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enterprise—gated communities, tiny strip malls—flourish. If human life flourishes up
     on that slope of the mountain proper, there is very little sign of it.
    It was to Burnt Mountain that Finch Wentworth brought his bride, still in her car-spilling souffle of seed-pearled white satin,
     for their honeymoon. They were headed for a small colony of old cottages in an enclave called Burnt Cove that rode the ridge
     of Burnt Mountain down to an icy little blue inlet of War Woman Lake. Burnt Cove had been the wilderness retreat for a small
     number of Atlanta families for many generations. There had always been Wentworths in the Cove, Finch said.
    “Is it private?” Crystal asked when he told her about it, envisioning gates mounted with carved eagles and a discreet log
     sentry house. Beyond it, bridle paths and a low stone clubhouse.
    “Jesus, no… or I don’t think so, anyway,” Finch said. “It’s just kind of always been the same bunch of people. I don’t guess
     all that many new people would appreciate the Covenow. It’s seen better days. But I’ve always loved it. I used to come here with Dad a lot when I was a kid. You know I told
     you it’s not fancy, honey, but it’s all I have time for in the rest of Christmas break. Later on, in the summer, I’ll take
     you anywhere you want to go. Mexico, the Caribbean… anywhere.”
    “The Piedmont Driving Club?”
    “Food’s awful and the nearest wildlife are the mosquitoes on the tennis court.”
    He laughed, liking it that his new wife was relaxing enough to joke about the lares and penates of his privileged life.
    She wasn’t.
    A gravel road dipped down into the hollow that sheltered the approach to Burnt Cove. The road wound around a kudzu-garlanded
     shack—”caretaker’s place,” Finch said—and past a small, canted white board church. Its bare, swept yard had a hand-lettered
     sign that read:
Holiness Church of the Pentecostal Fire.
    “Isn’t that great?” Finch said, looking over at Crystal. Her face was blank.
    “Is that where y’all go to church?” she said finally.
    “Well, no,” he said, looking closer to see if she was still making jokes. It was impossible to tell.
    “It’s just an old mountain Pentecostal church; I’m not sure who goes to it. I’m sure of this, though: Whoever they are, they
     holler. It’s been there as long as I’ve been coming up here. I just kind of like it.”
    “We could have gotten married there,” Crystal said, and this time she was smiling.
    He laughed aloud with relief. “Oh, right. That wedding would have blown the roof right off old Holiness.”
    “It was pretty, wasn’t it?” Crystal said dreamily.
    “It was spectacular,” he said.
    The little gray stone Methodist church in Lytton sat on the corner across from the post office. It was as old as the town,
     well over a century. Crystal had fretted when her mother insisted on having the wedding there.
    “It won’t hold half of Finch’s friends and family,” Crystal said. “And everything inside is all dull and…
old.
And Reverend Lively snorts when he inhales.”
    “It won’t look dull and old when I’m through with it,” Leona said. “And Reverend Lively won’t have enough to say to snort.
     Besides, a woman is
always
married in her own church. Where were you thinking of having it, the Piedmont Driving Club?”
    “Well, the Wentworths go to St. Philip’s Cathedral in Buckhead….”
    “You would be laughed out of Atlanta,” Leona said, and that was that.
    True to her word, the Methodist church looked neither dull nor particularly old on the day of the winter solstice, when Crystal
     Thayer married Finch Wentworth. It looked, as Caroline Wentworth said privately to her friend Ginny Hughes, “like a Christmas
     sale at Rich’s. A good one, of course.” The old wooden pews were garlanded in pink poinsettias and the altar was forested
     with them. Ruby the florist had almost lost her mind rounding up enough pink poinsettias to