The restaurant’s air pressed in on me with the weight of water pushing me down so I couldn’t get to the surface where there was oxygen, voices, sunlight. I swam through the tables with the buoy centerpieces, past the shellac-thick bar, around the swinging lanterns, until I returned to the table with Sadie and the kids. She looked at me. “You okay?”

I nodded, and then I cried tears that had never been wept—tears pent up in some unknown place for over twelve years. I don’t know why it sometimes takes that long to feel something, but that’s how long it took to understand and feel what I had lost: that sweetness in Hutch O’Brien.

Move on … .

Which is of course what I’d done. Moved on.

Right?

Seven

Seven

I made my mandatory appearance at the Broomes’ fiftieth anniversary party because they are my parents’ next-door neighbors, because they are my friend Annie’s parents, and because, well … because the firmly grounded social graces I don’t remember learning—I’ve just known them—were planted so deeply in my mental maneuvering that I dressed in a navy Tory Burch dress, pulled my curls into a loose ponytail, and swiped on my makeup before driving to the Broomes’ home in Buckhead.

Buckhead. The part of Atlanta that is still Atlanta—meaning it has the mailing address: Atlanta, Georgia. There are what seem like hundreds of outlying neighborhoods—inside and outside of I-285—where people live and say, “Yes, I live in Atlanta.” This is a point of contention with the old Atlanta crowd, those “from” Atlanta, those born at Piedmont Hospital or Crawford Long, those whose parents and grandparents belong to the Piedmont Driving Club or Cherokee Town and Country Club—preferably both.

OTP they call those who live “outside the perimeter” of I-285, and when their children move to Marietta or Duluth or Peachtree Corners, they act as if they must pack an overnight bag to drive under the asphalt circle of spaghetti junction and then stop at a rest stop before reaching their destination in a suburban-gated neighborhood.

There are those who say that Peachtree Street once stood for the real Atlanta, the Atlanta of Gone With the Wind and Mayor Hartsfield, yet now the road changes into Peachtree Industrial or Peachtree Parkway and then continues to run into forever. For now, though, Peachtree Street led only to the Broomes’ driveway. I sat in my car for a moment and stared at my childhood home next door.

When my gaze returned to the Broomes’ house, I saw Sadie and Annie were walking toward the front door. They stopped and waved, as if they were in a homecoming parade. I was meeting Rusty there, as he’d be coming from a meeting. I went to greet my friends.

“You look amazing,” Sadie said as I joined them at the front door.