“Maybe,” I say, thinking about my old friend Skip Hudson, who is happily living out his life as a gay man in Atlanta. I wonder if Angela felt isolated all those years married to Dwight. I sense an undercurrent of bitterness in her that I don’t understand. I remind myself that despite our two visits, Angela and I still know next to nothing about each other’s lives in the last thirty years.

Still, I want to know more.

“Listen,” I say, trying to sound casual, “I’m going to be over here again sometime next week. Is it all right if I call you?”

“Of course,” she says, her face serious as she briefly touches my arm.

“Thanks for breakfast.”

Though her hand is gone in an instant, it is as if I have been given an

electric shock. As I head north for my meeting at the Ting family home on Peach, I recall the pressure of her mouth on mine and wonder if our kiss meant anything at all to her. It did once, but three decades is a long time to try to jump-start a battery. I can’t tell if we are starting a new relationship or resuming an old one. Though there is much that is familiar about Angela, she is not the same, but I can’t put my finger on it. Perhaps, it is simply grief in addition to her uncertainty about the future that gives such an explosive feel to her personality. Though she was not emotional as she was yesterday, there was an edginess that I sensed beneath the surface.

Time has given her a dimension that a younger woman can’t match.

Whatever it is, it’s pulling at me.

As I near Tommy’s old neighborhood, I think of how undeveloped this area of the town was when Willie and Doris Ting first built out here. I would occasionally give Tommy a ride home from the tennis courts and was always struck by how isolated they were. Though their house is literally on the edge of town, it is now in the most impressive residential area of Bear Creek, new houses having been built one by one until the development was full. Each brick home is on two lots and surrounded by magnificent shade trees. I pull into the circular drive wondering how much the home is worth.