Mel decided to focus on the present. “You’ve had a tough time. You look thin.” She remembered their teenage years, the pair of them dieting and standing in front of mirrors and being horribly self-conscious about their appearance every summer when it was swimsuits and beach barbecues and midnight swims and boys. They’d worried about thighs and boobs and stomachs and—God, they’d been young, she thought. All the things that had mattered to them back then didn’t matter at all compared to the real stuff. She wished she could have told her teenage self that one day she’d be grateful to have a body that just worked and allowed her to run on the beach, and swim in the sea, make love with Greg and give birth to her daughter. Her anxieties had been nothing, but back then they’d seemed like everything.

“It hasn’t been the easiest time.”

It was such a ridiculous understatement that Mel laughed and to her relief Joanna laughed, too, and that laughter warmed the atmosphere.

They’d always had the ability to make each other laugh. One look was often all it had taken. A shared thought. Reading each other’s minds. There had been times when they’d choked at the dinner table, and times when they’d been thrown out of class. Mel missed that. She had plenty of friends she laughed with, but nothing that came close to that rib-aching, agonizing laughter that had come from being with Joanna.

“Do you want to come in?” Finally Joanna smiled, and in that moment Mel caught a glimpse of the girl who had once been her best friend.

“Do you want me to come in?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it would be better than yelling at me outside?”

“No more yelling, I promise.” Mel shrugged. “I think I might have been bottling that up.”

Joanna’s eyes gleamed. “Seemed like it.”

“But hey, if yelling gets me a tour of the new place, then I can yell some more.”

“You want a tour? As long as you’re prepared. It’s nothing like the old place.”

Was she expecting judgment? “I wouldn’t need a tour if it was still the old place, would I?” Mel remembered the basket in the car. “Wait just a moment.” She sprinted back to the car. She wished now she’d added one of Rhonda’s chicken pot pies. She tried to resist them, but Joanna looked like she needed the calories.

“I picked up a few things from the farmers market.” She handed the basket to Joanna. “I didn’t know what you wanted. Or if I’d get to talk to you. You probably already have all the food you need. Or maybe this isn’t gourmet enough for you. You probably cook everything from scratch.”

“It was thoughtful of you to bring something.” Joanna looked inside the basket. “Cookies!”