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I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
    “I’m so sorry, ma’am, but I don’t have the authority to do that. I was instructed to locate the current mailing address and send it on, that’s all. This is not even my department. I’m just filling in.”
    “Oh, I see. Well, couldn’t you just take one quick little peek and tell me if it’s over a hundred thousand dollars?”
    Then she heard his muffled voice, obviously whispering behind his hand, “Mrs. Poole, the wife and I just married off our daughter, so I know what you’ve been through. Don’t worry, she’s not getting sued.”
    “No? Oh, thank God! Oh, bless you, Harold. I don’t know why, but with Mother, I always assume it’s going to be bad news, but then again, it could be good news, right?”
    Harold didn’t say anything, so Sookie’s mood suddenly brightened. “Hey, wait a minute. Did she win a contest or something? Are you from Publishers Clearing House? Should I have her over here at the house in the morning, dressed and made-up or anything? I need to know, because she’ll want to have her hair done. Will there be photographs? Or news people?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Oh … well … can you give me just a little hint of what to expect?”
    There was a long silence on the other end, then Harold said, “Mrs. Poole, all I can say is … you are not who you think you are,” and then he abruptly hung up.
    Sookie sat there with his last words ringing in her ear, and now there was someone banging away on her back door. As Sookie stood up, her ankle throbbed even worse than before, but she hobbled down the hall and opened the door, and there stood Netta in her robe, who looked at her strangely. “Honey, are you all right? I saw you running around the yard like you were in some kind of distress. I tried to call you, but your line was busy. You left one of your shoes out in the yard.” Sookie took the shoe and said, “Oh, thank you, Netta.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine, Netta. I was just trying something new with feeding the birds, and this man just called about some registered letter for Lenore and I think I’ve sprained my ankle. Come on in.”
    “No, I can’t, I’m still in my robe. I better get back home, but call me if you need me.”
    A FEW SECONDS AFTER Netta left, Sookie went and looked out in the front yard to check on her birds and, to her dismay, saw that her entire yard was now a veritable sea of blue. It looked like she was running a blue jay reserve. She’d been so distracted by the phone call that she didn’t know if the little birds had gotten anything to eat at all. Oh, drat. She would just have to try again tomorrow.
    She hobbled back into the kitchen and put some ice cubes in a hand towel and wrapped it around her ankle. As she sat there with Peek-a-Boo in her lap, she thought more about the phone call and what the man had said. “You are not who you think you are.” Then it suddenly dawned on her. That man had probably been calling from the Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other religious group. They were always leaving pamphlets at her door asking, “Do you know who you are?” or “Do you know who your father is?” Oh, Lord. Now she felt like a fool. What a complete idiot she had been, telling him all that personal stuff about the family.
    But on the other hand, knowing her mother, he could be calling from ancestor.com or some other genealogy-tracing company. She’d also seen ads for them that said, “Who are you?” or “Who do you think you are?”
    The more she thought about it, she thought that it must be Lenore trying to trace the Simmons family line again. “I just know we’re related to the royal family in some way. I just feel it in my bones,” she said. For as long as Sookie could remember, she had been tracing and retracing, but so far, no connection. Now even Dee Dee was obsessed with it and had the Simmons family crest hanging over the mantel in her condo.
    A S THE MORNING WORE on, Sookie