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everybody’s problems. Hazel Marie and Pickens are both adults, and you didn’t push them into anything. They’ve done what is right and, if it doesn’t work out, why, nothing’s been lost and a father to those babies has been gained.”
    “You’re right. I know you’re right. I keep forgetting about those babies, which is the strangest thing. It’s the expecting them that’s worried me, not the two little real people who’ll be coming. That sounds silly, I know, and I’m as bad as LuAnne, being so concerned about appearances, but I so wanted to protect Hazel Marie and Lloyd.”
    “And you have,” Sam said. “Nobody could’ve done more, and they love you for it. And I do, too, but if you keep comparing yourself to Emma Sue and LuAnne, I’m going to have one nightmare after another.”
    “Oh, you,” I said, laughing while I untangled myself from his arms and got ready for bed.
    Once I was beside him and snuggled up close, I had the strangest recall of certain events in the early days of my first marriage. Not knowing any better, I’d slip closer in the bed to Wesley Lloyd, wanting, I expect, some reassurance that he was happy with me. “Move over, Julia, you’re crowding me,” he’d say. Or “Get on your side of the bed.” It was off-putting, to say the least, and I quickly learned to keep my distance. Learned it too well, if you want to know the truth, for Sam had proved to be just the opposite and I was having to learn all over again the joy of touching the one you loved.
    I was almost asleep when Sam said, “Julia?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Larry Ledbetter dropped by the house this afternoon.” Sam was speaking of his house, probably while Mr. Pickens was packing his suitcase.
    “What’d he want?” I mumbled, not particularly interested in a pastoral visit, unusual though it was.
    “Wants us to participate in a few study sessions he’s dreamed up. We’ll meet on Monday nights for about six weeks, just to see how it goes. He wants us to provide a stabilizing influence, whatever that means. I said we would.”
    My eyes popped open. “A stabilizing influence for what?”
    “For young couples in the church. Seems it’s to be an enrichment course mainly for them.”
    “Spiritual enrichment?”
    “No.” Sam let a second or so pass, as my eyes began to close. “Marriage enrichment.”
    I sat straight up in bed. “ Marriage enrichment? Marriage counseling ? Is that what it is? Sam, how could you? I don’t want to be counseled about anything, especially our marriage. What does Pastor Ledbetter know about it, anyway? He’s no expert. All you have to do is look at Emma Sue to know that.”
    Sam drew me back down beside him. “We’re not going to be counseled, Julia. If anything, we’ll be there to help counsel the others. Give them the benefit of our experiences. Besides, Ledbetter won’t be the counselor. He’s got somebody lined up who knows what he’s doing. A Christian psychologist, he said.”
    “That does not reassure me,” I said, lying stiff beside him. “I don’t trust psychologists as far as I can throw them, and anybody who has to tack his Christianity onto his occupation is somebody to stay away from. ‘Go into thy closet and pray in secret,’ or something like that. But don’t advertise it just to get clients. I mean, you don’t go to a Christian barber, do you, expecting to get a better haircut?”
    I could sense Sam smiling in the dark. “I agree with you, sweetheart, but let’s humor him. We haven’t done much in the church lately, and I thought this would be easy enough. We can drop out anytime you want to.”
    “What about now?”
    Sam laughed. “Look at it this way. We might pick up a few pearls that would help Hazel Marie and Pickens. Of course, the sessions would be ideal for them, but it’s a little early along to be suggesting it.”
    The possibility of helping them get a good start in their marriage put a different light on it, and I relaxed, thinking I