"Somebody got some explaining to do around this here bitch, and it ain't going to be me," she fumed to herself. As Sandy looked at photos of Isis, she thought about how she wasn't going to let their beautiful daughter be cheated out of the plans they had made for her future. Her daughter wasn't going to have to go to some community college instead of an Ivy League university so that some illegitimate child could get a higher education too. Isis wasn't going to have to get a Hyundai for her sweet-sixteen gift instead of a BMW because her husband had to get a car for some bastard of a child. "Oh, hell no!" Sandy raged.

She needed some answers, and she needed them now! She paged her husband about ten times over the next thirty minutes to no avail. She knew that Ice was nearby because his big rig was outside, parked alongside the house, which was a sign that he hadn't left for work yet. Sandy waited a few more minutes to see if her husband was going to return her page, but her patience was wearing thin. She was desperate, so she called Mrs. Joplin back. "Juvenile and Domestic. Mrs. Joplin speaking. How can I help you?"

"Hi. This is Mrs. Tatum again. We just spoke about half an hour ago?" Sandy said into the phone receiver. "How can I help you?" Mrs. Joplin asked. "If you don't mind, I would like to ask you a question or two."

"Sure, if I can answer them," she said. "Go ahead." Sandy thought about how she could best articulate the question without offending the woman. "Mrs. Joplin, when we last spoke, what did you mean by‚'been there, done that'?"

"Well, honey, I was married to a cheater myself," Mrs. Joplin admitted. "After I found out what I was dealing with, I divorced that jerk."

"Well, I know you don't know me, but we do have something in common. And I don't know who to turn to because all of my friends think that my husband and I have the picture-perfect life. They would probably just love for me to call and confide in them about this, and I can't give them that kind of satisfaction."

"I do understand." "So I guess what I want to know from you is: How did you handle your situation? I mean in the beginning. I'm over here going crazy. And you know the saying: Crazy people do crazy things. I need answers. I've paged my husband, and he isn't calling me back fast enough, and I don't know what to do."

"Well, I cut out the middleman, which was my husband, and went straight to the source. I knew all he would do was tell me lies. I hightailed it right over to the woman's house. You might not know about her, but if she knows your address, then surely she knows about you."

"I don't know anything about this woman." Sandy sounded defeated. Mrs. Joplin lowered her voice. "Well," she said, "she lives at 1713 Lady Smith Road. And if anyone asks, you didn't get that information from me. I'll deny it on my mama's grave." This time it was Mrs. Joplin who hung up. Sandy wrote the address down and headed out the door. When she got to her driveway, she remembered she didn't have her car. As far as Sandy was concerned, it was a do-or-die situation. She had to do something she had never done before: drive Ice's rig. She had ridden as a passenger in it plenty of times before Isis had been born, when Ice made his legitimate (and illegitimate) runs across the country. She had watched him operate it. It had to be just like riding a bike.