Chapter 17
Maggie woke to a thin gray light just beginning to slip through the edges of the curtains in Barbara’s guest room. For a moment, she lay very still, listening—not for anything in particular, just listening. The house was quiet and heavy.
It made her feel…like she didn’t belong. Not in this house—she certainly didn’t belong here—but not in this state.
Which was shocking because Magnolia Fredericks Lawson was a Georgia peach, born and raised, from birth to seventy-eight to…
To something she didn’t want to think about yet.
She shoved the thought away and turned over, focusing on the present. But it nagged, that number—seventy-eight. Just a handful of months away from eighty. Then…
Stop it, Maggie. Age never affected her and she wasn’t about to start feeling her years now. But the truth was…there weren’t unlimited years left.
Was she living them in the right way? In the right place?
She sighed and turned over, forcing herself to think about more important things, like the whole Crista and Anthony situation.
There would be no spying today. And for that, she was grateful. The time here had been…fine. A lot of laughs with Jo, but nothing concrete. And today, there would be no half-formed plans, no hushed strategy over coffee, no careful timing or driving by buildings and pretending it was coincidence.
It had all gotten them nowhere, to be honest.
Today, Anthony would be working—he always worked—and even if he weren’t, they were tired. Bone tired.
The fact was, they’d been on this wild goose chase for too long. They had no proof, only suspicion and unease. Nothing that could be held up to the light and examined.
They’d drawn out the trip, called their kids to say they were alive and well, and went shopping, had lunch, or binged on Barbara’s Netflix, watching Love is Blind until they were blind.
Somewhere along the way, the mission they were on had lost its focus and urgency. She was ready to go back to Destin, but they’d decided to stick around for one more chance to try and follow Anthony, maybe this weekend.
Maggie heard the familiar and oddly comforting ding of a dish and pushed the covers back and sat up, feet touching the floor. Pulling a robe on more out of habit than the need to be warm, she padded out toward the kitchen and the sound of Jo Ellen the Mad Tea Drinker.
“Oh.” Maggie drew back when Jo turned, with nary a flamingo bathrobe in sight. “You’re all dressed. Jewelry and everything.”
Jo Ellen absently touched an earring as if just remembering she’d put them on. “Because you and I are going…somewhere.”
Oh, that sounded vague and Jo Ellen-ish. “Where?”
“It’s a surprise,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Which I hate.”
“I don’t care, Mags. I want to surprise you. Get your coffee, get dressed, and get ready to ride down memory lane.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes as realization and a few recent conversations exploded into an explanation. “You want to go back to UGA.”
“Oh, Mags!” Her whole body sank in disappointment and frustration. “You ruined the surprise.”
“It wouldn’t have been a surprise,” Maggie countered. “We talked about the Tri-Delt life for an hour last night and I could see you getting all misty and maudlin.”
“I don’t even know what that means, but didn’t you feel it? The call of the past?”
Maggie lifted a shoulder. “It’s been sixty years, Jo. Going back will just make us feel old.”
“We are old,” she said in her most pragmatic voice. “Please, Mags?” Jo Ellen scuttled closer and made praying hands, looking like Nolie when she wanted chocolate ice cream. “Pretty please? I had Oscar make us up an itinerary. It’s not a long drive and we could have fun.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“You never want to have fun,” Jo Ellen said, once again sounding like a seven-year-old.
“We didn’t come here for fun.”
“Pffft!” She flipped her hand, and turned to the coffee pot, pouring a cup with a flourish. “Take this to your room, get ready, and we can have lunch on campus.”
With a dubious look, Maggie took the coffee. “I’ll drink it right here, thank you very much, and while I do, I’ll talk you and Oscar out of your latest madness.”
“It’s not madness and we won’t be talked out of it.”
Maggie took the coffee but didn’t sit. She leaned against the counter instead, watching her friend the way one watched weather rolling in—equal parts curiosity and caution.
“We agreed,” she said, attempting a different approach, “that today was a down day. No plans. No driving past offices. No…whatever this is.”
“This,” Jo Ellen said, waving a hand, “is not spying. This is living.”
Maggie closed her eyes briefly. “That sentence alone makes me nervous.”
Jo Ellen laughed. “Relax. We’re just taking a little drive.”
“Athens is an hour and a half away,” Maggie said. “Two, if we take our time or get lost. That is not a little drive.”
