“That’s not funny, Natalie,” she chuckled. “Just because you’re leaving home doesn’t mean we’re getting a divorce. I might have thought about it when you were so rebellious this past year, but we . . .” She stopped at the sight of her name and Eli’s at the top of the page.

She sat in stunned silence, paralyzed from her eyes to her toes. She wasn’t dying, but her life flashed before her at warp speed—weepy goodbyes, joyous homecomings, happy times, bad moments, scary events.

Finally, she found her voice and started to scream, a guttural noise that sounded like a dying animal.

“Okay, Smokey, you’ve got to help me out here.” Tootsie Colbert stared at the picture of her husband in his dress uniform. “Should I go on the trip by myself in memory of you, or do I sell the motor home and forget all about it?”

She listened intently for a minute, cocking her head from one side to the other. “Of course I can drive the sumbitch. I drove it home from the dealership, didn’t I? That’s not the issue. I’m not sure I can go to the old house without you. It’s where we spent our honeymoon, and you won’t be there.”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “You could at least give me a sign. If folks can see Jesus on their toast, surely you can throw something out here. Maybe a cloud in the shape of a big-ass RV?”

Smokey had been gone just shy of a month, and this trip had been weighing on her for the past week. She and her husband of more than sixty years had gone to their vacation place near Scrap, Texas, for a month in the fall to celebrate their anniversary. At the beginning of their marriage, it hadn’t been possible every year, not with Smokey in the military, but they hadn’t missed going for the past two decades.

“Come on, just a little something,” she begged. “Peace in my heart one way or the other will do just fine.” She got up from her comfortable rocking chair and went to the back door to stare at the enormous motor home sitting in her backyard. What had she been thinking? Using a chunk of their savings for that monstrous thing was pretty silly at their age.

While she was standing there, she heard the most god-awful sounds—something like a coyote with its foot caught in a trap. She hadn’t heard that kind of noise since she lived in northeast Texas—up there in the rural area around Scrap. Coyotes were a problem in most parts of the state, but she’d never even heard one howling in Sugar Run.

She threw open the door and realized it was coming from Carmen’s house next door. Without even stopping to put on her shoes, she raced across the lawn, threw open the yard gate, and hurried to Carmen’s back door.

Having never been blessed with children, she and Smokey had adopted the three army wives who lived on their block. The women had each had a precious little girl when they moved to Sugar Run thirteen years ago, and the kids plus their parents had breathed life back into a tired old neighborhood.

Without even knocking, Tootsie tried the back door only to find it locked, but that awful sound swelled. Tootsie’s heart pumped so hard that she had to stop a second for breath when she made it to the front porch. Someone had to be attacking poor Carmen, the smallest of her kind-of-adopted daughters. Should she go back home and get her pistol or just use whatever was handy, like a lamp, to take care of the villain? Another scream convinced her that she’d better just take her chances with whatever she could find to fight with. But first she had to catch her breath again.

She put her hands on her knees and inhaled deeply before she slung open the door and hurried to Carmen’s side. The poor girl was curled up in the fetal position on the end of the sofa. The painfully raw sobs coming from her throat had traveled all the way to Tootsie’s house.

Tootsie sat down beside her and gathered her into her arms like a mother with a hurt child. “Is it Natalie? Please stop this, Carmen. You are breaking my heart.”

“Not Natalie,” she said before the sobs overtook her body again.

“Eli?” Tootsie asked.

Carmen pointed at the papers lying on the floor. “Divorce.”

“That son of a bitch.” Tootsie grimaced. “What in the hell is he thinking, serving you with that today of all days?”

“What am I going to do?” Carmen’s teeth began to chatter. “This can’t be happening. Eli is not divorcing me.”

“We’ll get through this. I’m going to get you a good strong shot of brandy to calm your nerves.” Tootsie cussed all the way to the kitchen. “I asked for a little sign, Smokey, not a bomb.”

Coming back into the living room, she put a glass in Carmen’s hand and said, “Drink this. All down in one big gulp. You’ve got to stop shaking.”

Carmen straightened her legs and took the glass, but her hands shook so badly that she couldn’t get it to her mouth.

Tootsie took it from her and held it to her lips. “All of it in one swallow. You’re in shock. The first thing we have to do is get that under control. I’ll get a blanket and call Diana and Joanie, and then we’ll all talk.”

With a nod that looked more like a spasm, Carmen obeyed. “Call them now, please.”

While Tootsie was making the call, Carmen’s phone rang. She sat up and answered without even looking at the caller ID. “Hello,” she whispered.

“Carmen, is that you?”

Eli’s voice brought on more sobs. “Why did you do this?”

“I’ve been unhappy for months,” he said, “but I held off until Natalie graduated.”

“But today of all days.” She cried even harder.

Tootsie handed her a fistful of tissues. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Who’s there?” Eli asked.

“Tootsie is right beside me. Want me to put it on speaker?”

“No! I do not. I just want you to sign the papers and get this thing settled. I don’t want to be married to you anymore. And I’m not sure that it wasn’t a mistake in the beginning. It just took me all these years to figure it out.”

He’d used that bitterly cold tone with her once before.

When she’d told him she wanted to take online courses to get a degree, he’d disagreed with her, but she’d done it anyway, and he’d been so angry that she thought that frost would fly out of his ears when he talked to her.

“I’m not signing shit until I talk to a lawyer,” she told him.