Once, when Roberta’s family drove to Florida for a vacation (Sherri was so jealous; it was a big deal to go anywhere farther than Des Moines), Roberta told Sherri that she’d convinced her parents to stop in Macon, Georgia, on their return drive because she wanted to lay flowers on the spot where Gregg’s brother Duane Allman had been killed by a truck carrying peaches, the tragedy that inspired their album Eat a Peach. Just a few blocks away was where bassist Berry Oakley had been killed in a separate motorcycle accident. Roberta said she’d stood in front of the old house the band lived in and waited in vain for Allman or guitarist Dickey Betts to emerge.

On the day Allman married Cher, Roberta wore all black to school, and then, when Cher filed for divorce just nine days later, she danced through the halls. “Now I can marry him.” She remained devoted to the Allman Brothers even after Ian came along and introduced her to punk rock.

Sherri loved the Allman Brothers because she loved Roberta. She admired Gregg Allman, too, but not for his looks—he was pretty with his soft lips and blue eyes, but too pretty for Sherri’s taste. What she admired about him was his musicianship. She and Roberta would lie on the shag rug in Roberta’s basement and listen to her Brothers and Sisters and At Fillmore East albums over and over again, the sound big, jazzy, and Southern. They had two drum sets, and Allman was the only rock and roller she knew of who played the organ. She’d read that he’d said playing the organ “is like kissing a lady.” She thought of that often when he rocked the pedals and the three-note chords. She wondered when Allman decided he could play whatever music he wanted, find his own sound, join a band, become an actual artist, do his own thing. Could he do that because he was a man, or because he was really that talented?

She took a fifteen-minute break and ran to the dressing room phone to call Roberta at her parents’ house, a number Sherri had known by heart most of her life. “Berta, are you sitting down? You’re going to die when you hear what I’m about to say.”

Roberta screamed at the top of her lungs.

The next day was her first day off in ages. Arthur was due to pick her up around noon, and she felt nervous about seeing him again. She wasn’t sure what it would be like—easy and passionate, or awkward and strange? She knew he’d be disappointed that she’d made other plans for later that night, but they’d have the afternoon together.