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bitten the dust.
    “I guess I am,” Amanda said, with an aw-shucks tone of voice, as if to say, that’s life—not all marriages last forever.
    “You poor, poor dear,” Heather said, with an uncontrollably insincere tone. Amanda tried to remember what that German word she had heard in college was, the one that meant taking pleasure in the pain of others. Schadenfreude, that was it. If you looked it up in the dictionary, you would see Heather’s face right next to it.
    “Ann told me all about it,” Heather said, and then she backtracked. “I mean, about you coming by to pick up keys,” she added quickly. “That’s really all I know.”
    Amanda nodded wearily. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I just got back from Bible study at Hillside Park Presbyterian, and they’re already praying for me.”
    “And your darling kids,” Heather added, and then she winced. “Children,” she corrected herself. “I just can never remember to say children instead of kids . I’m never gonna get this.” Amanda knew exactly what she was talking about. There were certain conversational rules that applied in Hillside Park, and if you didn’t follow them, people would question whether you really even belonged in the neighborhood. One of the conversational giveaways to a non–Hillside Park childhood was the use of the word kids instead of the proper word children . Among the mothers of Hillside Park, children were children, kids were goats, and people who didn’t know the difference didn’t belong.
    “You can’t worry about things like that,” Amanda assured Heather, and suddenly she found herself asking why she was so interested in the feelings of a woman who was perhaps the ultimate gossip machine in the community. Amanda found herself surreptitiously glancing at the ring finger on Heather’s left hand, which sported a remarkably large engagement ring. Heather, embarrassed, caught her looking.
    “It didn’t work out,” she said sadly. “He’s a good man and all, but we just weren’t right for each other.”
    “Was this something just recent?” Amanda asked sympathetically.
    “Oh, no, no,” Heather said dismissively. “Norm and I broke it off, like, more than two years ago.”
    “Norm?” Amanda asked. “Norm who?”
    “Norm Hunter,” Heather said, surprised that Norm needed a last name to be identified. He was only one of the leading cosmetic surgeons in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.
    “Norm Hunter?” Amanda asked, shocked. “I didn’t even know he was divorced!”
    Now Heather shrugged. “He wasn’t exactly divorced divorced,” she admitted. “But he and Jane were separated, and it didn’t look like their marriage was going to survive, and he proposed to me.”
    “While he was still married to Jane?” Amanda asked, not getting it.
    “They hadn’t been living together for more than a year,” Heather said defensively. “I didn’t, like, bust up that marriage, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    Amanda put a hand up. Hold it right there.
    “Whoa,” she began. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything like that. It’s just a lot to take in all at once. I had no idea Norm was even divorced.”
    Heather, calming down, studied her. “You sure have been out of the loop for a while,” she said.
    Amanda nodded. “You’ve got that right,” she said. “I’m sure I’ve missed a lot.”
    “No doubt.”
    “You never gave the ring back? I don’t mean to be rude, but . . .”
    Heather grinned. She held up her hand for Amanda to admire. “Ten carats,” she said proudly. “I call it Ira, like I-R-A—get it?” She giggled. “An engagement ring’s a gift, right? Why should anybody have to give back a gift? After all, he broke off the engagement.”
    “I always thought . . .” Amanda began, but she bit her tongue.
    Suddenly she vaguely recalled hearing that Heather had been through three such engagements/near misses, and come to think of it, Heather had kept the rings on those