On a 7-9, you have to be persistent and lucky

You feel a warm glow in Mary's embrace. "Can I thank you personally?" you say. "Maybe you have some pie for me?"

Mary laughs. "Oh, hon, I have so much to do," she says. "Trail along with me, I suppose? I can't promise, but maybe if we finish early."

After the washing and the folding, it's a two-car caravan of shopping, dropping things off at the post office, picking up a delivery at the package service, and getting her car's oil changed.

Each time you stop, you get another little tidbit from Mary, a little nibble. She started working at a diner more than twenty years ago. Her husband, a long-distance trucker, was the cook's boyfriend. Mary stole him away and hung on to him, had two daughters, moved from an apartment to a trailer to a double-wide on their own land. When she learned that her man had a woman in every big town willing to make him welcome, she was jealous and hurt, but she prayed on it.

"And I decided I was called to the same mission," Mary said. "To bring joy to ladies. Gentlemen, too, now and then. So I talked it over with Brian, and we prayed on it together, and that was our decision. That he would bring joy to his ladies on the road, and I would bring to ladies when our paths crossed with grace."

You're not sure you'd describe Mary's actions at the hospital as exactly following that mission. But you carry no shame, nor want her to have blame. You think of the taste of June, of Julie, of Maggie, of Jeannie, of Brenda.

"Thank you, hon," she says, signing for the oil change.

"Do you think we have time?"

Mary checks the time and nods slightly. "Follow me home, Gloria," she says. "It's in the Lord's hands."

You follow Mary's old car up the winding country road toward her home.

Roll +Hot(+1) to EAT Mary Forbes. On a Miss, it may stop before it even starts.