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wasn’t sure about other book clubs, but making a decision, even with just three of us present, required more discussion than Khrushchev and Kennedy probably had during the entire Cuban Missile Crisis. Plain Jane wanted to sit on my porch and sip iced tea and get caught up. Jackie balked on account of my turtles which (a little rudely, in my opinion) she kept referring to as “those dreadful things.”She suggested we go to her house and drink mimosas. I knew what I wanted to do, but I waited for the two of them to talk their ideas to death. Finally, there was a lull. “Where’s the baby?” I asked. “I’m dying to see her.”
    Instantly, it was agreed that we would all go to Mrs. Bailey White’s house, where the baby spent most of her time.
    Judd was obviously relieved that we were leaving. Jackie called to him, “Honey, I made some chili for you and the twins. Go ahead and eat if I’m not home in time for supper. And there’s a special honeydew melon that I bought just for you.”
    As we were driving away, two things occurred to me. One was that the aforementioned honeydew melon was, in all likelihood, the same one Judd and I had just fed by hand to “those dreadful things.”
    The second was that I was thrilled to be back with Jackie and Plain Jane in the Buick. On the radio, the Supremes were singing “Where Did Our Love Go?” and for the moment, all was right with the world.

Six
    M rs. Bailey White’s house was haunted. How could it not be? Someone had died an unnatural death there. That someone was Mrs. Bailey White’s husband. Although what really happened was a topic of popular debate in Collier County, and Mrs. Bailey White insisted it was self-defense, she had been convicted. And she went to prison for decades.
    I have to admit I was scared of Mrs. Bailey White when she showed up at Jackie’s book club at the library two years before. We all got the creepy-crawlies but were too polite to ask her to leave. It never occurred to us that we would grow to like her.
    Now we were on the way to her house, which had become a familiar place to me. I rode up front with Jackie; Plain Jane stretched out again in the back. There was a time when people scowled at the sight of Jackie’s outrageous car, but that was before the town discovered she was Miss Dreamsville, the incognito radio star. Now people smiled, a few waved, and some children even called out “Miss Dreamsville! Miss Dreamsville!” as we drove past. The impossible had happened: The town nowtolerated Jackie as one of its own. She’d made Naples famous with her radio show, and even though she had quit the show (it wasn’t as much fun, she said, now that everyone knew who she was), she would always be thought of as Miss Dreamsville, just as people would always call me the Turtle Lady, and Mrs. Bailey White would always be the Black Widow of Collier County. Like it or not, in the South, nicknames stick like bare feet in a clay pit.
    Mrs. Bailey White’s house was tucked back from the road. I still got a little thumpety-thump in my heart as we approached it, but when we rounded the bend of the long private drive I was surprised. Why, the old Victorian house looked almost presentable. The serpent-like vine that had gone up one side of the house, across the roof, and down the other side had been removed. There was a fresh layer of paint or stain, and the broken window on the third floor had been replaced. I wouldn’t say the old house looked spiffy. There was still something about it that wasn’t quite right, and I found my eyes searching for flaws. It simply looked tired, as if it were an older lady trying to reclaim her glory days by wearing an excess of Maybelline.
    I’m pretty sure I’d never actually been hugged by Mrs. Bailey White, even when I climbed on the bus bound for Mississippi the year before, so I was a little shocked when she greeted me