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only knew what plagues home at all hours. Not that she even bothered to wonder. Not that Averill ever burdened hisseamy mind with anything like guilt or shame. Averill never felt he deceived anyone. Yet there was no one Averill wouldn’t deceive. He was oblivious to his own amorality because he was the most ardent believer of all his own lies.

    Averill’s eyes held on to their decorous spirituality while his torso slipped through the doorway for a second brush with Leelinda Spakes’s resurrected breasts that day. He was the Old Testament ram’s horn and the windblown enemy of sin. Unless of course he happened to be the sinner; then he wriggled his way around the Ten Commandments by hating not the transgressor but the all-too-human sin within him. Blue Hudson said Averill acted like he had a “Get Out of Hell Free” card in his vest pocket.

    No. No, she wasn’t going around any bends with thoughts of Blue today. Blue was gone, he was in California with his kids. She wasn’t going to get bogged down in all that. She couldn’t squeeze anything else into her head. Blue was a fragile little candle in the dark. She snuffed it out. Then for the last time she played the gregarious and smiling preacher’s wife, greeting her husband’s flock.

    “You sounded like a little angel bird this morning, Leelinda.”

    “Thank ya, Leona.”

    “Johnnie Nell, how’s Miss Leticia?”

    “We’ve put her in God’s hands, Miz Sayres.”

    “Mister Johnson, sir, hand that silly cane to Miz Johnson and give me my hug.…”

    Meanwhile Chester Spakes, Leelinda’s red-faced husband, had watched his wife’s breasts brush Averill’s shirt and tie. Now he tugged at her sleeve and she moved toward his parked pickup truck. As he opened thepassenger door for her, Leelinda turned back around and gave Averill a wistful pout. Her husband, who had seen her, twisted one finger around her hair and tugged hard. He gave her a quick shove up into the cab, slamming the door. As he stepped around the front grille, he flicked a dozen or so strands of blond hair onto the ground. Then he glanced across the churchyard to see how much of his point Averill had taken.

    Averill had already turned his back on Leelinda and her husband. He was holding eighty-eight-year-old Ella Stone’s hand and listening with an earnest expression while she told him tearfully for the hundredth time that her brother Amos had been killed while fighting in the Philippines on Easter Sunday, 1944.

    Meanwhile, Leona had faced down Audena and Winky with all the welcome she had left in her, and introduced them to everyone who walked past. They weren’t going to inconvenience themselves trying to make polite conversations.

    “Soames, I want you to meet my sister-in-law Audena.”

    “Winky says he’s hungry, Leona.”

    Soames had heard all about them from Leona. Audena emitted a faint odor of Dial soap and perspiration. Soames, who never missed a cue, asked Audena with a dead-earnest expression if she was wearing Chanel No. 5 and then left Leona to keep a straight face.

    She was entering a ludicrous twilight by now. People were crowding around, eager to devour the two new faces like fresh-killed meat. She hoped she wasn’t a snob, but she had observed that country people sometimes showed raw edges in situations, while town people regarded such behavior as inappropriate. Averill was lingering over every pair of eyes that walked out of thechurch, avoiding his sister and brother-in-law. Audena embarrassed him. Winky was a walking offense. Leona was jumpy as a tick trying to preplan how to get the last dose down Averill without killing her in-laws.

    There was nothing to do but escort them a hundred yards up the road to the house, hand them both big glasses of tea and listen to them snort at each other.

    Later, after Averill showed up and she had run Audena out of the kitchen, their visit was beginning to feel like some plan. Audena hated to be alone with Leona. She was up