While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax

Breckenridge snorted as she reached for a wineglass. “After four years of hearing how many Advanced Placement classes he took, how high his test scores were, and how many schools were begging him to apply, it’s kind of hard to fathom.”
    “I know!” Marilyn Bender stepped up to give Claire a hug, then reached for a bowl of mixed nuts. “I ran into her at Kendra’s lacrosse game and she was going on about how happy he was at Georgia Southern after all and that he might not even want to transfer to Georgia later.” She rolled her eyes.
    There were titters of amusement as Claire joined a group ogling the sponge and marzipan cake that had been shaped into a four-poster bed with a bare-chested, pant unzipped version of billionaire Christian Grey leaning against it. Black lace panties and a short brown whip hung from the dining room chandelier. Invitations had been short suggestive emails and the signature drink was the Greyhound—a combination of vodka and grapefruit juice. Whether it was chick lit or S and M the River Run Book Club dearly loved a book that lent itself to a theme.
    “I know you didn’t get that cake at Kroger!” Marilyn said.
    “You’re right about that,” Amanda crowed. “I ordered it online and it arrived in a plain brown wrapper.”
    “Welcome back to the hinterlands!” Woman after woman hugged Claire and proclaimed how wonderful it was of her to come all this way—as if she’d moved thousands of miles from them instead of in town.
    “It’s exactly twenty-three-point-four miles,” Claire said the fourth time someone commended her on her fortitude. “If it’s not rush hour, it’s only thirty-five to forty minutes.”
    “But it’s always rush hour nowadays,” Amanda said. “I swear you have to be crazy to get on a highway anywhere in the metropolitan area between seven a.m. and seven p.m.”
    “Isn’t it weird to go from a three-bedroom Colonial to a studio apartment?” someone asked.
    “Do you really walk to the grocery store?” Lisa asked as if she’d claimed she’d walked on the moon.
    “I have. But driving is allowed,” Claire teased. “The Publix near me has a parking lot and everything.”
    “But what do you do if it rains?”
    “I’m guessing she gets wet or opens up her umbrella,” Amanda deadpanned. “Kind of like we do out here in the ’hood.”
    There was laughter, but Claire knew that in a place as dependent on the automobile as the Atlanta suburbs completing tasks on foot really was an alien concept. As they plied her with questions they looked at her warily as if the desire to throw off a life and start a new one might be contagious.
    “How’s Hailey liking it up in Chicago?” Diana Grayson asked.
    Claire launched into a story Hailey had told her about getting lost on the El and the group laughed, though she could tell from their expressions that they didn’t understand why her daughter had chosen to go to college in the Midwest any more than they understood why Claire had shed life as they knew it for a tiny condo in the middle of the city.
    The laughter and conversation flowed around her but didn’t quite touch her. She wasn’t sure how she could possibly feel so far removed from the life she’d lived for so long so quickly, but the long-awaited neighborhood clubhouse remodel, an email war about the landscaping for the front of the neighborhood, even home values already felt like ancient history. Another glass of wine or a Greyhound might have helped, but she was afraid of drinking too much, because when she left she wouldn’t be cutting through the Graysons’ yard and down two houses, she’d be driving two interstates to get back to the Alexander.
    “Your eyes are completely glazed over,” Kerry Morgan said with a laugh. “It’s too tacky of us to bore you with the same old neighborhood shit, when you’ve already shaken the red clay of River Run off those adorable new ballet flats you’ve got on. Let’s go grab those empty seats over