“In five hundred feet, turn right,” the GPS announces.
I take a breath, check my mirrors, and pull out of the parking lot.
Whatever is waiting for me in Copper Creek, I will handle it with the grace and efficiency I have been bred to exude, just like my mother taught me. I will sign the papers, sell the bar, and return to my real life. Simple, straightforward, completely under control.
The GPS guides me toward the highway, and I do not let myself think too much about those birthday cards that were in the trash, or the great aunt who remembered me when no one else really did, or the dream about my mother turning away.
I just drive.
The GPS has obviously lost its mind.
“In one mile, turn right onto Possum Hollow Road,” the pleasant robotic female voice announces.
I grip my steering wheel tighter, convinced that I have somehow driven into an alternate dimension where road names are generated by some kind of random hillbilly word generator.
I have been driving for almost two hours, watching Atlanta’s gleaming skyline shrink in my rearview mirror until it disappears entirely, replaced by rural scenery. The highway gave way to a state route, which gave way to a county road, which is now apparently giving way to something called Possum Hollow Road.
My Lexus feels very out of place here. The last twenty minutes have just been a parade of pickup trucks, some rusted, some lifted on enormous tires, but all of them making my sedan look like a lost tourist. Which I suppose I am.
I make the turn onto Possum Hollow Road and immediately hit a pothole that rattles my teeth. The road narrows, winding through the forest so thick that the trees form a canopy, dappling the pavement with shadows.
It is beautiful, I admit begrudgingly. The Blue Ridge Mountains rise in the distance, their peaks softened by a haze that makes them look like a watercolor painting.
I round a curve and nearly rear-end a tractor. Yes, an actual tractor. Moving approximately three miles per hour. It is driven by an elderly man in overalls who waves cheerfully at me as I slam on my brakes, my heart hammering against my chest.
There is no room to pass. The road is too narrow, the curve too blind.
I have no choice but to follow the tractor that would make a snail impatient.
“Recalculating,” my GPS says, with what I swear is a tone of judgment.
“I’m not lost,” I tell it, as if it understands me. “Just trapped behind agricultural equipment.”
The GPS, of course, does not respond. It has probably given up on me.
Eventually, after what feels like seventy years, the tractor turns onto a dirt path, and the driver tips his John Deere cap at me as I finally accelerate past him. I wave back, my mother’s training kicking in even when I am irritated beyond reason.
The road begins to descend, and suddenly I can see it. Copper Creek, Georgia, nestled in a valley below, like a toy village arranged on a Christmas train set.
It is small. Impossibly small.
I can see the whole downtown from up here, maybe three blocks of buildings clustered around what looks like a central square, surrounded by scattered little houses, and beyond those nothing but trees and mountains.
“You have arrived at your destination,” the GPS announces as I enter the city limits.
I have not arrived at my destination. I have arrived at what appears to be the set of a Hallmark movie, complete with American flags hanging from every lamppost and flower baskets so aggressively cheerful they border on hostile.
The main street is called, with stunning originality, Main Street.
I drive slowly, looking at all the storefronts. Dixie’s Diner. Sweet Tea Bakery. Mountain Hardware and Feed. The Clip Joint, which is a barber shop with an actual spinning pole. And something called Grits and Grind, which I assume is a coffee shop.
Every parking spot on Main Street is occupied by a pickup truck. Every single one.
I circle the block twice before I find a spot in front of the hardware store, and even then, I have to squeeze between a Ford F-150 and a Chevy truck that are both parked at angles suggesting that their drivers have never even heard of parallel parking.
I turn off the engine and sit there for a minute, staring at the town through my windshield.
A woman in a floral dress walks by carrying a casserole dish, waving at someone across the street. Two men in flannel shirts lean against the hardware store, drinking coffee from paper cups and laughing. A dog, unleashed, because apparently leash laws are suggestions here, trots down the sidewalk with a tennis ball in its mouth.
