He waved them off with the screwdriver he was holding. “Go on-get! I never will get this job done if you keep standing around here jawin’ at me. Get out of here, y’all-have a good time. And don’t forget to write.”

Jimmy Joe chuckled and gave him a nod rather than a wave, since his hands were full, as he herded his bride-to-be out of the room. Troy could hear her hollering all the way down the stairs.

“…and we’ll call you with the number where we can be reached as soon as we get to the hotel. Oh, there’s plenty of that chicken left for salad or sandwiches, if you get hungry. Call if you have any questions…”

Troy waited where he was, shaking his head and laughing to himself, until he heard the front door, and a minute or two later the slamming of three car doors, one after the other. Then he put down the screwdriver and climbed off the ladder and went down the stairs and onto the front porch, just in time to watch a silver Lexus pull out onto the main road, spittin’ gravel. He noticed that Mirabella was driving, which surprised him some even though it was her car. In Troy’s experience, professional drivers like his brother Jimmy Joe didn’t usually give up that ol’ wheel to an amateur if they could help it. But then, most drivers didn’t have to deal with Mirabella.

“Bubba,” he said to the chocolate Lab who was just coming up the steps onto the porch, wet and stinking of pond muck, “I do believe my baby brother’s got his hands full…what do you say, old boy? Huh? What do you think?”

Bubba, who at ninety-five pounds was still a puppy and hadn’t figured out yet where he left off and the rest of the world began, was weaving his way ecstatically around and between Troy’s legs and leaving them well smeared with whatever it was he’d just been wallowing in. In spite of that, Troy gave him a good roughhouse and hug, partly to fill the lonely, empty place that always seemed to open up inside him when he watched his brother and his woman and her baby together.

And sometimes for no reason at all. In fact, he’d been having that feeling a lot in the past six months or so, pretty much ever since he’d made the decision to retire from the navy. It seemed all his SEAL training and experience hadn’t done a whole lot to prepare him for what came after that.

“Whoo-ee, you stink,” he said to Bubba. And now, of course, so did he. He gave the dog one last rub and went in to wash himself off. He had a nursery to rewire, and he figured if he tried he could probably stretch the job out to take up the whole weekend. Might as well, he thought. He didn’t have anything better to do.


Charly drove slowly, trying to take in everything at once and at the same time watch where she was going-not that there was any traffic to worry about; that much hadn’t changed. She didn’t know which was the greater wonder to her-the things that were different or the things that, even after twenty years, were still exactly as she remembered them.

She noticed that there was now a great big new Winn-Dixie on the outskirts of town, on a spot where there’d been nothing but a whole bunch of trees half buried in kudzu and a curb market that used to sell fresh honey, peanuts boiled or roasted and peaches and tomatoes and watermelons in their proper season. And praise the Lord, fast food had found its way to Mourning Spring! Both a Burger King and a KFC appeared to be flourishing, cunningly planted as they were, across the street from the high school.

But there was B.B.’s Barn, better known in Charly’s day as the Beer and Boogie, just as tacky as ever, still standing alone at the edge of town like the village outcast, with only the equally trashy Mourning-or Moanin’, as it was locally pronounced, with an implied snicker-Springs Motel across the road for company. And the big old redbrick and white frame Victorian houses on Main Street looked just the same, although Charly noticed that a few now had quaint, handcrafty signs like The Good Mourning Bed And Breakfast, and Mourning Glory Inn planted in beds of geraniums on their front lawns.

The butterflies in her stomach didn’t start in earnest, though, until she drove onto the courthouse square. It was still as pretty and quaint as she remembered, like something Norman Rockwell might paint, shaded by big old oak trees, with the white bandstand in the middle looking like something that belonged on the top of a wedding cake. And yes, there was still the blatantly phallic Confederate Memorial, rising out of the flower beds at the far end. And judging from the petunias and day lilies and the baskets of impatiens and ferns cascading from every light pole and street sign, the town’s two rival garden clubs were still trying hard to out-green-thumb one another.

Charly considered that pretty amazing. She’d have thought surely most of the old biddies would have died off by now.

Twice she drove past the redbrick courthouse with its imposing white columns, her heart pounding. Would he be there now? she wondered. It was after hours, but he’d often worked late in his office behind the second-floor courtroom, the one with the window that looked out toward the mountains, not down on the square. In the winter when the leaves were off the trees and the darkness came early, she’d been able to look out her own bedroom window and see the light shining in his.

Naw, she told herself, taking a deep, restorative breath. He wouldn’t be there. For all she knew, he might even have retired by now.

On her second pass around the square, Charly aimed the Taurus into one of the head-in parking places that faced the park and turned off the engine. Her palms were sweaty and her mouth was dry, and she had an idea that when she tried standing on them, her legs were going to be wobbly.

She was having major second thoughts about this whole thing. She’d been truly crazy to come. It was a bad idea. Foolish, at least.

But she’d done it, she was here and how was she going to face herself in the mirror if she didn’t go through with it now? It simply wasn’t in her to turn around and drive away without doing what she’d come here to do. Not after all this. She’d come too far, and not just in miles. She had to finish it. She owed herself that much… the closure, at least.

But before she faced him, she had to settle her emotions down. She was going to have to be calm, cool and adult about this. She couldn’t let him sense her vulnerability. She knew him. If she did, he’d go straight for the jugular.

