High Noon

do you?”
    Oddly, Phoebe felt washed-out and dull standing there on the wide sidewalk while Maximillian Dufree peed lavishly on the trunk of the near live oak. “I guess not, but I wasn’t expecting to be on TV.”
    “Expect the unexpected.” Mrs. Tiffany wagged her elaborately ringed index finger. “You remember that, and always carry your blusher, you’ll do fine. You get yourself on TV like that, you might just catch yourself a husband. A man likes a woman with pink in her cheeks. And a nice, soft bosom.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind. You and Maximillian Dufree have a nice walk now.”
    As Phoebe started up the walk to what she considered the relative sanity of home, she heard Mrs. Tiffany trill out with a “And good evening to you! ”
    She glanced back, saw the man strolling by. He tapped the brim of his ball cap toward Mrs. Tiffany. He wore a camera strapped crossways over his dark windbreaker and resting at his hip. A tourist, Phoebe thought idly, though there was something vaguely familiar about him.
    Since he was a man, Mrs. Tiffany had to put her flirt on.
    Amused, Phoebe continued up the steps. She didn’t see him pivot, raise the camera, frame her in. When something tickled at the base of her spine, she glanced back. But he was strolling casually away. She could hear him whistle as he walked, something slow and sad and as vaguely familiar as he’d been himself.
    She couldn’t say why the sound of it gave her a chill.

13
    She would not feel guilty because she was doing something outside the house and family on a Sunday evening. She would not feel guilty. It was a litany Phoebe repeated off and on through the day, starting when Carly bounced into her bed for Sunday Morning Snuggles.
    Snuggle they did so Phoebe snuck kisses and sniffs of her daughter’s soft curly hair, deliciously shampooed the night before. Cuddled up, she got the lowdown on Sherrilynn’s brother Tear—so named because he always seemed to be on one—sawing off the heads of two of Sherrilynn’s Barbies with his daddy’s penknife before he was caught and suitably punished.
    Heads on the same pillow, nose to nose, they expressed their mutual horror over the crime.
    What had she ever done to earn such a perfect, precious child? Phoebe wondered. How could she not spend every free moment of every day with this incredible little girl?
    Of course, later that morning when she and Carly bumped heads over Carly’s desperate need for the purple butterfly sandals she’d seen in one of her grandmother’s catalogues, Phoebe wondered how she could dare risk letting this pint-sized shoe hog out of her sight for ten minutes.
    She would not feel guilty.
    And wasn’t Carly going off to a backyard picnic birthday party at her current best friend in the entire world Poppy’s house? And wasn’t Ava already set to drop her off, then pick her up, bookending her own trip to a flower show?
    And Mama? Well, Mama was so busy designing new patterns, organizing her threads and yarns, she’d barely notice if Phoebe jetted off for a weekend trip to Antigua.
    There was nothing to feel guilty about.
    But she suffered twinges of it nonetheless as she brushed Carly’s lovely bright hair, helped pick out the absolutely perfect hair clips. She fought against those twinges while she approved Carly’s choice—after numerous rejections—of just the right outfit.
    They tugged again while she stood on the front veranda, waving to Ava and her fashionable little girl as they drove off for their Sunday outings.
    Inside, she hunted up her mother, only to find Essie on her sitting-room computer, laughing away as she clattered on the keyboard.
    Chat room, Phoebe thought. The agoraphobic’s constant friend. Still, Phoebe leaned against the doorjamb, watching as her mother’s fingers flew and her eyes sparkled with humor.
    This was one of her safe conduits to the outside world, after all. Neighbors still dropped by, or old friends paid calls. Now and then Essie would have a group of women over for tea, and God knew she always enjoyed it if she or Ava planned a cocktail or dinner party.
    People came. Of course they came. The South loved their eccentrics, and to many in Savannah who knew the Mac Namaras, Essie’s condition was no more than a charming little eccentricity.
    Essie Mac Namara? they might say. She was Essie Carter before she married Benedict Mac Namara. Married up, too, and only to be widowed before she was thirty. Just a tragedy! She hasn’t