"Let her be," my father says. "She’s been through enough."

All I can think is that he ought to know my mother better than that. She’s from the my hangnail hurts more than your brain tumor school of thought. And she’s got me married to a policeman and her social standing in ruins.

"You already made one terrible mistake," she reminds me, and I can’t argue since Rio absolutely proved her right. Another reason for me to hate him with all my heart. And if he weren’t the father of my children, you can bet I’d wish pretty nasty things on him, even if I am basically a very nice person. "You want to make another?"

"A man dies on her doorstep. What do you want her to do, Juney? Not call the police?" my father asks, making my presence superfluous.

"She didn’t have to call that policeman," my mother says and she shoots me a stare that suggests I not only called Drew on purpose, but I probably killed the guy on my porch as an excuse to do it. It’s not her train of thought that amazes me, but the fact that she can still make that face despite all the Botox and Restalyn she’s had pumped into it.

"He’s not a policeman," I say. "He’s a police detective. He’s got a shield and everything, so if you’re going to be embarrassed that I went out –"

"It’s the everything else he’s got that worries me," my mother says. "I only want the best for you. You know that. And after your last marriage . . ." Yadda, yadda, yadda.

You don’t have to hear the whole story about how after we found out that Rio was trying to drive me crazy, my mother took one of his guns and shot him in the leg (don’t ask where she was aiming) and I blackmailed him into not pressing charges. Suffice it to say that in my mother’s certifiably warped mind, she saved me from the man I’d already saved myself from.

Bobbie knocks at the back door and enters without waiting for me to wave her in. She’s got my father’s favorite banana bran muffins in a basket and she passes it under his nose before setting it down on the bar in my kitchen.

"You bring Teddi some Valium?" Bobbie asks my mother. After a murder last night and my mother this morning, I think I could use some.

My mother assures her that I don’t need any. "Afer all, I’m here," she says.

Actually, I think I’m holding up pretty well. I might have the makings of a decent detective. If I weren’t such a great decorator, maybe I’d consider it. I’d be really good at it, I think.

Except for the throwing up part, that is.

"Man, Diane is totally bummed that this didn’t happen in her precinct," Bobbie says about her sister the rookie cop. "She wants to know why nothing exciting ever happens in Oyster Bay."

"Because my daughter doesn’t live there," my mother says, and before I can complain about her implication, Bobbie says that she told Diane the same thing.

I hate it when my best friend and my mother agree on anything. It reminds me how they’ve both read the Secret Handbook of Long Island Rules– a book they each swear doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t, what explains how everyone seems to know the rules but me?

"I just remembered something about last night," I say, ignoring them both and reaching for the phone. "I’d better tell Drew."

My mother thrums her fingernails on the kitchen table. "I’d guess you forgot your panties in his pocket," my mother says. "If we hadn’t gotten here when we did."

"June," my father says with a sigh. "Let her be. Nothing was going on between the two of them except a dead body."

"Because we were here," my mother says, studying her manicure and no doubt finding fault with the job.

Like I could have slept with Drew here last night with the kids around and all. Of course, if they’d slept at Bobbie’s. . .

Another reason to wish my mother had slept in her own bed last night instead of her and my father sleeping in mine.

By the time they find Drew at the precinct I’ve almost forgotten my excuse for ... I mean, my reason for calling him.

"Just before the doorbell rang last night," I tell him. "I heard squealing tires."

"Could explain the lack of a blood trail," Drew says. "Although the ME says the bullet nicked an artery and all the blood was in his belly."

A detail I could have done without.

"Small caliber bullets’ll do that," he tells me. "A man can wind up drowning in his own blood without spilling a drop." I don’t say anything in response because I’m afraid if I open my mouth I might barf up one of Bobbie’s muffins. "Teddi? You there?"

I mumble that I just wanted him to know about the car I heard.

"Like he was braking? Or like he was screeching away from the curb?" he asks while my mother exchanges a look with my father that says they are moving in until the investigation is over and Drew is once again out of my life.

"Do those sound different?" I ask, trying to move past drowning in blood and my parents moving in and reminding myself which one is worse.

"Yeah, they’re different, he says, and he offers to take me for a ride and show me.

I look at my mother, hanging on my every word.