Charly got out of the car and locked it after her-a habit born of living her entire adult life in L.A.-and then stood for a moment gazing in bemusement at the restaurant on the corner across the street. The sign above it still said Coffee Shop, in the same two-foot-high red plastic letters she remembered from twenty years ago. But in her day the smaller, hand-painted sign hanging in the big front window had said Dottie’s Diner. Now, in the identical style, it said Kelly’s Kitchen instead.

No way, Charly thought. Could it be? Emotions were tumbling around inside her like old gym shoes in a clothes dryer.

Finally, smiling for the first time since she’d passed that city-limits sign, she crossed the street to the restaurant, pushed the door open and went in.

For a moment or two the sense of déjà vu was so overpowering she felt light-headed. There was the same black-and-white linoleum set in squares, like a checkerboard, and the same Formica-and-chrome tables and counter, the same red plastic seats. Four teenagers-two couples-were crowded into a booth toward the back, boisterously socializing, ignoring an Elton John song playing on the jukebox. In the alcove off to the right near the rest rooms, another teenager was punching and pinging away at a video game. In Charly’s day it had been a pinball machine, but everything else was just as she remembered it, including the fact that in spite of the ceiling fans whirling drunkenly overhead, the air was too warm, and heavy with the smell of frying grease.

Behind the counter a pretty woman with poufy blond hair was busy stocking the glass pie cabinet. When she heard Charly come in she turned half around, her face already lit up with an automatic smile of welcome, and sang out, “Hey, there! You just go on and have a seat, hon, and I’ll be with you in a sec, okay?”

What happened then made Charly feel as if aliens had taken over her body. All of a sudden she felt herself scrunch down and lean over to one side, as if she were trying to see out from behind an invisible obstacle. Those aliens must have taken over her voice, too, because when she spoke it seemed to have gotten a lot louder and higher pitched than her normal adult speaking voice, with a stronger Alabama accent than she’d heard coming out of her own mouth in almost twenty years. “Kelly? Kelly Grace, is that you?”

At that, the blond woman sort of scrunched down herself, and stared at Charly for a second or two. Suddenly her mouth fell open, and she pressed both hands to her chest and gasped, “Oh, my Lawd, I don’t believe it!”

She advanced on Charly with open arms, at the same time cutting loose with a blood-curdling squeal that would have prompted anyone within earshot to immediately dial 911 anywhere in the world, that is, except in the South, where they’re used to that sort of carrying on. It was, in fact, completely ignored by the teenage couples in the back booth and the boy playing video games three feet away.

“Charlene Elizabeth Phelps, is that really you? Oh, my stars, I swear I’m gon’ die. You just come here an’ let me look at you-why, you haven’t changed a bit, not one little bit. Where in the world have you been all these years? Oh, God-my poor heart’s just goin’ like a freight train. Why didn’t you evah write? Oh-oh my, I b’lieve I’m just gon’ have to sit down ’fore I fall down. Charlene Phelps, I swear I could just kill you…”

Although this was all delivered with the accompaniment of laughter, tears and hugs and at a decibel level rivaling that of a factory whistle, and was certainly all the welcome any prodigal son-or daughter-could have asked for and more, Charly didn’t let it go to her head. Since Kelly Grace had been her best friend all those years ago and was prone to emotional outbursts even then, it was pretty much what she’d expected.

“It’s Charly now,” she said when she could get a word in edgewise. “I’m sorry I didn’t write…” Well. okay, she couldn’t help but be a little choked up.

Kelly Grace waved that away as if it were just an old fly making a nuisance of itself. “Oh, hey, don’t you say a thing, not a thing. I know how it is, I really do-I’m terrible about that myself. But you coulda let me know you were comin’!”

“Well,” Charly mumbled, “it was kind of on the spur of the moment.”

Kelly Grace wiped her own hands on her apron and grabbed for Charly’s. “Well, you just tell me all about everything, this minute. Charly, you say? Oh, that’s cute, I really do like that-but you know I am never goin’ be able to call you anything but Charlene. Come on over here and sit. Are you hungry? Can I get you something to drink? How ’bout some sweet tea? Oh, Lord-you used to like cherry Cokes, remember? Do you still drink those things?”

“Maybe if you put a little bourbon in it,” Charly said, not entirely facetiously.

Kelly Grace laughed and fanned herself with her hand. “Oh, my, you haven’t changed a bit.” She cocked her head sideways and studied Charly with the frankly critical appraisal permitted lifelong friends. “But look at you, there’s not a gray hair on your head!”

“And never will be,” declared Charly, “while there’s breath left in my body.”

Kelly Grace laughed some more. “Well, now, I hear that. Let’s hear it for Clairol. No, but I swear, you look just the same as you did back in high school.”

“So do you,” Charly lied as she slid into a booth.

“Go on, I do not. I’ve put on at least twenty pounds since the divorce-”

“Oh, Kelly, I’m sorry.”

“Well, yeah, me too. It’s been a while, now, though. I’m okay with it-things work out for the best, you know?”

“Did you and…?” Charly made a rotating motion with her hand.

“Bobby Hanratty,” Kelly Grace filled in for her, leaning against the opposite bench with her arms folded across her plump waist. Her smile, the dimples, were the ones Charly remembered. It was her eyes that were older-reminiscent and a little sad. She shrugged. “Yeah…you know how it was. We got married right after we graduated. Probably shouldn’t have-we were real young and stupid. Had our babies right away, too…” Her eyes suddenly darkened, and she caught herself and blurted, “Oh, God, Charlene, I’m just so sorry. I didn’t mean-”