“Oh, Mags!” Her whole body sank in disappointment and frustration. “You ruined the surprise.”
“It wouldn’t have been a surprise,” Maggie countered. “We talked about the Tri-Delt life for an hour last night and I could see you getting all misty and maudlin.”
“I don’t even know what that means, but didn’t you feel it? The call of the past?”
Maggie lifted a shoulder. “It’s been sixty years, Jo. Going back will just make us feel old.”
“We are old,” she said in her most pragmatic voice. “Please, Mags?” Jo Ellen scuttled closer and made praying hands, looking like Nolie when she wanted chocolate ice cream. “Pretty please? I had Oscar make us up an itinerary. It’s not a long drive and we could have fun.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“You never want to have fun,” Jo Ellen said, once again sounding like a seven-year-old.
“We didn’t come here for fun.”
“Pffft!” She flipped her hand, and turned to the coffee pot, pouring a cup with a flourish. “Take this to your room, get ready, and we can have lunch on campus.”
With a dubious look, Maggie took the coffee. “I’ll drink it right here, thank you very much, and while I do, I’ll talk you and Oscar out of your latest madness.”
“It’s not madness and we won’t be talked out of it.”
Maggie took the coffee but didn’t sit. She leaned against the counter instead, watching her friend the way one watched weather rolling in—equal parts curiosity and caution.
“We agreed,” she said, attempting a different approach, “that today was a down day. No plans. No driving past offices. No…whatever this is.”
“This,” Jo Ellen said, waving a hand, “is not spying. This isliving.”
Maggie closed her eyes briefly. “That sentence alone makes me nervous.”
Jo Ellen laughed. “Relax. We’re just taking a little drive.”
“Athens is an hour and a half away,” Maggie said. “Two, if we take our time or get lost. That is nota little drive.”
Jo Ellen leaned her elbows on the counter, eyes intent. “Come on. Don’t you want to see what’s happened to the campus in all these years?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “I don’t have to. The place will be bigger and shinier and nothing will fit the way it used to. Our sleepy little college town will be gone, replaced by something loud and unrecognizable.”
“Don’t make me invoke Scarlett O’Hara,” Jo Ellen teased in a sing-song voice. “Fiddle de?—”
Maggie wiped her hand through the air to halt the bad Southern accent. “Stop.”
“I will not. I’ll quote Scarlett O’Hara until we’re in the car.” She cleared her throat. “‘Is that…Tara? Oh, Melly! It’s still standing! And so are we.’”
Maggie snorted a laugh and shook her head, defeat in the air. “I need an hour to dress for this fiasco.”
“Yes!” Jo Ellen practically danced around the kitchen.
The drive slippedby without ceremony, Atlanta thinning into something greener, quieter. Maggie found herself surprised byhow much she recognized as they got closer, the landscape stirring something familiar despite the years layered on top of it. It was bigger, yes. More developed. But it was still the very place that had transformed them from girls to women in the middle of the wildest decade in American history—the sixties.
Downtown Athens was louder than Maggie remembered, and way more crowded. Restaurants pressed shoulder to shoulder. Shops stood where there had once been empty lots. Apartment buildings—most of them ugly as sin—rose to make it all feel polished and urban and important.
They chatted about the differences, finding the occasional place that looked vaguely familiar, but mostly they were quiet as they neared campus.
And that was when the big differences faded and everything looked very much the same.
As if they had the thought at the same precise moment, Jo Ellen and Maggie exchanged a look, the satisfaction in Jo’s eyes matching what Maggie felt in her heart.
Thank goodness that so much of it was the same! Stately red brick, comforting arched windows, massive trees, and acres of grass. Yes, there were new buildings scattered around and plenty of students, considering it was July.
