Page 4

Chapter 3

E xactly two weeks later, on a perfect Friday afternoon, Peter, Mere, and I rolled into Juliana, Georgia.

Peter had driven the nine hundred miles from Manhattan to northwest Georgia in our newly purchased, gnat-encrusted Subaru Forester pulling the rented U-Haul behind it at approximately fifty miles an hour. Although my husband could navigate the MTA or hail a taxi with his eyes closed, behind the wheel he apparently turned into a ninety-year-old grandma, in no hurry at all. I didn’t mind. Mere and Ramsey were cuddled in the back seat, Ramsey having declined his crate somewhere back in New Jersey. Peace permeated the car. We would arrive at our destination in exactly the right amount of time. Even the journey to our new home was heaven.

Juliana was only a couple of hours northwest of Atlanta, but it might as well have been a hundred, the way the town seemed totally separate, insulated and cut off from the sprawl of the big city. After exiting I-75, it took a good twenty minutes of winding, two-lane country roads past boiled peanut and tomato and peach stands to get to the square. But when we finally arrived, I was dumbstruck all over again, as if I was seeing the place for the first time.

Or maybe I was just seeing it through Mere’s eyes. From the squeals of delight coming from the back seat, it would appear that to her, Juliana looked like something out of a fairy tale or a movie studio backlot. She kept calling out for me to look—at the small houses on the outskirts of town, at the Dairy Queen with the old-fashioned dip cone for a sign, the white clapboard church with a picket-fenced cemetery.

I rolled all four windows of the Forester down and let the soft April air flow over us. It was laden with the scent of flowers and cut grass and charcoal. A frisson of excitement passed through me as I hungrily took in the sights of the town. It was perfect. Puffy white clouds drifted over the horizon, slowing my blood pressure to match its rhythms. While the town wasn’t exactly bustling, there were a handful of people out, walking up and down the wide, shady sidewalks. There were even a few golf carts buzzing around the square.

I wanted to laugh in anticipation, cry in relief, scream with joy. Like I’d written in the brief, one-page letter I mailed to Mom at the compound in Maine, I couldn’t wait to start our new life. I hadn’t gotten a reply to that letter yet, let alone an email or phone call, but it didn’t matter. At the going-away dinner my friends from Billie’s had thrown me, I’d been showered with plenty of love.

Peter cruised into the downtown area, with its neat square, red brick courthouse, and bronze statue of the eponymous Juliana with the butterfly on her finger. Around the pedestal of the monument, the black fountain shot out multiple sprays of water. I scanned the main streets that extended from the square, each of them neat as a pin and lined with the wrought-iron street lamps. Minette Street, Cleburne Street, Dalzell Avenue, and then a host of others that Bonnie St. John had told us were named after the other founding families.

Mere’s nose was smashed against the window. “Look, there’s a Street Road. Why they didn’t just—”

“—call it Street Street?” Peter said.

I let out a short laugh. “Okay, stop it. No jokes. Seriously, y’all , we’re officially Southerners now. Juliana is our town, and we will be proud of it. Got it?”

Peter glanced at me with warm eyes and that wry expression that never failed to make me feel protected and understood. I covered his hand with mine, and we squeezed at the same time. I leaned my head back and breathed out every bit of the pain of the last few years. Enough of grieving the past. It was time to focus on what lay ahead.

“Go around again, Daddy,” Mere said, and he did.

I checked out the vacant storefronts that dotted the town square. Bonnie had told me there was no rush to choose one, but I didn’t want to lose out on the perfect spot. And clearly, the decision wasn’t going to be easy. The spaces all looked incredibly inviting, and lots of them were big enough for a restaurant. I’d have to do some serious reconnaissance in the next few days. As soon as I chose a spot, the new business grant, thirty thousand dollars, would be deposited in my bank account.

And then . . .

Then I’d be busy again. Then I could fill my mind with the chaos of starting a new restaurant. Stop obsessing over Mom. Focus on Mere and Peter. Restart my life.

