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life? God! I hate them!”
    In the next instant, I could hear Amelia’s voice start to crack and I didn’t want to be responsible for making her cry. This was no time for tears. I had not called her to upset her. The poor girl!
    “Well, Amelia? Honey? Listen to me right now. This isn’t your fault. You know that.”
    “I know. But I don’t need this!”
    “Who does? I think you’d rest a lot easier—we all would in fact—if someone who really cared about the welfare of children was around if and when your mother agrees to take a break from, well, polite society for a stretch of time.”
    “Polite society?” Amelia was mounting her high horse and was about to unleash the part of her social conscience that dealt with class struggle.
    “What would you call it?”
    “I don’t know. But calling it taking a break from polite society? It makes you sound like such a . . . well, you sound like a little bit of a snob, Aunt Caroline. I’m sorry.”
    I knew that she thought I was a snob. Her whole family thought I was a snob. So what? Well, maybe I was. But not all the time. Really.
    “If not coming right out and announcing that rehab is imminent for a family member for the fifth time makes me a snob, then so be it. I’ll be a snob.”
    Honestly, my niece would go a lot further in this world if she softened her language and could remember not to correct her elders. But at that moment I guessed that in some way she was trying to defend her mother, the low-rent drunk who nearly killed her sister. And I was fully aware that alcoholism was a progressive disease and that Frances Mae was firmly in its clutches and being eaten alive by it. It was all deeply upsetting, and when I was upset I did indeed have the capacity to get bitchy. Unapologetically so. I’m way far from perfect.
    “Sorry,” she said. “Oh Lord! Let me think about this. You’re right. We would all be totally insane to leave Linnie and Belle in charge of the house and Chloe.”
    “My point exactly.”
    “So what are we going to do? Wait and see what Dad says? I guess.”
    “I’m just saying that if your sisters would consider the fact that maybe Rusty isn’t the Antichrist, maybe there could be a possibility for an easy and workable solution. Do you see what I mean?”
    “Yeah, sure I do.” She sighed deeply. “Look, I think Rusty is okay. In fact, I think if I had met her under different circumstances, I’d probably really like her. But I don’t care what any of us say, you know how Mom feels. Mom says she’s a home wrecker and that’s pretty much about it.”
    “Well, she might be, from Frances Mae’s point of view, but she’s got time on her hands and it’s not like you can commute from Columbia. And I have a business to run.”
    “Right. What about Millie? Couldn’t she come and stay with them?”
    “Millie? Humph. She’s got a job, and besides, there would be a bigger revolt than if Rusty was there! Millie has no patience for nonsense. Zero tolerance. Anyway, Trip has to work this out. I’m just an aunt. He’s y’all’s parent. And here we are planning your mother’s absence when I don’t even know if Trip has talked to her about it.”
    “Well, there’s really no option but rehab, is there, Aunt Caroline?”
    “None that I know of, honey. I wish there was a pill.”
    “Well, actually, there is one. It’s called Antabuse, I think. All I know is if you take the pill and drink booze, you puke your guts out and you could die.”
    Puke was such a repulsive word and guts was better used in conversation between men regarding the eviscerating of deer and fish and animals they caught in the woods. Antabuse was it?
    “Good Lord! That’s pretty powerful.”
    “Yeah. It is. In fact, you can’t give it to somebody with heart trouble or any kind of vascular weakness because they really could drop dead.”
    “Is this what they teach you in college these days?”
    “No. I found it on the Internet. It’s been around since the