She had to spit all of it out.

Even as she did so, Charlotte was aware that she was out of control, and she only hoped that all the question marks in her declarations had neutralized their—desperation. How much Mrs. Thoms knew, which also meant how much Mr. Thoms knew—boiling, boiling, boiling, boiling, Charlotte scanned Mrs. Thoms’s face square millimeter by square millimeter—

A drop in the noise level of the little room as the front door opened—

“Why, Miz Simmons”—gasp—“land’s sakes, it’s just real nice”—gasp—“to see you!”

The unmistakable good-hearted contralto of Miss Pennington. She and Momma had always remained Miss Pennington and Mrs. Simmons to each other, and more than once Charlotte had wondered if it was because of her. Charlotte could hardly believe it, but Miss Pennington went up and gave Momma a hug, and Momma hugged her, too. Charlotte knew intellectually that the very sight should fill her with happiness. The two most important women in her life had closed whatever gap there was between them—but ohmygod, think of the peril! What one knew, the other would know, too! And what Mrs. Thoms knew—they would soon know, too!