“No, I honestly don’t think about that summer,” Carolyn said evenly. “Not until you bring it up. If you want to know how I feel about it, I can only tell you that I loved part of it. I loved seeing you again, because we had been apart so long. But I didn’t like the feeling of being an outsider, somebody that everyone stared at. I didn’t like the feeling that you really didn’t want me there.”

“I’m sorry you felt that way,” I said.

“You asked the question.”

“And it’s unfair of me,” I told her. “It’s just that this may be the last time I come here. There’ve been a lot of memories, that’s all.”

She was firm in her reply: “Well, enjoy them, because you’re right, it is the last time you go up there, unless I go. I’ve had enough of that place, and everything about it, dragging you away from where you belong.”

“My God, Carolyn, you won’t ever understand it, will you?”

There was a pause. “Do you know something, Bobo, I could say the same of you, couldn’t I? Call me before you leave,” she said calmly.

From the manner that Maggie and Paul Charles greeted me at the Dollhouse Lodge and Restaurant, I was certain that Lila had called and alerted them. “The artist friend from Georgia,” Lila would have said in reminder. “You can’t miss his accent.”

Maggie and Paul bubbled warmth. They embraced Amy as they would embrace an old friend and then guided her on a tour of Maggie’s doll collection. The way they introduced the dolls—name, place of origin, age, costume, personality—made them sound like happy, make-believe parents from a children’s book with bright illustrations and lyrical stories.

Amy was impressed and I imagined the three of them as good friends in the future, being together for dinners and concerts, for trips into the city, making late-night telephone calls with flutterings of distress or joy, joining in laughter on holidays, exchanging gifts for special occasions. I knew that Amy would lead her grandchildren on the same tour of dolls that we were taking. She would lift one and hold it gently and tell her grandchildren that this was her favorite, and she would tell them the story of the doll in whispered awe.

Maggie asked Amy where she lived and Amy told of the house she had inherited from her mother.

“Oh, I know the place,” Maggie enthused. “You’re having some work done, aren’t you? I saw some trucks there a couple of days ago.”

“It needs it,” Amy said. She added, “I’ll either move up here permanently one day, or I’ll sell it.”