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lanterns.
    Very Stonehenge chic.
    Juxtaposed with the Fred Flintstone posts was a very contemporary pair of raised cameras focused on the drive and a discreet sign that let visitors know Big Brother was watching.
    But where was the sign announcing, BELLE MEADE : LUXURY LIVING FOR THE GOLDEN YEARS or something to that effect? I’d half-expected a Times Square-worthy billboard or Las Vegas-style neon lights after Mother’s glowing descriptions. There wasn’t anything of the sort, not in plain sight.
    Maybe it wasn’t actually a retirement community for well-to-do widows and widowers. Maybe it was really an insane asylum for women who’d cochaired one Big Steer Ball too many and had gone over the edge.
    If that were the case, I’d have to book a room for Cissy.
    Ha ha . Sometimes I cracked myself up.
    “Is somethin’ funny?” my mother asked, and I realized I’d chuckled out loud. Maybe I was taking that stress book too seriously. Or else I was becoming delirious from the lack of food in my belly.
    “Not a thing,” I said and closed my mouth, still staring out the window.
    Mature trees that must’ve cost a bundle to transplant bowed above a lengthy brick drive that made for slow going, but didn’t give me whiplash the way speed bumps would have. Beyond the tunnel of branches, I could see an enormous pillared mansion, and I felt as though I’d been transported to Twelve Oaks from Gone With the Wind . I could easily picture us arriving for a barbecue with Ashley and Melanie Wilkes.
    Fredrik slowed the car further as we reached a security checkpoint beside which was parked a golf cart with BELLE MEADE painted on its side in scripted letters. Hmm, how fast could that baby go in a chase? Five miles per hour? Ten?
    A white-haired fellow in a tan uniform ducked his head out the window to nod us through, which made me wonder if all chauffeur-driven Bentleys were allowed to pass, or if they had Mother’s license plate recorded in their system.
    “I believe that was Bob,” Cissy murmured. “Or was it Sam? I can’t keep them straight.”
    So they had real-live security guards on duty? I was already impressed, and we were just on the driveway.
    It stunned me to think that this was something Annabelle Meade had created, after establishing another such site in Austin, according to Mother.
    Nope, it hardly seemed possible; but then I hadn’t seen her in years. After our camp days, for a while, there’d been an occasional phone call or letter before we’d left our respective prep schools and headed in different directions (she, to the University of Texas in Austin, and I to Columbia College in Chicago). The last time I’d actually laid eyes on her, we’d barely been teenagers, and we’d hardly discussed our ambitions for the future much beyond the end of camp. She must’ve changed a lot from the insecure girl I’d known, and I realized I was looking forward to our impromptu reunion, for curiosity’s sake, if nothing else.
    My daddy used to say that life was a circle, and that seemed to fit in this case. The death of my mother’s lifelong friend was about to lead to my reacquaintance with my former Camp Longhorn cabinmate.
    But then despair and joy were just flipsides of the same coin, right? (No, not another of my father’s sayings. I’d plucked that gem from the broken belly of a fortune cookie when Malone and I had ordered takeout a few nights back.)
    Mother started pointing things out as we approached the pillared façade: the wing on the right that housed the salon, spa, and gym, and the streets lined with minimansions to the left, which she informed me were private townhouses with attached garages. The landscaping was lush, lots of flowering shrubs and plantings that doubtless required a team of green thumbs to tend.
    “Bebe could let down her guard here,” Cissy remarked, and I shifted my gaze to her, watching the play of emotion on her face. “After living alone for years, albeit with a devoted staff,