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more than a few days this summer that she hadn’t been sick.
    And she was tired of it. Her own blue eyes stared back at her from the mirror. Did she really need to force herself to go to church this morning when instead she could put her pajamas back on, climb into bed, and stay there the rest of the day? Kiki would probably even make her some chicken soup—with the baked dumplings on the side.
    Guilt overrode any thoughts of indulging her laziness. Here she was, a perfectly capable thirty-two-year-old, thinking about creatingmore work and worry for her eighty-two-year-old grandmother. Besides, after this relapse, which included spending four days in the hospital, she’d already missed the last two Sundays. The records were probably a mess. And she needed to follow up with anyone who’d visited during her absences—because no one else would have thought to do it since she hadn’t reminded Patrick to get someone on it.
    With her Bible and spiral-bound sermon-notes journal tucked in the crook of her left arm, she grabbed her purse, keys, and sunglasses off the table by the front door. After checking to make sure she had at least half a pack of tissues in the small handbag, she got in the car—and felt like she was sitting in a hole. The backrest was halfway into the backseat of the small sedan.
    Her skin tingled. Bobby—he’d driven her car last, and leaning the seat back must have been the only way he’d been able to fit into the compact vehicle. She readjusted it, once again weighing the merits of crawling into bed and staying there. Forever.
    No. She would face him eventually. Might as well be today. Just like taking off a bandage—best to do it quickly to cause the least amount of pain.
    She checked the clock. Good. She had enough time to stop for coffee. And God must have thought it was okay, too, because someone pulled out from a parallel spot on Twelfth Avenue South just as she drove up to The Frothy Monkey. With no traffic coming, she hung a U-turn in the middle of the street and slipped her car into the vacated spot.
    Several people she knew from the neighborhood greeted her from their tables on the front porch. She pushed her glasses up to the top of her head, shoving her mass of curly hair back away from her face.
    A few minutes later, she fought to get the glasses untangled from the snarls of hair with one hand while holding her large, sugar-free, fat-free caramel latte in the other. Mission accomplished, she waved at her neighbors and turned the car around in the middle of the road again to go to church. For the thousandth time, she wished Becker’sBakery hadn’t gone out of business. For the first couple of years she lived in the 12 South area, it had been the perfect place to stop to get pastries to take to church or work. Of course, she loved the table and chairs she’d gotten for her back porch at the furniture store that had moved into the old bakery building after Becker’s closed, but she missed the ease with which she used to buy snacks for everyone.
    This area had changed so much, just in the fourteen years she’d lived in Nashville. What must Bobby think of it, coming back to a city nearly half again the size it was when he left? She was still surprised by some of the changes that had happened, seemingly overnight, especially in areas like the Gulch and the Demonbreun Avenue corridor.
    Though traffic on Wedgewood was minimal, she got caught at the light at Sixteenth Avenue South, giving her time to enjoy a few sips of the latte. Last April during the Country Music Marathon, her cousin and his band had played on a stage set up in the median triangle here, between Belmont University and Music Row. She wished she’d felt well enough to walk over and hear them play. Even after fourteen years, her maternal aunt and cousins still felt like strangers to her. Of course, only the oldest of her four cousins, Lee, lived here—he’d just started his sophomore year at Belmont.
    The light changed, and