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sweetly to be mocked, how could I possibly withhold it from you?”
    Just as Joey pulled his door shut, a contraction gripped Agnes. She grimaced, sucking air sharply between her clenched teeth.
    “Oh, no,” said the Worry Bear. “Oh, no.”
    “Good heavens, sweetie, relax. This isn’t ordinary pain. This is happy pain. Our little girl’s going to be with us before the day is done.”
    “Little boy.”
    “Trust a mother’s intuition.”
    “A father’s got some, too.” He was so nervous that the key rattled interminably against the ignition plate before, at last, he was able to insert it. “Should be a boy, because then you’ll always have a man around the house.”
    “You planning to run off with some blonde?”
    He couldn’t get the car started, because he repeatedly tried to turn the key in the wrong direction. “You know what I mean. I’m going to be around a long time yet, but women outlive men by several years. Actuarial tables aren’t wrong.”
    “Always the insurance agent.”
    “Well, it’s true,” he said, finally turning the key in the proper direction and firing up the engine.
    “Gonna sell me a policy?”
    “I didn’t sell anyone else today. Gotta make a living. You all right?”
    “Scared,” she said.
    Instead of shifting the car into drive, he placed one of his bearish hands over both of her hands. “Something feel wrong?”
    “I’m afraid you’ll drive us straight into a tree.”
    He looked hurt. “I’m the safest driver in Bright Beach. My auto rates prove it.”
    “Not today. If it takes you as long to get the car in gear as it did to slip that key in the ignition, our little girl will be sitting up and saying ‘dada’ by the time we get to the hospital.”
    “Little boy.”
    “Just calm down.”
    “I
am
calm,” he assured her.
    He released the hand brake, shifted the car into reverse instead of into drive, and backed away from the street, along the side of the house. Startled, he braked to a halt.
    Agnes didn’t say anything until Joey had taken three or four deep, slow breaths, and then she pointed at the windshield. “The hospital’s that way.”
    He regarded her sheepishly. “You all right?”
    “Our little girl’s going to walk backward her whole life if you drive in reverse all the way to the hospital.”
    “If it is a little girl, she’s going to be exactly like you,” he said. “I don’t think I could handle two of you.”
    “We’ll keep you young.”
    With great deliberation, Joey shifted gears and followed the driveway to the street, where he peered left and then right with the squint-eyed suspicion of a Marine commando scouting dangerous territory. He turned right.
    “Make sure Edom delivers the pies in the morning,” Agnes reminded him.
    “Jacob said he wouldn’t mind doing it for once.”
    “Jacob scares people,” Agnes said. “No one would eat a pie that Jacob delivered without having it tested at a lab.”
    Needles of rain knitted the air and quickly embroidered silvery patterns on the blacktop.
    Switching on the windshield wipers, Joey said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you admit that
either
of your brothers is odd.”
    “Not odd, dear. They’re just a little eccentric.”
    “Like water is a little wet.”
    Frowning at him, she said, “You don’t mind them around, do you, Joey? They’re eccentric, but I love them very much.”
    “So do I,” he admitted. He smiled and shook his head. “Those two make a worrywart life-insurance salesman like me seem just as lighthearted as a schoolgirl.”
    “You’re turning into an excellent driver, after all,” she said, winking at him.
    He was, in fact, a first-rate driver, with an impeccable record at the age of thirty: no traffic citations, no accidents.
    His skill behind the wheel and his inborn caution didn’t help him, however, when a Ford pickup ran a red traffic light, braked too late, and slid at high speed into the driver’s door of the Pontiac.

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