I hear a chair scrape and I know Miss Leefolt about to come hunting for me. I can’t put it off no more.

I open the door with the ice tea pitcher in my hand. Round the table I go, keeping my eyes to my shoes.

“I heard that Betty character might be Charlene,” Miss Jeanie say with big eyes. Next to her, Miss Lou Anne’s staring off like she don’t care one way or the other. I wish I could pat her shoulder. I wish I could tell her how glad I am she’s Louvenia’s white lady, without giving nothing away, but I know I can’t. And I can’t tell nothing on Miss Leefolt cause she just frowning like usual. But Miss Hilly’s face, it’s purple as a plum.

“And the maid in Chapter Four?” Miss Jeanie going on. “I heard Sissy Tucker saying—”

“The book isnot about Jackson!” Miss Hilly kind a scream and I jump while I’m pouring. A drop a tea accidentally plops on Miss Hilly’s empty plate. She look up at me and like a magnet, my eyes pull to hers.

Low and cool, she say,“You spilled some, Aibileen.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Wipe it up.”

Shaking, I wipe it with the cloth I had on the handle a the pitcher.

She staring at my face. I have to look down. I can feel the hot secret between us.“Get me a new plate. One you haven’t soiled with your dirty cloth.”

I get her a new plate. She study it, sniff real loud. Then she turn to Miss Leefolt and say,“You can’t eventeach these people how to be clean.”

I HAVE TO SIT LATE that night for Miss Leefolt. While Mae Mobley sleeping, I pull out my prayer book, get started on my list. I’m so glad for Miss Skeeter. She call me this morning and say she took the job. She moving to New York in a week! But Law, I can’t stop jumping ever time I hear a noise, thinking maybe Miss Leefolt gone walk in the door and say she know the truth. By the time I get home, I’m too jumpy to go to bed. I walk through the pitch-black dark to Minny’s back door. She setting at her table reading the paper. This is the only part a her day when she ain’t running around to clean something or feed something or make somebody do right. The house be so quiet I figure something wrong.

“Where everbody?”

She shrug,“Gone to bed or gone to work.”

I pull out a chair and set down.“I just want a know what’s gone happen,” I say. “I know I ought a be thankful it ain’t all blowed up in my face yet, but this waiting’s driving me crazy.”

“It’s gone happen. Soon enough,” Minny say, like we talking about the kind a coffee we drink.

“Minny, how can you be so calm?”

She looks at me, puts her hand on her tummy that’s popped out in the last two weeks. “You know Miss Chotard, who Willie Mae wait on? She ask Willie Mae yesterday if she treats her bad as that awful lady in the book.” Minny kind a snort. “Willie Mae tell her she got some room to grow but she ain’t too bad.”

“She really ask her that?”

“Then Willie Mae tell her what all the other white ladies done to her, the good and the bad, and that white lady listen to her. Willie May say she been there thirty-seven years and it’s the first time they ever sat at the same table together.”

Besides Louvenia, this the first good thing we heard. I try to enjoy it. But I snap back to now.“What about Miss Hilly? What about what Miss Skeeter say? Minny, ain’t you at least a little nervous?”

Minny put her newspaper down.“Look, Aibileen, I ain’t gone lie. I’m scared Leroy gone kill me if he find out. I’m scared Miss Hilly gone set my house on fire. But,” she shake her head, “I can’t explain it. I got this feeling. That maybe things is happening just how they should.”

“Really?”

Minny kind a laugh.“Lord, I’m starting to sound like you, ain’t I? Must be getting old.”

I poke her with my foot. But I try to understand where Minny’s coming from. We done something brave and good here. And Minny, maybe she don’t want a be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad. But I can’t pick up on the calm she feeling.

Minny looks back down at her paper but after a little while, I can tell she ain’t reading. She just staring at the words, thinking about something else. Somebody’s car door slam next door and she jump. And I see it then, the worry she’s trying to hide. But why? I wonder. Why she hiding that from me?

The more I look, the more I start to understand what’s going on here, what Minny’s done. I don’t know why I’m just now getting this. Minny made us put the pie story in to protect us. Not to protect herself, but to protect me and the other maids. She knew it would only make it worse for herself with Hilly. But she did it anyway, for everbody else. She don’t want anybody to see how scared she is.