I gazed out the window, allowing myself to be enraptured by every sight Juliana was offering me. Trees shaded every corner of the square. Gardenias and impatiens and ivy spilled out of pots clustered on the sidewalk. Rows of old, arched brick storefronts with tile thresholds flanked each street. There was an antique store, a lawyer’s office, a florist, an insurance office. The small hotel, Juliana Inn, with three floors of lacy, wrought-iron balconies. A bar with a sign that read THE DREDGES. And on one corner a perfectly preserved, old-fashioned movie theater, proclaiming itself on a huge sign lined with lights, THE JULIANA. Its marquee showed a double bill of Pleasantville and The Sandlot . The only thing missing was a bookstore, a situation which undoubtedly would be rectified eventually.

When we passed a barbershop with a spinning barber pole out front, Mere piped up. “Mama, what’s that thing for?”

“Good question,” I said, and googled it on my phone. I swallowed when I read the origin of the helical poles: they indicated that bloodletting occurred at an establishment. The blue stood for the veins, the red for blood, and the white for the bandages applied to patients. I slipped my phone under my leg. “It just means that’s where you can get a haircut.”

Peter turned left onto Dalzell Avenue. We drove past a tiny brick post office and Laundromat, then two more blocks of quaint, gingerbread houses. American-made SUVs were parked in most driveways. American flags waved from the same porches. Bikes and scooters lay on front walks. I saw a handful of kids tossing a football.

I was already dreaming about the new café. What I was going to call it. Not Billie’s. Billie’s was the blue-tiled, hole in the wall in the East Village, with the stained-glass windows over the front and back doors. It had been a punk bar in the eighties, a dry cleaner in the nineties, a macaron shop in the aughts, and then a pet groomer’s before I signed the lease. Billie’s was my staff. Billie’s was the regulars. For a couple of weeks, Billie’s was Pacino’s favorite place to sit with an espresso and crepe, and the place where Taylor Swift supposedly met up that one time with her secret boyfriend. I couldn’t call another place by the same name.

Billie’s had been my first love, my first heartbreak, the place I dreamed might make me a millionaire and a celebrity chef. Prepandemic, I was on my way to reaching that dream. We were fully booked with reservations from eight o’clock to ten at night. Walk-ins, ever hoping for a last-minute cancellation, typically waited on line for over two hours with no complaints. My applesauce hotcakes, sage sausage and egg frittata, and specialty cocktail, a fig-infused Paloma, got written up by every food critic in the tristate area.

I rolled out new dish after dish. There were wild seasonal coffees and cocktails, twists on breakfasts from every corner of the globe. Medialunas from Argentina, Middle Eastern Haleem, hagelslag on toast from the Netherlands. It seemed like I could do no wrong—breakfast, lunch, and dinner were always packed.

And then the goddamn virus. After a couple of weeks of struggling to transition to takeout, I made the decision. I prepared one last family meal for my staff, my friends, and while I was doing it, came the lockdown order, effective the next day. I closed up shop that night. Called it a furlough because that’s what everyone was calling it, but I knew better. People were scared. People were sick, even dying, so I decided there was only one thing to do. Let Billie’s die with them.

“Mere,” Peter said, shaking me loose from the memories. “Hold on to Ramsey. We’re almost there, and I don’t want him lost in all the luggage.”

Dalzell Avenue had turned into Route 140, which ran parallel to the river, the Etowah, a golden-brown ribbon of water bordered by mossy banks and overhanging trees. Three-quarters of a mile down the road, we caught sight of a bridge made of huge old beams and riveted steel that spanned the water. On the opposite side of the river, partially obscured behind a row of trees, sat the old mill, a deserted, shingle-and-stone building with a huge paddle wheel that turned steadily.

I noticed a sheriff’s vehicle parked next to the old structure. A young man in uniform was rolling up yellow tape that appeared to have been strung out between a stand of trees and a stone building. I straightened, peering out the window, trying to get a better view between the trees. Had there been an accident? Some sort of crime? I started to say something but then stopped myself. Peter hadn’t noticed it, nor had Mere. No reason to call attention to it.

Just past the mill, we turned left onto an unmarked dirt road. Peter slowed as the Subaru and U-Haul bumped over the road, and we wound around clumps of pines and rolling fields. There was a huge, twisted oak that spread its gnarled branches over the road, then the ground rose gently. At the top of the swell, the house finally came into view. Peter braked, letting the car idle, and we all stared.

The stately Italianate Victorian house, nestled between towering magnolias, rose up like a perfect wedding cake. White with black shutters and doors, high windows, and a wide porch, it appeared to have been freshly painted. They must’ve done that last week. Everywhere I looked, I saw triple-arched windows, stained glass mullions, intricate wooden corbels, sparkling in the sun. Someone had mown the grass out front and planted a simple bed of lantana and petunias on either side of the front steps.

