Chapter 2
I spend the morning packing a small bag, just enough for a few days, and canceling all of my appointments. It doesn’t take long, since I have only two appointments scheduled all week.
I choose my outfit carefully: a cream silk blouse, navy slacks, and low heels. I want to be professional without looking ostentatious. I do not have any idea what one wears to inherit a honky tonk, but I refuse to show up looking anything less than put together.
I shake off the thought. This has to be grief talking, or exhaustion, or the stress of impending financial ruin in front of all of Buckhead’s elite.
My mother loved me. She just showed it through correction rather than praise, through pushing me to be better rather than just accepting me for who I was.
And who am I really?
I lock the door and head to my car, a sensible three-year-old Lexus sedan that’s almost paid off. I enter Copper Creek, Georgia into my GPS and watch as the route pops up on the screen. Two hours north into the mountains, away from everything I know.
I have only been to the North Georgia mountains once, many years ago, when we had a meeting there at a winery. I do not remember much about it other than the beautiful blue hills off in the distance and the subpar wine that I drank.
“In five hundred feet, turn right,” the GPS announces.
I take a breath, check my mirrors, and pull out of the parking lot.
Whatever is waiting for me in Copper Creek, I will handle it with the grace and efficiency I have been bred to exude, just like my mother taught me. I will sign the papers, sell the bar, and return to my real life. Simple, straightforward, completely under control.
The GPS guides me toward the highway, and I do not let myself think too much about those birthday cards that were in the trash, or the great aunt who remembered me when no one else really did, or the dream about my mother turning away.
I just drive.
* * *
The GPS has obviously lost its mind.
“In one mile, turn right onto Possum Hollow Road,” the pleasant robotic female voice announces.
I grip my steering wheel tighter, convinced that I have somehow driven into an alternate dimension where road names are generated by some kind of random hillbilly word generator.
I have been driving for almost two hours, watching Atlanta’s gleaming skyline shrink in my rearview mirror until it disappears entirely, replaced by rural scenery.
The highway gave way to a state route, which gave way to a county road, which is now apparently giving way to something called Possum Hollow Road.
My Lexus feels very out of place here. The last twenty minutes have just been a parade of pickup trucks, some rusted, some lifted on enormous tires, but all of them making my sedan look like a lost tourist. Which I suppose I am.
I make the turn onto Possum Hollow Road and immediately hit a pothole that rattles my teeth. The road narrows, winding through the forest so thick that the trees form a canopy, dappling the pavement with shadows.
It is beautiful, I admit begrudgingly. The Blue Ridge Mountains rise in the distance, their peaks softened by a haze that makes them look like a watercolor painting.
I round a curve and nearly rear-end a tractor. Yes, an actual tractor. Moving approximately three miles per hour. It is driven by an elderly man in overalls who waves cheerfully at me as I slam on my brakes, my heart hammering against my chest.
There is no room to pass. The road is too narrow, the curve too blind.
I have no choice but to follow the tractor that would make a snail impatient.
“Recalculating,” my GPS says, with what I swear is a tone of judgment.
“I’m not lost,” I tell it, as if it understands me. “Just trapped behind agricultural equipment.”
The GPS, of course, does not respond. It has probably given up on me.
Eventually, after what feels like seventy years, the tractor turns onto a dirt path, and the driver tips his John Deere cap at me as I finally accelerate past him. I wave back, my mother’s training kicking in even when I am irritated beyond reason.
The road begins to descend, and suddenly I can see it. Copper Creek, Georgia, nestled in a valley below, like a toy village arranged on a Christmas train set.
It is small. Impossibly small.
I can see the whole downtown from up here, maybe three blocks of buildings clustered around what looks like a central square, surrounded by scattered little houses, and beyond those nothing but trees and mountains.
“You have arrived at your destination,” the GPS announces as I enter the city limits.
I have not arrived at my destination. I have arrived at what appears to be the set of a Hallmark movie, complete with American flags hanging from every lamppost and flower baskets so aggressively cheerful they border on hostile.
The main street is called, with stunning originality, Main Street.
I drive slowly, looking at all the storefronts. Dixie’s Diner. Sweet Tea Bakery. Mountain Hardware and Feed. The Clip Joint, which is a barber shop with an actual spinning pole. And something called Grits and Grind, which I assume is a coffee shop.
