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pretend like it doesn’t matter?”
    “Aw, shucks, lady.” As if it was a monumental effort, Thad unfolded himself from the railing and scuffed his boots against the metal deck. “Why don’t you just head on out of here? I told you; I don’t know what in the tarnation you’re talkin’ about.”
    “You… don’t… know… what…” The woman contained her aggravation, but just barely. And it cost her. Her hands curled into fists, she pressed her arms close to her sides, and she pulled in breath after uneven breath. “I’m not going to give you another chance. You hear me, Thad Wyant? You’ve had every opportunity to come clean about this. Now—”
    “Yer wasting your time! Git along. Git yourself outta here.” Thad never touched her, but the shooing gesture he made toward her might as well have been a slap in the face. That’s how violently she reacted.
    Her shoulders so stiff that I swore they were going to snap, the woman backed away from Thad and whirled around. It was the first she realized there were a couple dozen people watching their confrontation, and when she did, all the color drained from her cheeks, leaving her grayer than ever. Her chin quivering, she dropped her face into her hands and raced to the stairway, sobbing.
    I was torn between going after her and checking on my guest of honor. I’m pretty sure I would have opted for the woman if not for the fact that Thad, hands in the pockets of his jeans, ambled over like he didn’t have a care in the world.
    “Well, ain’t that just the darndest thing.” He looked toward the now-empty stairway, shaking his head.
    I am not the dithering type. Still, I found it hard to get anything evenly vaguely coherent out of my mouth. I looked from the stairway to Thad and from Thad to the crowd that, now that the excitement had ended, was heading over to stand near the railing and watch the city skyline float by and—no doubt—go over a play-by-play of the knock-down, drag-out they’d just witnessed. By the time I did, my blood pressure was down and I’d regained some of my legendary composure. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Things like that shouldn’t happen in public. It’s bad enough that your friend was upset, but—”
    “Friend?” Thad wrinkled his too-big-for-his-face nose. “Never seen that there lady before in my life.”
    “But how… Why?” I didn’t want to get into an instant replay. I mean, really, Thad must have remembered everything the woman said just as clearly as I did. “Why was she so angry then? And who is she?”
    He had a glass in one hand, and he looked down into its empty depths. “Darned if I know. Crazy, huh? Button folks, they’re just darned crazy!” He threw back his head and laughed, then twitched his shoulders, tossing off the whole incident just like that. As if he didn’t have a care in the world, he strolled downstairs.
    That’s exactly when I realized Daryl Tucker was standing next to me, looking where I was looking.
    “I’m so sorry.” There I was, saying it again. Sorry was quickly turning into the conference mantra. “That certainly isn’t the best way to start off a conference.”
    “It’s amazing.” He didn’t so much speak the words as let them escape on the end of a sigh. Behind his glasses, his eyes were thoughtful. “I can’t believe it.”
    “Me, either.” I tried for light and was afraid I sounded callous, so I figured it was as good a moment as any to try to put Daryl at ease. “No worries. The woman apparently mistook Thad for someone else.”
    Was that enough to reassure Daryl that he hadn’t come to his first button convention and found himself in the midst of a bunch of loony people? I can’t say. I do know that when he walked away, he was muttering to himself, “Didn’t look that way to me.”
    “Chin up, Jo.” Before I even knew he was in the vicinity, Kaz had an arm around my shoulders. He gave me a squeeze. “You can’t control every minute of this conference.