I began digging through the contents. "Yes, I'm Abigail Thurmond."

"Do you have any comment?"

"Yes, I'd like to know if she has another wet wipe."

I found one, opened it and used it on my face as well. Cameras flashed, I got up, mustering my sense of humor and my pride and left the room to find Rebecca. Huey caught my arm at the back of the room.

"That was bloody brilliant, Abigail. Bloody brilliant. I'll never use my bronzer again."

"Oh, God, Huey! You're priceless!"

I rapped my knuckles on Rebecca's door and Byron opened it. Julian was there with Claudia and Miss Olivia. Rebecca was sitting on her bed against her pillows with her knees up to her chest, tissue box at her side, still weeping and intermittently blowing her nose.

"I'm such a fool! Did y'all see what I did? I completely lost my cool in front of a zillion people! I had this chance to talk about a million things-anything! And what did I do? I washed my damn face! What's the matter with me?"

"It was phenomenal, Rebecca! You did great!" Claudia said.

"No, I didn't! I looked like an idiot! The entire country is going to be making fun of me for the rest of my life! I'm going to be that stupid woman who took off her makeup on national television!"

"So what? You sent a message to women everywhere, Rebecca!" Huey said.

Miss Olivia was sitting across the room in an upholstered armchair that was so big it made her appear tiny and withered. But her attention to the conversation was as sprightly focused as ever.

"What do you think, Abigail?"

"I took off my makeup too."

Everyone, including Rebecca looked at me and said, "Oh, my God! You did! You really did!"

And then we started to laugh and laugh.

"Well, at least I'm not the only national idiot!" Rebecca said.

"Nobody's a national idiot," Julian said.

The phone rang and Claudia answered it. It was Nat.

"He wants to talk to you," she said, handing the phone to Rebecca.

"Hello?"

"I don't need forty-eight hours to get out of here. I'm leaving now. You can pick up the kids from school and have at it, Rebecca. I'll come back and get the rest of my clothes this weekend. I'll be staying with Charlene in Orangeburg. I made her bail and we made up."

"Fine."

"Fine? Is that all you have to say? Fine? How about thank you, Nat? Do you think you could choke out a simple thank you?"

"Hey, Nat? How's this? Thank you for getting out of my house?" She dropped the phone back in its cradle and looked at us. "I hung up on him."

"Well, that's better than being hung up on him," I said, thinking how clever I was. "Let's get some lunch. I'm starving!"

"I'll come along," Julian said, "but only if you girls put on some lipstick."

The great white shark that lives in the hearts of all women was poised to strike on dry land, and Claudia, Rebecca and I shot him straight lines of death rays.

"It was only a joke! Jeesch! You're all so sensitive!"

With plenty of groans, the consensus comment was, "Very funny, Judge."

"Okay, I'll buy lunch for everyone. Are we okay now?"

"It's a start," I said. "It's a start."

TWENTY-THREE.

HOME FIRES BURNING.

AFTER lunch, Claudia and I went back to Rebecca's house with her. She hadn't stepped foot in it since the day she walked out, and she had no idea what she would find.

Where she lived on Tradd Street, on the tip of the peninsula, is the most historic and unique section of Charleston. Every few steps you passed a window box with flowers tumbling over its edges followed by a wrought-iron gate a few feet away. You peeked through the gate and behind it was a magical garden of clipped and shaped boxwood topiaries, azalea and camellia hand-pruned shrubs and specimen plantings of ornamental grass borders. Pyracantha and ivy climbed ancient walls of tiny handmade bricks and lead decorative pots overflowed with brightly colored geraniums and begonias. The whole area was so bewitching that you would find yourself longing to trespass just to dip your hot feet in a stranger's fountain waters. Rebecca's home was one of those, but her garden was hardly a nominee for "yard of the month."

We pushed open the heavy gate and Rebecca gasped. The flowers in her planters were dried up and gone to another incarnation. The grassy areas had not been mowed in several weeks. Her roses were spindly and filled with black spot. Forgotten bicycles and skateboards had been dropped and left, and the outdoor table was littered with fast-food cups and bags. The courtyard fountain sputtered and the water lilies were thick clumps of strangling overgrowth.

"Oh, Lord!" she said. "My fountain is full of green gunk! And look at this yard! It's a mess!"

"These are all fixable things," I said. "Don't you have a gardener?"

"Well, we did! Looks like he's on vacation!"

"Just call him," Claudia said. "Nat probably told him to take a hike."

We climbed the steps and Rebecca stopped. Running shoes caked with mud were piled on the porch near the door.

"What?" I said.

"I don't have keys!"

"Let's just try the door and see."

Sure enough, Nat had left the front door unlocked, and we walked right in to her center hall, as any robber could. On our right was her living room, and the dining room was on the left. I assumed the kitchen was behind the dining room and that a study or a guest room was behind the living room. There was a delicately curved flight of stairs to the second and third floor and a powder room tucked under the stairwell on the first floor. Rebecca went from room to room and disappeared into the kitchen.

It was a classic Charleston row house, beautifully detailed, but to say it was filthy was charitable. Her house was desperately in need of dust cloth, vacuum cleaner and Windex action, followed by some big bowls of flowers and the smell of something good, like chocolate chip cookies coming from the kitchen. Rebecca's children were going to be shocked enough as it was to find her there. It was obvious that we all needed to help her pull the house together.

Claudia and I were trying to figure out what to do when Rebecca came bounding down the steps.

"The dishwasher is full, the dryer is full of clothes, every bed is unmade and heaven only knows when the last time was they changed the sheets! There's nothing in the refrigerator to eat, everything's covered in an inch of dust, the bathrooms are gross..."