Jo Ellen leaned her elbows on the counter, eyes intent. “Come on. Don’t you want to see what’s happened to the campus in all these years?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “I don’t have to. The place will be bigger and shinier and nothing will fit the way it used to. Our sleepy little college town will be gone, replaced by something loud and unrecognizable.”
“Don’t make me invoke Scarlett O’Hara,” Jo Ellen teased in a sing-song voice. “Fiddle de—”
Maggie wiped her hand through the air to halt the bad Southern accent. “Stop.”
“I will not. I’ll quote Scarlett O’Hara until we’re in the car.” She cleared her throat. “‘Is that…Tara? Oh, Melly! It’s still standing! And so are we.’”
Maggie snorted a laugh and shook her head, defeat in the air. “I need an hour to dress for this fiasco.”
“Yes!” Jo Ellen practically danced around the kitchen.
The drive slipped by without ceremony, Atlanta thinning into something greener, quieter.
Maggie found herself surprised by how much she recognized as they got closer, the landscape stirring something familiar despite the years layered on top of it.
It was bigger, yes. More developed. But it was still the very place that had transformed them from girls to women in the middle of the wildest decade in American history—the sixties.
Downtown Athens was louder than Maggie remembered, and way more crowded. Restaurants pressed shoulder to shoulder. Shops stood where there had once been empty lots. Apartment buildings—most of them ugly as sin—rose to make it all feel polished and urban and important.
They chatted about the differences, finding the occasional place that looked vaguely familiar, but mostly they were quiet as they neared campus.
And that was when the big differences faded and everything looked very much the same.
As if they had the thought at the same precise moment, Jo Ellen and Maggie exchanged a look, the satisfaction in Jo’s eyes matching what Maggie felt in her heart.
Thank goodness that so much of it was the same! Stately red brick, comforting arched windows, massive trees, and acres of grass. Yes, there were new buildings scattered around and plenty of students, considering it was July.
“Everyone does summer school now,” Jo Ellen mused, proving that her thoughts mirrored Maggie’s. “Straight for sorority row, Mags.”
“Why not?”
Maggie took a turn, driving from memory, and slowed the car as they meandered down Millidge Avenue. When they reached the cream-colored mansion with three triangles over the front door, both of them gasped softly.
“There it is,” Jo Ellen whispered.
Pulling to the curb across the street from the house, Maggie felt a sudden, unexpected rush of gratitude. It was still here! Yep, Jo was right. It was definitely a Scarlett O’Hara “pulls up to Tara after the war” moment.
The bones were the same. Updated, yes. Fresh paint, new windows, lovely black shutters, beautiful landscaping. But it was unmistakably their house.
“It looks…good,” Maggie sighed.
“Better than it did back then, even,” Jo Ellen said. “But it looks smaller than I remembered.”
“Nah. We’re just…bigger.”
They laughed, memories spilling out easily now as they stared.
Maggie suddenly saw herself sitting on the front steps until they unlocked the door, because she’d stayed out after curfew on a date with Roger…the night he told her he loved her.
She let her gaze move up to a small window on the side, knowing her bed had been in that room. There, she and Jo studied and laughed and shared clothes and experimented with rouge and confessed everything to each other.
“Remember rush weeks?” Jo Ellen mused. “All stress and drama.”
“And finals week,” Maggie countered. “More stress and drama.”
Jo Ellen leaned closer. “And the time we smoked a joint?”
Maggie snorted. “No stress, but plenty of drama.”
Sighing together, they sat quietly and looked at the house.
“You know, Jo, I don’t really care about getting old.”
“Good thing, hon, because that ship has left the port and could sink any day.”
“But I don’t want to…fritter the last chapter of our life,” Maggie finished in a serious tone that made Jo Ellen turn and look at her.
“No one’s frittering,” she said. “But I do like that you call it ‘our’ life.”
Maggie smiled, not even realizing she’d said that. “Are we going to look around?” she asked.
“You want to go in the house?” Jo Ellen’s eyes flashed. “They love it when legacy alums show up.”
“No, I don’t need to go in the house, but let’s go to campus and see Lyndon Hall.”
“Where we met! Ooh, good call.”
Maggie pulled out and made her way toward the heart of campus, finding a public lot, anticipation building as they walked in the shadow of the splendid old dorm where they’d met.
They walked toward the dozen stone steps that led to the main door, then up to the window on the second floor.
“That’s where it all began,” Jo Ellen whispered with nothing but love. “Mags and Jo, inseparable from the day I walked in and announced I was your randomly selected roommate.”
The front door popped open and two girls came out, looking…twelve. Maybe fifteen.