front hallway so everyone - including the green-eyed Downeys - could see it when they came to call.
So "Just as well, darlin'," was said with some mixed feelings by Ava Downey when Willow McKenna stopped to chat in the midst of a walk with little Cooper snoozing in his stroller. Ava was sitting in her faux wicker rocking chair on the front porch, celebrating a warm spring day with her first outdoor gin and tonic of the season. She was referring to the departure of Anfisa Telyegin from their midst, something that Willow herself hadn't quite come to terms with, despite the advent of the Houstons who - with their children, their au pair, and their commitment to home improvement - were so much more suited to Napier Lane. "C'n you imagine what we'd be goin' through right now if we hadn't taken steps to deal with the problem?" Ava asked.
"But if you'd seen her that night..." Willow couldn't remove from her mind the image of the Russian woman as she'd been on her knees, weeping in the ivy. "And then to learn about what the rats meant to her... I just feel so - "
"Extended postpartum," Ava said. "That's what this is. What you need is a drink. Beau! Beau, honey, you in there, darlin'? Fix Willow here - "
"Oh no. I've got to get dinner. And the kids're alone. And... It's just I can't stop feeling sad about it all. It's like we drove her off, and I never thought I'd do something like that, Ava."
Ava shrugged and rattled her ice cubes. "All for the best," she noted.
What Leslie Gilbert said darkly was, "Sure Ava would feel that way. Southerners are used to driving people off their property. It's one of their sports." But she said this mostly because she'd watched Ava zero in on Owen at the New Year's Eve party. She hadn't yet forgotten that they'd used their tongues when they'd kissed, although Owen was still denying that fact.
Willow said, "But she didn't need to leave. I'd forgiven her. Hadn't you?"
"Sure. But when someone's ashamed... What're they supposed to do?"
Ashamed was how Willow herself felt. Ashamed that she'd panicked, ashamed that she'd tracked down Anfisa's previous residence, and ashamed most of all that, having tracked down the truth in Port Terryton, she hadn't given the Russian woman the chance to rectify matters before the men acted. Had she done that, had she told Anfisa what she'd unearthed about her, surely Anfisa would have taken steps to make sure that what had happened in Port Terryton didn't happen in East Wingate.
"I didn't really give her a chance," she told Scott. "I should have told her what we intended to do if she wouldn't bring in the exterminators. I think I should tell her that now: that what we did was right but how we did it was wrong. I think I'll feel better if I do that, Scott."
Scott McKenna thought no explanations to Anfisa Telyegin were necessary. But he knew Willow. She wouldn't rest until she'd made whatever peace she felt she needed to make with their erstwhile neighbor. He personally considered it a waste of her time, but the truth was that he was so caught up in meeting the needs of - praise God - the twelve clients he had now at McKenna Computing Designs that he really didn't do more than murmur, "Whatever you think's right, Will," when his wife at last mentioned going to see Anfisa.
"She was in prison," Willow reminded him. "In a concentration camp. If we'd known that at the time, I'm sure we would have done things differently. Wouldn't we?"
Scott was only half listening, so he said, "Yeah. I guess."
Which Willow took for agreement.
Chapter 12
It wasn't difficult to trace Anfisa. Willow did it through the community college, where a sympathetic secretary in Human Resources met her for coffee and slipped across the table to her an address in Lower Waterford, one hundred and fifteen miles away.
Willow didn't take Leslie Gilbert this time. Instead she asked if she would baby-sit Cooper for a day. Since Cooper was at the stage where he slept, ate, eliminated, and spent the rest of the time cooing at the mobiles above his crib, Leslie knew that she'd not be distracted from her daily intake of talk shows, so she agreed. And since she'd been looking forward to the topic of the day on her favorite show - I Had Group Sex With My Son's