“To me you are,” Jo Ellen replied. “You’re…fun.”
“Something I’m so rarely accused of.”
“With me, you’re fun.”
“I sure am,” Maggie agreed.
“I love you, Mags. Just like I loved Artie.”
“Oh.” Maggie put her hand to her chest. “That’s so sweet.”
“It’s true.”
They sat without speaking, the bench warm beneath them, the shade of the old tree dappling the ground at their feet. Students passed by in twos and threes, backpacks slung low, voices rising and falling in fragments of laughter and complaint. Someone kicked a soccer ball nearby. Somewhere else, music drifted faintly from an open window.
Maggie folded her hands in her lap and breathed, remembering that this had always been a place meant for thinking, for talking things through. A place where decisions had once felt possible.
“This is where I told you I was going to marry Artie,” Jo Ellen said, as always, her thoughts a mirror of Maggie’s.
“You’d been on three dates, and you were so sure.”
“You were sure of Roger.”
“Neverthatsure,” Maggie quipped. “He always…made me work for his affection.”
“Oh.” Jo Ellen put a hand on Maggie’s leg. “I don’t remember it that way. He adored you.”
“Mostly,” Maggie agreed, looking around as a thought formed in her head. A shocking thought, but one that had been niggling for a while. “I’m not entirely happy, Jo.”
Her friend turned to her, all humor disappearing. “What’s wrong, Maggie?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I feel like I’m not where I belong and it might be too late in life to do anything about it.”
There…it was out. In one simple and ugly sentence. She braced for Jo Ellen’s scoffing laugh and assurance that they were not old or far gone and they belonged right where they were.
But Jo just stared at her intently. “Is it being here?”
“Not here on campus,” Maggie said. “But here in Atlanta. It doesn’t feel like…home.”
“Barbara’s house is not home,” Jo Ellen said. “As if you’d tolerate that paint job.”
“I need to do something, Jo, but I don’t know what.”
“Well, they’re expecting plastic surgery. Shall we run over to the med school and sign up for facelifts?”
Maggie shook her head, smiling.
“If it makes you feel better, I have felt the same way recently. Not here, but in Destin.”
Maggie slid her a surprised look. “How?”
“Like that place is…” Jo Ellen winced. “Home?”
Maggie nodded slowly. “Destin feels more like home than Atlanta,” she said, feeling a strange ripple of relief when the words were out. “And that surprises me.”
“I feel the same and it doesn’t surprise me at all,” Jo Ellen said. “But I don’t live on that pretty street with a rose garden and my daughter and granddaughter. I live in a drafty old house in Ithaca where the snow is high, the sun is rare, and Artie’s gone, and you’re…far away.” She added a bittersweet smile. “I can’t bear the idea of going back when summer ends.”
“I don’t want to go back to my old life, either,” Maggie said quietly. “Not really.”
