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days to just hang out watching the work, pretending to take notes, deciding if we want to do this, while the clock is ticking for Bitsy. Sooner or later, she’ll have to agree to our terms or look for someone else. Or, God help her, do the shopping herself.“
    Jane pushed her plate toward the side of the table and sighed. When Shelley got the bit in her teeth, there was no stopping her.
    Shelley took a sip of her soup. “Ugh. It’s awful and it’s cold already. Let’s go home and maybe we can get together this evening after you’ve read through this carefully.“
    Jane was happy to abandon her choices of food as well. The macaroni and cheese must have been made from dried skim milk and the cheapest artificial cheese it was possible to purchase.
    After she had fixed Todd, Katie, and herself a good dinner, Jane told the kids to load up the dishwasher and put away the leftovers. Then she went to her bedroom to study the contract. She was as disappointed as Shelley had been. The terms weren’t good. What was more, it wasn’t even written properly. There were words spelled wrong. Some of the conditions weren’t even stated in full sentences. Bitsy had apparently pieced this up herself with no guide at all. And she didn’t even know the difference between it’s and its. All of the pronouns were feminine gender.
    Jane wasn’t normally a fanatic grammar cop, but the contract made her wonder if Bitsy wasn’t downright stupid. Or simply too stingy to consult an attorney to draw up a contract.
    Either choice was scary.
    As she reached for the phone to call Shelley, it rang.
    “Have you read it yet?“ Shelley asked.
    “It’s awful. There are sentence fragments about important things that don’t even make sense,“ Jane said.
    “That’s not all that’s wrong,“ Shelley said. “May I come over and show you something else I’ve discovered?“
    Shelley turned up minutes later with wads and rolls of paperwork. She had fire in her eyes. Even her hair was in disarray, as if she’d been trying to tear bits of it out.
    “Wait till you get a look at this.“ She unrolled the old floor plans as the house had been originally on Jane’s kitchen table, and kept them from snapping back into a roll with a salt-and-pepper shaker.
    Then she flipped open her notebook. She pointed to the total dimensions of the back of the house on the second floor in the plans. Then she showed Jane her own figures.
    “It’s a foot and half off. Where did we go wrong?“ Jane asked.
    “Jane, get a grip. We didn’t go wrong. You can’t have already forgotten how obsessively precise I was upstairs, could you?“
    “I’ll never forget.“
    “Didn’t Bitsy say this was done by an architectural engineer?“
    “I seem to remember that she did.“
    “Do you see the name of the firm anywhere on this paper? Much less an individual’s name?“
    Jane stared. “Who really did this? Not Bitsy. She wouldn’t even take the time to fake this up, however incompetently.“
    “Now look at the finished plan for the first floor,“ Shelley said, removing the salt-and-pepper shaker and replacing the old plan with the new plan and anchoring them down the same way.
    Jane read the dimensions, then consulted Shelley’s notebook. “It’s even farther off what we measured. Nearly three feet just across the back. And no name on this one, either.“
    “So we figure Bitsy didn’t do this herself, right? So who did?“
    “Sandy,“ Jane said firmly.
    “Sandra, or some amateur friend of Sandra’s, maybe,“ Shelley qualified. “One of her feminist gang, I’m willing to bet. Maybe she has a daughter studying architecture.“
    “Shelley, we really should tell Bitsy this. She’s not one of my favorite people, but I hate to see her being made a fool of.“
    “You bet we will.“
    Jane thought for a moment, then said, “Shouldn’t we just bow out and let them fumble through it themselves?“
    “Jane, I’ve never heard you say a single cowardly thing,“