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to the charge of being wishy-washy about getting married, but it has nothing to do with Aunt Nettie. And I’m not going to argue about this in the middle of Peach Street. Good-bye.”
    I walked away, and Joe stood where he’d been. I didn’t look back. I was too mad, and maybe too scared. Because Joe had come up with a new wrinkle in an argument that had been going on since the previous June, when Joe had first told me he wanted to marry me.
    Or had he? Frankly, whenever he brought it up, he used the phrase he’d just declaimed. “I want to get married.” Somehow that wasn’t the same as saying, “I want to marry you.”
    But this was the first time Aunt Nettie had figured in the argument.
    I was ready to admit that Aunt Nettie was special to me. Twice in my life—first when I was sixteen and my parents were getting a divorce and later when my own marriage broke up—she’d stepped in, given me a home, and made me feel that I was a worthwhile person even if my life was in shambles. If I had a shred of mental health, I owed it to Aunt Nettie. And she wasn’t even a blood relation; she was my mother’s brother’s widow.
    But the last thing Aunt Nettie would want was to come between Joe and me. She had made it clear that she approved of Joe.
    Right at that moment I wasn’t sure I did. I walked on, mulling over how quickly my life had changed from happy to horrendous. An hour earlier I’d been enjoying the lovely fall day with nothing on my mind but delivering chocolates to the Rinkydink. Now I was frantically worried about a charmer who was broadcasting phony signals and moving in on my aunt, and I’d had an argument with my boyfriend.
    I needed comfort. I resolved not to think about my problems for the rest of the afternoon. I couldn’t settle the question of whether or not I wanted to marry Joe while I was upset, and I couldn’t risk quarreling with Aunt Nettie by making any overt attack on Aubrey Andrews Armstrong.
    As I went in the door to TenHuis Chocolade (“Handmade chocolates in the Dutch tradition”), I breathed deeply to get the full effect of the chocolate aroma. After I’ve been inside for a little while, I get used to it, so whenever I come in I try to inhale all the chocolate atmosphere I can.
    TenHuis Chocolade is my real home, I guess. For one thing, Aunt Nettie and I spend more time there than we do in her hundred-year-old house on Lake Shore Drive, the place where we sleep and store our clothes. For another, it’s a friendly place—a cozy retail shop, a shiny-clean workroom, and a comfortable break room.
    As I came in I could see Aunt Nettie through the big glass windows that separate our small retail shop from the big workroom where the chocolates are made. She was standing beside Dolly Jolly. I could tell by the color of the substance on the worktable that Aunt Nettie was teaching Dolly to roll uniform balls of strawberry-flavored filling for strawberry truffles. (“White chocolate and strawberry interior coated in dark chocolate.”) Dolly was sticking out the tip of her tongue, a sign that she was concentrating.
    I couldn’t hear what Aunt Nettie was saying, but I could see Dolly roll a ball of pink soft filling, compare it to one Aunt Nettie had formed, then set it on a scale. After more than thirty years in the chocolate business, Aunt Nettie can roll those balls for hours on end and have every one come out within a microgram of every other one. This is a trick that the “hairnet ladies,” the skilled workers who actually produce TenHuis Chocolade, claim a chimpanzee can do. And maybe a chimpanzee could—once she’d had enough practice. But you have to learn to judge exactly how big to make the little balls. The truffle fillings have to be uniform; we can’t sell Customer A one that’s larger than the one we sell Customer B.
    Dolly Jolly was looming over Aunt Nettie just the way she looms over everybody.
    “I think I’m getting the hang of it!” Dolly shouted.
    “Those