It got worse. The grocery store around the corner was also a diner, or at least a café. It served as the town’s meeting spot during the winter months. On Tuesdays, and Cody had completely displaced this tidbit of information until he and Candy walked inside, was the Women’s Aid Lunch. Six women whose real age nobody would ever find out, were just about to begin their weekly gossip circle. They stopped dead in their tracks, steaming mugs halfway to their mouths, when one of them—perhaps Mrs. Brimsby; Cody always mixed them up—hollered: “Praise the Lord, it’s Cody Laughman! The prodigal son has returned!”
For ten seconds of complete Armageddon, he was swarmed by a bunch of bouffant, cheery women, who engulfed him in a cloud of heavy perfumes. In his state of horror, he failed to recognize t
