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Doris’s saccharine smile or disapproving glances, depending on her mood and what shirt I was wearing. Dinner each night was torture. Dad and Doris would ask me questions in an effort to inspire conversation, but usually I stayed silent while they discussed the business of the parish—speculation about whose marriage seemed too perfect on the surface but was probably in serious trouble, or which caterer offered the best funeral wake.
    It was Doris’s ill-conceived idea to host a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party for me as an opportunity to introduce me to people from the community. I suppose she was hoping the party would serve as damage control for my initial impression on the neighbors as an assailant of their beloved wildcat.
    Doris’s idea of a party was not the same as my mom’s idea of a party. For one thing, there was no booze. As Southern Baptists, Doris and Dad did not indulge in booze other than a bottle of medicinal brandy Dad kept in his study. For another thing, Doris prepared all of the food herself, didn’t call for delivery from the local Italian deli or Lebanese restaurant the way Mom would have. Not that there was any such thing as an Italian deli or Lebanese restaurant in Ashland. Doris confined herself to the kitchen for two days, a never-ending collection of decorative aprons dirtied by her efforts, and created an impressive spread of ham biscuits and potato salad and deviled eggs and every other stereotypical southern food fit for a preacher’s wake. Lemonade and iced tea were offered up in frosty pitchers, and there was a sickly sweet punch for the kids that stained the Styrofoam cups an electric pink.
    I was expected to stand at attention with Dad and Doris and be introduced to everyone who came to visit us in our informal receiving line, though I immediately forgot any names that were told to me.
    Though Doris had invited everyone in the immediate neighborhood, only the people who attended Dad’s church showed for the party. Whether because of the threat of eternal damnation or social obligation, it wasn’t clear. I got the sense that Doris made people uncomfortable, with her rural interpretation of Martha Stewart perfection and her icy smile.
    There were only a few people I really remembered meeting at the party. One of those was Police Chief James Perry. He was exactly the person a Hollywood studio would have cast as a small-town southern sheriff—tall and broad through the shoulder, in good shape, and without the usual paunch of a middle-aged man. His black hair was cut with military precision, and his gray eyes seemed to suddenly know everything there was to know about a person with one fluid glance.
    Police Chief Perry arrived in uniform, explaining to Doris as he greeted her that he would be heading in to work as soon as he left the party. When his gaze turned on me I experienced a twinge of guilt—for what, I don’t know. But there it was.
    â€œHello, Frank,” the police chief said as he extended a hand first to Dad, then to me. “This is your son, I take it. We’re glad to have you here,” he said to me, though the way his eyes appraised me implied he was still reserving judgment about how glad he was to have me there.
    â€œThanks. We’re glad to have him here, too,” Dad said affably.
    Doris’s smile never wavered, but she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to lie and say she too was glad to have me there. I clashed with her ideal public image the same way my Louder Than Bombs poster clashed with her plaid drapes in the spare bedroom.
    â€œThis is my daughter,” Chief Perry said as he half turned to reveal a teenage girl who stood just behind him, her long hair matching his own in color. “Delilah, say hello,” he said with just the hint of an edge to his tone, like the words he expected to come out of her mouth would be something less than polite talk for a man of God and his