Every parking spot on Main Street is occupied by a pickup truck. Every single one.
I circle the block twice before I find a spot in front of the hardware store, and even then, I have to squeeze between a Ford F-150 and a Chevy truck that are both parked at angles suggesting that their drivers have never even heard of parallel parking.
I turn off the engine and sit there for a minute, staring at the town through my windshield.
A woman in a floral dress walks by carrying a casserole dish, waving at someone across the street.
Two men in flannel shirts lean against the hardware store, drinking coffee from paper cups and laughing.
A dog, unleashed, because apparently leash laws are suggestions here, trots down the sidewalk with a tennis ball in its mouth.
Everyone is moving slowly, deliberately, as if time itself is just taking a coffee break.
I check my reflection in my rearview mirror, smooth a non-existent flyaway from my French twist, and step out of my car.
The air hits me first. It is clean and cool, scented with pine. It is so different from Atlanta’s humid exhaust that I actually pause to breathe it in.
“Nice car,” someone says.
I turn to find an elderly woman looking at my Lexus with curiosity. She is wearing a purple tracksuit and sneakers, her white hair permed into tight curls.
“You lost, honey?”
“No, I, well, I have an appointment with Harlan Tucker, the attorney.”
The woman’s face lights up.
“Oh, you must be Mavis’s great-niece, the one from Atlanta.” She says “Atlanta” the way someone might say “Mars.” “Harlan’s office is right up those stairs there, just above the hardware store. Go on up, the door’s never locked.”
“Thank you, I—”
But she has already moved on, waving at somebody else, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with the feeling that everybody in this town will know my business before I can even finish climbing the stairs.
I find the door she pointed to, a narrow entrance wedged between the hardware store and something called Birdie’s Alterations, and climb a steep staircase that creaks under my low heels.
At the top, a frosted glass door reads Harlan Tucker, Attorney at Law, in gold lettering that is peeling at the edges.
I knock, and a voice calls out, “Come on in, it ain’t locked.”
The office is exactly what I expected and nothing like what I expected all at the same time. It is small, barely bigger than my studio’s supply closet, and every available surface is covered with papers, books, and file folders. It looks like somebody’s file cabinet exploded in here.
Bookshelves line three walls, stuffed with legal volumes and what appear to be local history books.
A ceiling fan rotates lazily overhead, desperately needing dusting and stirring the warm air.
The single window looks over Main Street, and through it I can see the town square with its white gazebo and towering oak trees.
Behind the massive wooden desk sits a man who looks like he was ordered out of a catalog of Southern lawyers.
He looks to be in his sixties, with a shock of white hair that seems to have its own weather system, wild eyebrows that move expressively as he looks up at me, and a rumpled seersucker suit that has seen better decades.
Reading glasses are perched on the top of his head, apparently forgotten as he squints at me.
“Ms. Whitfield.” He rises, extending a hand with genuine warmth. “Well, I’d recognize those cheekbones anywhere. You look just like your great-aunt did at your age. God rest her soul. Please, sit down.”
I shake his hand, firm grip, calloused palms, nothing like the limp fish handshakes of Atlanta’s professional class, and settle into the chair across from his desk. It is surprisingly comfortable, worn leather that has molded to accommodate countless clients before me.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Tucker. I have to admit, this was all very unexpected.”
“Harlan, please. We don’t stand on ceremony much around here.” He settles back into his chair, which creaks in protest. “I imagine it was unexpected. Mavis told me you probably didn’t know much about her.”
“I didn’t know anything about her, really. My mother…” I pause, trying to choose my words carefully. “My mother just didn’t discuss her.”
Harlan nods. “Your grandmother’s family was what we might call particular about propriety. When Mavis left Atlanta back in ’89 to buy a bar in the mountains, well, it did cause quite the scandal. They more or less pretended she ceased to exist.”
“But she kept sending me birthday cards.”
His eyebrows rise slightly. “Did she now? I didn’t know that, but it sounds like Mavis. Stubborn as a mule about the people she loved, even when they didn’t love her back.”
Something in my chest tightens. “I mean, I never got to read them. I’m embarrassed to say that my mother threw them away.”