"Rebecca! Get a grip, honeychile! I'm a full-service attorney and Claudia's a full-service friend. We already got this nailed! She's gonna fold the laundry and change the beds..."

"I am?"

"Yes, you are!"

"I guess I am."

"And I'm commandeering the vacuum cleaner and the dusting. You tackle the kitchen and the bathrooms, and in the end we'll divide up the work again, okay? Feel better? Gee niminy! I should've brought Daphne!" That gave me an idea. I dialed Huey on my cell phone and he picked up right away. "Huey? How much do you love me?"

Huey, thank all the saints in heaven, loved me a lot. He was bringing dinner, doing a general grocery shop for the house and picking up fresh flowers.

"What's the children's favorite dinner and dessert?" he said.

"I don't know. Hang on." I found Rebecca in the kitchen, rummaging around the storage closet, pulling out all the cleaning supplies. "Hey! What do your kids like for dinner?"

"Spaghetti, garlic bread, salad and chocolate cake. There's no milk in this house or bread or anything!"

"Stop whining! Get to work!" I went back to my phone. "Huey?"

"I heard it all. Boy, she really has her bloomers all twisted in a knot, doesn't she?"

"Yep. So would you. You should see this place." I walked back out to the hall where Rebecca couldn't hear me. "Don't worry, I'm billing Nat for our hours on this one too!"

"Well, psychologically it will be very good for those kids to come home to a clean house. Am I right?"

"Well, Claudia and I think so, or else we wouldn't be rolling up our sleeves!"

The business of restoring order got under way. You couldn't hear yourself think with the noise of the vacuum cleaner, the slamming of doors as Rebecca took bag after bag of garbage, magazines, catalogs and old newspapers outside. The flushing of toilets, and running water were the backup music for the old Motown music I had blaring from 102.5 on Rebecca's sound system. Claudia and I were singing along at the top of our lungs, and even Rebecca joined in. We still knew all the words to "Stop! In the Name of Love!" and "My Boyfriend's Back." We sounded so terrible that I half expected all the neighborhood dogs to start howling.

Claudia must have passed me fifty times with armloads of sheets and towels, the children's laundry, and Nat's as well. She stopped as she was carrying a laundry basket of Nat's clean clothes upstairs.

"This irritates the crap out of me," she said.

"What does? Did you say crap? Is that how doctors talk in Atlanta?" I giggled. I liked Claudia. She understood the value of well-used slang and she didn't care what anyone thought about it either.

"Yeah. Crap. All doctors in Atlanta say it. It's required. Listen, I'm folding Nat's panties like the son of a bitch is my husband and we're going to Europe or something. Shouldn't I just throw them in a suitcase and help get him out of here?"

"Actually, that's not a bad idea. Ask Rebecca where they keep the luggage."

"Third-floor attic closet. Already saw it."

"What?" Rebecca said, coming in the room.

We told her and she said, "Why should I give him the luggage? I'll never see it again!" She sailed out of the room bound for the kitchen and I looked at Claudia.

"My goodness, Doctor Kelly. You have the oddest expression! What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking I should do something extra special for my girlfriend, that's all."

I went back to my vacuuming and about fifteen minutes later, Huey walked in with six bags of groceries, dumping them on the floor in the hallway.

"There's more in the car," he said. "Come help me before I drop dead. Whoo! So much pressure!"

Claudia came outside and took the flowers from the front seat. She was laughing so hard I thought she was going to start having convulsions.

"Claudia! What ever on this earth could be so funny?" I said.

"My dee-ah! Do you need a chaise to recline until this hysteria passes?"

"Y'all! Y'all are not gonna believe what I did!"

"What?" I turned to Huey and said, "She's been doing Nat's laundry, and she's not too thrilled about it."

"Oh! Now I am! In fact, I'm so happy I got to wash and fold Nat Simms's cheap U-Trow and socks that I could dance!"

"Clau-dee-ah!" Huey said. "What did you do to them?"

"Yeah, fess up, Dr. Mengele. What did you do?"

"Promise not to tell?" We crossed our hearts and she said, "Well, I left the attic door open, and when I went back to the third floor I noticed they had fiberglass insulation in the walls..."

"No! You didn't!" I knew immediately what she had done.

"Yes! I did! Every last pair!"

"What am I missing here?" Huey said.

"Wake up, baby, and smell the chai!" Claudia said. "The fiberglass was dusty, and all I had with me was Nat's clean laundry. I merely turned his socks and underpants inside out and dusted thefiberglass insulation. Then I turned them back on the right side, folded them and put them back in his drawers. That's all. No biggie." She smiled, turned away and then back to us. "And if y'all tell Rebecca," she said with a south Georgia drawl, "I'll jess haveta kill all y'all till yewr choked dead."

Huey was astonished. His jaw was hanging open so wide I could count his caps.

"What a woman!" he said. "Wait until I tell Miss Olivia! She will love this story!"

"She's a little dangerous. Come on, let's get inside and finish up. Her children get out of school in less than an hour."

Forty-five minutes later there were roses in place on the dining room table, a bud vase of gerber daisies on an end table in the living room and another in the kitchen window. The whole house smelled like lemon wax, the chocolate brownies that were baking in the oven and the spaghetti sauce that simmered on the stove. The living room pillows were in their correct positions, the beds were all made with fresh linens, the bathrooms sparkled and clean towels waited on the racks. Nat and all his bad aura had been scoured, dusted, Windexed and swept right out the door.

Rebecca said, "Now this house looks like it's supposed to! Everything looks so pretty and clean! How can I ever thank you?"

"I might need an organ donor some day," I said.

"I'll go pack your stuff at the hotel, check you out and bring it back over here," Claudia said.