The wine-tasting group was a success from the start. They began with chardonnays at the Phillips’s house, a beautiful old stone home on West Club Boulevard. It had been one of the best parties Ann had ever attended. She had drunk no fewer than eight glasses of chardonnay, and she nibbled on wonderful cheeses, and smoked salmon dip, and pâtés. (Where had Shell Phillips gotten her hands on such provisions? Charlotte, she said.) The night had ended with everyone dancing to Patsy Cline in the Phillipses’ ballroom. Who knew such sophisticated fun could be had in their little town? Ann had babbled on and on in the car on the way home. It was nice to expand their circle; their social life had needed a boost. Ann had noticed the other women’s outfits: both Shell Phillips and Helen Oppenheimer had looked more glamorous than Ann, who had worn a linen skirt that nearly reached her ankles. She would go shopping in Charlotte before next month’s wine group.

Merlots at the Lewises’.

Sauvignon blancs at the Greenes’.

Ann was desperate to host, and she wanted to do champagnes. Expensive choice, Jim said. Yes, it was expensive, but that was part of the appeal. Ann bought two cases of champagne; most of it she had to special order from the bottle shop: Veuve Clicquot, Taittinger, Moët et Chandon, Perrier-Jouët, Schramsberg, Mumm, Pol Roger. Ann killed herself over the hors d’oeuvres. She toasted and seasoned macadamia nuts; she prepared phyllo triangles with three fillings. She bought five pounds of shrimp cocktail.

A thousand dollars spent, when all was said and done, though she’d never admitted that to Jim.

The night should have been a great success, but from the get-go, things were off-kilter. Helen Oppenheimer showed up alone; Nathaniel was sick, she said. Then Helen proceeded to get very drunk. But really, Ann thought, they all got very drunk. It was something about the nature of champagne, or about the tiny, delicate (insubstantial) hors d’oeuvres Ann had prepared. The evening reached a point where Helen collapsed onto Ann and Jim’s sofa and said, “I’ve been lying to all of you. I’m sorry. Nathaniel isn’t sick. We’ve separated.”

There were expressions of shock followed by sympathy, followed by a lot of confessional talk, all of it too intimate for the nature of their group. However, Ann had willingly participated in it. She found the news of Helen’s separation titillating. It turned out that Helen, who worked in the development office at Fuqua, was desperate for children. And Nathaniel, who was a curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, refused to have any. Their sex life was a joke, Helen said. In fact, Helen suspected that Nathaniel was gay.

“It’s an irreconcilable difference,” Helen said. “It is THE irreconcilable difference. So I left.”

Ann and the other women agreed that Helen should have left. Helen was young, and so beautiful. She would find somebody else. She would have children.

When the night drew to a close, Helen was… well, if it hadn’t been for her tragic revelation, Ann might have called her a sloppy drunk. She couldn’t drive herself home. Ann volunteered Jim to drive her.

Ann remembered Olivia giving her googly eyes. As in What the hell is wrong with you? But Ann was too drunk herself to pick up on it.

She remembered that Jim had come home whistling.

But at the time, Ann thought nothing of it. She was happy that Helen had felt close enough to the group to reveal the truth. It meant the evening had been a success. And the next day everyone called to thank Ann and tell her it was the best wine tasting yet.

Cabernets at the Fairlees’.

Finally, it was Helen’s turn to host. She had moved out of the house that she had shared with Nathaniel and into one of the brand-new lofts built at Brightleaf Square. She invited everyone over for a port tasting. She would serve only desserts, she said, and cigars for the men.

Ann had been excited to go. She was dying to see what those lofts looked like, and she wanted to support Helen in her new life. It must have been difficult to stay in the wine-tasting group as the only single person among couples. But then Ryan got the chicken pox. On the Saturday of the port tasting, he had a temperature of 103 degrees and was covered in red spots. Jim had offered to stay home and let Ann go. But Ann wouldn’t hear of it. She didn’t really like port anyway, and Helen had made a big deal about the Cuban cigars she had gotten from a friend of hers living in Stockholm. Jim should go. Furthermore, Ryan was a mama’s boy, a trait that became even more pronounced when he was sick. Ann couldn’t imagine Jim staying home to deal with him.

“You go,” Ann said.

“You’re sure?” Jim said. “We could both stay home.”