It was even more beautiful than I remembered.

“Wow,” Mere said, craning her neck and visoring one hand over her eyes to block the bright sunlight. “We live in a mansion.”

I glanced over at Peter. He had an odd look on his face. “Peter? You okay?”

He shivered, like I’d startled him. “I guess I didn’t remember it being so big.”

“We’re going to have to hire a house cleaner,” I said. “A very energetic one.”

Peter stepped on the gas, and the car lurched forward. In front of the house, he switched off the ignition and we all climbed out, stretching and taking in the sight of our new home. In every direction, green fields met forests. Wildflower-dotted hills rose in the distance, meeting the wide blue sky. The sun was warm, and the air smelled sweet, redolent with some kind of blooming flower I didn’t recognize.

At that moment, Ramsey shot out of the car and streaked around the far side of the house, to the paradise beyond.

“Ramsey!” Mere took off after him.

“Mere, no!” I yelled, but Peter caught my arm.

“Let her go.” He spread his arms wide, to the rolling fields and the woods beyond them. “She’s safe.”

I let out my breath. I’d have to get used to letting my daughter out of my sight. We were in the country now. It was safe. I looked around the left side of the house. An old black sedan was parked there, behind the one fantastically twisted oak tree that hunched among the magnolias. No one had mentioned there’d be someone to meet us. The key was supposed to be under the welcome mat.

After a few moments, Mere reappeared around the opposite corner of the house. She was still running, but now she was crying, too. I could see her red face as she got closer.

“Ramsey’s gone!” she wailed and flung her little body at me.

I caught her. She smelled like sleep and cat and French fries. “He’s not lost, baby. He’s just exploring.”

“But he’s an inside cat.”

“We’re in Georgia now, so he can be an outside cat, too.”

She turned her flushed, teary face up to me. “He doesn’t know how to be an outside cat.”

“Sure, he does. It’s instinct, in all cats. He’s out there right now, remembering everything he has to do to take care of himself.” I smoothed her hair. “Why don’t you run up there to the house and make sure you leave your scent everywhere, so Rams can find you when he’s ready to come back?”

She gave me a doubtful look but turned and approached the steps. I watched her gingerly mount them then walk along the porch, her hand trailing over the rail. Her face looked grim, lips pressed together like she was trying not to cry. I turned to Peter, but he was busy at the back of the U-Haul, unloading the boxes. It would be fine. Ramsey would come back. We’d all get used to the space. The freedom. The quiet.

I lifted my eyes to take in the massive house again, to let it sink in. It was built in 1870, after the war—that being the Civil War, the event which I’d come to realize was the date everyone down here kept time by—by the young town doctor, Silas Dalzell. He married one of the Minette girls, one of Juliana’s younger sisters. Alfred Minette, the father, gave them the land and built the house as their wedding gift. Four bedrooms, four baths. All manner of drawing rooms and parlors and even a conservatory. There was a new roof, updated plumbing and electric, and the place was furnished, mostly from the original owner’s pieces.

Bonnie had told me the house had belonged to either a Dalzell or Minette until the 1970s when it was abandoned, furniture and all, by Oxford Dalzell when he divorced his first wife and moved closer to town. After that it moldered gently, peacefully, until the mid-1980s when the most recent owner, an older widower named George Davenport, purchased it. Davenport spent quite a bit of money refurbishing the systems and patching up the foundation.

“What happened to Mr. Davenport?” I had asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. A house that beautiful had to have a catch.

“One of his great-grandchildren moved him to an assisted living place near them in Orlando. George Davenport was a sweet old man, healthy as a bull. But at the end, his mind wasn’t right, and his family wanted to be closer to him.” She added that he’d passed away a few years later.

On the porch, Mere was now rocking energetically down the line of chairs while Peter ferried our luggage up to the double, etched-glass front doors. I sensed movement above that, on one of the upper stories. I looked at a set of windows, triple arched, stained glass, right in the middle of the second story.

In the center arch stood a man with a head of woolly, white hair. He was dressed in a rumpled, beige-colored suit, complete with a lopsided, brown bow tie. He stood motionless in the window, staring down, it seemed, right at me. In his arms was Ramsey.