She laughed in a short, sarcastic huff. “All my damn life, but my prayers weren’t very holy. ‘Please God, let that big stud buy me a drink.’”

He laughed at her. “I think you should let her come.”

“You do? Like we don’t have enough complications...”

“I think if you don’t, you might not get over it later. Sometimes we have to do things like that just to keep from having too many regrets.” He kissed her forehead. “Might have to get a room at the Coast Motel again.” Then he laughed.

“She doesn’t work,” Ray Anne said. “What am I going to do with her?”

“You should talk to your girls—Lou and Carrie. They’ve been through some rough times. So have you, for that matter.”

Indeed, she had. An abusive husband, a couple of acrimonious divorces, getting financially wiped out by at least one of them. That was just for starters. She’d learned a lot, been around the block a time or two.

She’d even lost a child, but hardly anyone knew about that. And her baby hadn’t died the way Ginger’s had. Hers was a secret teenage mishap that ended sadly and she’d never talked about until very recently.

“I’m not smart or wise enough,” she said.

“You’re the smartest woman I know. And you’re so full of love I can’t even hold all of you.”

She turned her head to look up at him. “I’ve never had anyone like you in my life before. Really, I haven’t. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I feel the same,” he said.

“We’ve got an awful lot on our plates,” she said.

“Bounty,” he said. “That’s what we call a full plate. Bounty.”

“Hope it doesn’t kill us,” Ray Anne said.

* * *

Al planned to take his two younger boys to the high school basketball game on Friday night. Lou’s husband, Joe, was a trooper who worked the swing shift four nights a week and Carrie didn’t open the deli early on Saturday mornings. Friday night was a perfect night to get together with her girlfriends, so Ray Anne reached out to see if they felt like a little hen party at her house—a little wine and whine.

“Come to my house, instead, and I’ll put out some snacks. You bring the wine and I’ll invite Gina,” Carrie said, including her daughter, who was also Lou’s niece-in-law. “If Mac is working or something, she’ll just sit around at home. If that’s okay with you.”

Of course Gina was a welcome addition, anytime. For a woman under forty, she was very prudent in the ways of the world. When Ray Anne arrived at Carrie’s, the others were already there and Rawley was just leaving. “You’re not staying for the hen party?” she asked.

“I ain’t no hen,” he said, pulling down his cap. “Thought I explained that.”

“Rawley is babysitting tonight,” Carrie said from behind him. “Cooper and Sarah want to go out without the baby.”

“Really?” Ray Anne asked. “How are you with babies?”

“Perfect,” he said. “If they go to bed and stay there.”

The women had gotten used to having Rawley in the background of their little gatherings, silently serving them, saying nothing unless specifically asked, hiding out in front of the TV when sports were playing while they gathered in the kitchen. “We’ll miss you,” Ray Anne told him. “Having you around at a girl’s night is kind of like having a butler—there to serve, but not there at all.”

“I reckon you’ll have to get your own food and drink and do your own dishes tonight,” he said. “Don’t wear yourself out.” And with that, he was gone.

The women were sitting around the kitchen table where Carrie had put out a selection of her best hors d’oeuvres. As Ray Anne moved toward the table, Gina held up an empty wineglass, more than ready for Ray Anne’s contribution to the party. She quickly uncorked one chilled white and one red.

“Will Rawley come back?” Ray Anne asked Carrie. Carrie merely shrugged and reached for a crab ball from the platter in the center. “Does he stay over?”

“Sometimes,” Carrie said. “If he doesn’t want to drive all the way to Elmore, to his house.”

Ray Anne put both bottles on the table and sat down. She lifted one of Carrie’s amazing crab balls and raised her eyes heavenward. “I have such a hard time picturing you and Rawley together. Romantically, that is.”

“Then don’t,” Carrie advised.

“But seriously, are you a couple now? I mean, I know he’s been around for months, like your boyfriend and partner, but...”

“Not everyone is as comfortable talking about the personal side of things as you are,” Carrie said.

“He has his own room,” Gina pointed out. When everyone stared at her, including her mother, she added, “Well, he does! He has my old room. Which doesn’t mean anything, just that it’s the way they want it! But believe me, I knock before walking in now.”

“Seriously?” Lou said. “His own room? Jesus, are you set in your ways or what.”

“Very much so,” Carrie said. “Rawley is, too. I’ve gotten so used to him, I don’t know what I’d do without him. He loves to cook, clean up, shop and run errands.”

“Very exciting,” Lou said.

“That’s all the excitement I can stand.”

The women were incredibly different. Just a look at them would make anyone wonder what they could possibly have in common. Carrie was plump and grandmotherly; she had never colored her short, steel-gray hair. She nurtured with food that was lovingly and thoughtfully prepared. Lou was small, trim, fit, kept her shoulder length auburn hair free of gray and looked younger than her sixty-two years. Gina was lovely, blond, midthirties with an eighteen-year-old daughter and three stepchildren and had been working at the diner for years and years, yet she looked like a girl.

And then there was Ray Anne. She teased her blond hair, wore her clothes on the tight, short, sexy side, her heels as high as possible. Well, she was short. But that had nothing to do with it, really. She liked them. She’d always worn more makeup, long nails, fancier and, for lack of a better word, spicier clothing. Lou called her a Dolly Parton knockoff and Ray Anne was not offended.

The women weren’t alike in many other ways, either. Lou was an educator who had raised her nephew Mac and then helped him raise his three children after his wife left him. Carrie had been a single mother and small business owner—the deli and catering. Gina had only married Mac a year ago or so and became the instant mother of a big crowd. Only Ray Anne had been this solitary, childless woman. But somehow they understood one another.

“Remember my cousin Dickie?” she asked, sipping her wine. “Remember his daughter, Ginger, whose baby died a while back?”

“Terrible,” Lou said, shaking her head. “Was that almost a year ago?”

“Almost nine months. Last summer,” Ray Anne said.

“Nothing could be harder than that,” Carrie said.

“Poor thing,” Gina said.

“She’s coming to stay with me for a little while,” Ray Anne said. “And I’m terrified.”