Frances’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. For a moment, the carrot souffle hung in the air like a teeny orange sun. Then Frances lowered her fork to her plate. “Am I going to be sorry, Patricia Anne, in September?”

What she was talking about was the fact that she had just retired from Alexander High after a career of thirty years, the last fifteen as counselor. I had retired the year before from the same school where I had taught English for thirty years.

“The day after Labor Day, you’ll be dancing a jig.”

“You’re lying, but thank you.” Frances picked up her fork again. “You and I are both such old war horses, we’ll chomp at the bit for the rest of our lives when we hear a school bell.”

“True. But it’s time to find out what’s beyond those school walls.”

“I know. But I’ll miss the kids. Hell, I’ll even miss the lunchroom food.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “you will.”

Frances is one of the most elegant looking women I’ve ever known. She’s sixty, just a few months younger than I am, but she looks, maybe, fifty, thanks to a discreet visit to a plastic surgeon in Atlanta a few years ago. I had gone with her and had been sorely tempted to have my eyes done. When school started and everyone told Frances how “rested” she looked, I wished I had given in to temptation. Now I thought that maybe that could be my adventure. Have everything lifted, tightened, lightened. Have my naturally curly hair straightened and tinted Marigold. Wear it back in a chignon like Frances.

“Looks like he would have known Haley would want a family, young as she is,” Frances said, getting back to the subject “Men!”

“None of Mary Alice’s three older husbands balked at her getting pregnant. In fact, they were all delighted.” I forked up the last of the carrot souffle. “Of course that was Mary Alice, not Haley. She probably didn’t give them a chance to balk.”

Frances laughed. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine. She was in a swivet yesterday because she had a date with a man who wasn’t ninety. She was nervous about going out with some man who is actually a few years younger than she is. Says she’s going to start counting backward on her birthdays.”

“Good for her. Is she still on the museum board?”

“And symphony board. And Arts Council. Even the Humane Society. She was on TV a couple of weeks ago. You know those spots where they show the baby animals and try to get people to adopt them? She had a kitten that clawed hell out of her. The curator at the museum adopted it. He said you had to appreciate an animal with courage like that.”