As the sun came up, people began to emerge and trickle outside, stripping down to their underwear and leaping into the pool. Two couples initiated a spirited chicken fight. I walked out onto the deck just in time to see Arch executing a perfect flip off the diving board, surfacing a few feet away from where he went in, right into Vanessa’s outstretched arms, whereupon they started necking with abandon. This seemed to set off some sort of chain reaction; within moments, all of the couples were making out in the pool. The sadness I felt watching Arch and Vanessa there, both of them so beautiful, felt beyond reckoning. I was drunk, of course, which didn’t help. But I was alone, and very lonely, and they had each other, and I knew then that they were a unit, a circle that was closed to me.

I went back inside and returned to Jamie and the juniors with the vodka. We sat at that table taking shot after shot. Jamie smoked cigarettes and told dirty jokes. A stereo was blaring a Van Halen album, but no one seemed to be listening. Upstairs, a caterer was laying out breakfast. We kept drinking until Alice and Melissa came down to tell us it was time to leave.

Arch and Vanessa were waiting for us in the Suburban. Arch sat behind the wheel. Jamie and I climbed in after our dates and took the two middle seats.

“You two reek,” Vanessa said.

I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t judge me,” I said.

We had to stop twice for Jamie to get sick. Finally, we reached Belle Meade. Arch dropped off Melissa and Alice. Both seemed relieved that neither Jamie nor I was capable of walking them to the door.

Back at the Haltoms’, Vanessa guided Jamie along the pathway toward the kitchen. Arch grasped my hand over his shoulder and led me into the carriage house. We found my mother in the middle of the floor, her eyes puffy and red, stuffing clothes into suitcases.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Get your things,” she said. “We’re leaving.”

“What do you mean, we’re leaving?” I said.

“Bonnie?” Mr. Haltom said. He was standing in the doorway behind us. He looked from my mother to Arch to me and back at my mother.

“I’m not afraid of her,” my mother said. “Not anymore.”

“I know you’re not,” he said.

“Mom?” I said.

“Archer, you and Charlie go back to the car,” Mr. Haltom said.

“Mom?” I said again.

Arch dragged me outside. He opened the car door and pushed me up onto the second seat. I had yet to gather the strength to sit up when I heard Mrs. Haltom shouting.

“Where do you think you’re going, Archer?”

“Hi, Aunt Cici,” Arch said.