that had fallen over the dinner table was so awkward that Martin felt compelled to break it.
"We had a surprise visitor today," he said easily.
"Who was that?" Catledge asked, right on cue, relief easy to read in his voice.
"My niece came to visit, with her baby boy," Martin said. I cocked an eyebrow at him. We weren't going to mention Regina's visit, we'd decided.
"A boy," Ellen said. "I miss our boys. They were adorable babies. But all cute babies grow up and leave home, don't they?" That should have been said in a light tone, but it wasn't. Ellen's voice grew more and more edgy with every word. Once again, an uneasy silence fell over the table. Ellen pushed her chair back and rose, maybe a little unsteadily. "Excuse me, please," she said, managing to sound almost normal. "I'm being a bad hostess. I feel unwell." And walking quickly, her backbone stiff, she was out of the room and going up the stairs, face carefully turned away. "I'm so sorry Ellen is ill," I said instantly. "She should have canceled. We would have understood. Bless her heart, she worked so hard when she should have been in bed." I hoped my chatter would fill the silence and smooth things over, and to some extent it did.
"Ellen never knows when to take things easy," Catledge said gratefully. "We'd love to have you back when she's well."
"Oh, no, it's our turn," Martin contributed. He was already up and retrieving my coat. "We enjoyed the evening, I'm just sorry it ended this way." As Martin and Catledge kept up the social end of the evening, I stepped into the kitchen to tell Mrs. Esther that I'd enjoyed the food and that she could clear the table. Mrs. Esther was sitting at the small breakfast table in the bay window in the kitchen, reading How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, I saw that the kitchen door to the garage was being pulled shut, and I understood that Ellen had gone down the back stairs, stepped silently through the kitchen, and - this I definitely heard - was starting up the car in the garage.
When I looked from the garage door back to Mrs. Esther, I saw that she was regarding me with an absolutely neutral expression. As clearly as if she'd spoken it, her face said, "This is none of my business and I don't want to know."
"Thanks for the delicious supper, Mrs. Esther," I said. I picked a dish at random. "The chicken was especially good."
"Thank you, Mrs. Bartell." Another one who didn't call me Ms. Teagarden. But it was not an issue I was going to fight over. It had never made any difference to me what people called me, as long as I knew who I was. We exchanged good-byes, and I turned back to the dining room to find Martin and Gatledge shaking hands. But then Catledge mentioned the Wednesday meeting of the zoning commission, and Martin remembered that Pan-Am Agra had bought some land adjacent to the plant that needed to be re-zoned, and they started up all over again.
I couldn't fiddle with the table, not with Mrs. Esther in the kitchen waiting to take care of it, and I couldn't wander around the house because that would be rude. So I fished around in my purse for a mint and surreptitiously popped it in my mouth, I got all my hair freed from the collar of my coat, and then I gently patted Martin's arm.
"You and Catledge will just have to call each other tomorrow, honey. We need to get home."
Martin smiled down at me fondly. "You're right, Roe. We need to check on Regina and the baby before we turn in."
So, finally, finally, we were out the door and on our way. Even then, we had to stop to get gas, because Martin was low and didn't want to have to fill up on the way to work in the morning.
We'd had Ellen's wine with our meal, and a somewhat trying day, so we were quiet and (speaking for myself) sleepy on the drive home. Though I was still mildly concerned about Regina's visit and the unexplained baby, I was willing to put off worrying about it until the next morning. But I could tell from Martin's frown that he was brooding over it again.
As we turned up our long driveway, my pleasant drowsiness evaporated. Though I couldn't tell