“No, no, no!” Ann said. “That would make it seem like we’re rejecting Helen.”

“It will not seem like we’re rejecting Helen,” Jim said. “It will seem like our child has the chicken pox.”

“You go,” Ann said. “I insist.”

At the groomsmen’s house, breakfast was devoured, and everyone complimented Ann’s efforts in the kitchen-especially Autumn, who seemed surprisingly at ease with Ann, considering that Autumn was wearing no pants and had spent the night with Ann’s son after knowing him all of six hours. Ann cleared the dishes and began washing them at the sink, until Ryan and Jethro nudged her out of the way and told her to go relax.

Relax? she thought.

She headed upstairs to find Stuart.

Ann often wondered: If Jim had stayed home to take care of Ryan with the chicken pox and Ann had gone to the port tasting at Helen’s new apartment, would any of this have happened?

As it was, Jim went to Helen’s party and returned home at 3:20 in the morning. Ann had fallen asleep a little after ten after giving Ryan a baking soda bath, but she opened one eye to Jim, and the clock, when he climbed into bed. He smelled unfamiliar-like cigar smoke, and something else.

In the morning, Ann asked, “How was the party?”

Jim nodded. “Yep. It was good.”

In the afternoon, Olivia called. She said, “Helen Oppenheimer is trouble. She was all over every man at that party.” She paused. “What time did Jim get home?”

“Oh,” Ann said. “Not late.”

The affair had started that night, or at least that was what Jim confessed later. Ann had her suspicions that something had actually happened when Jim drove Helen home after the champagne party. But Ann had continued on, blissfully unaware, throughout the spring, into the summer.

It was in July that Shell Phillips had called with the idea of hot air ballooning. It could be done near Asheville, in the western part of the state, a four-hour drive away. They would lift off at five in the evening and land just before sunset in a meadow where there would be a gourmet picnic dinner with wines to match. There was a bed-and-breakfast nearby where couples could spend the night.

“Perfect for our group,” Shell said.

Ann had been thrilled by the prospect of ballooning, and she accepted right away. She wasn’t sure how Jim would react. He had been moody around the house, sometimes snapping at Ann and the kids. He bought a ten-speed bicycle and started going on long rides on the weekends; sometimes he was gone for three hours. Ann thought the bike riding was probably a good thing. She said to Olivia, “He must have seen Breaking Away one night on TV. He’s obsessed with the biking.”

Ann started calling him “Cutter.”

She worried that Jim might not want to go on an all-day ballooning adventure with the wine-tasting group. But when she asked him, he said yes right away. It was almost as if he already knew about it, Ann thought.

It had been so many years earlier that certain details were now lost. What did Ann remember about the hot air ballooning trip? She remembered that Jim had been quiet in the car on the way to Asheville. Normally on a ride that long, he popped in a cassette of Waylon Jennings or the Marshall Tucker Band, and he and Ann sang along, happily out of key. But on that ride, Jim had been silent. Ann asked him what the matter was, and he said tersely, “Nothing is the matter.”

Jim liked to stop on the highway at Bob’s Big Boy for lunch. He positively adored Bob’s Big Boy; he always ordered the catfish sandwich and the strawberry pie. But this time, when Ann suggested stopping, he said, “Not hungry.”

Ann said, “Well, what if I’m hungry?”

Jim shook his head and kept on driving.

Ann remembered gathering with the group in the expansive green field; she remembered her heightened sense of anticipation. Along with Ann, Helen Oppenheimer seemed the most excited. She had been positively glowing.

Ann remembered the gas fire, the heat, the billowing balloon, the stomach-twisting elation of lifting up off the ground. She recalled the incredible beauty of the patchwork fields below them. The farmland, the woods, the creeks, streams, and ponds below them. She filled with pride. North Carolina was the most picturesque state in the nation-and she represented it.

The basket was eight feet square. Their group was packed in snugly. Ann, at one point, found herself hip to hip with Steve Fairlee and Robert Lewis as they leaned over the edge and waved to children playing a game of Wiffle ball below. It was only bad luck that caused Ann to turn around to see how Jim was faring. She happened to catch the smallest of gestures-Jim grabbing Helen’s hand and giving it a surreptitious squeeze. Ann blinked. She thought, What? She hoped she’d imagined it, but she knew that she hadn’t. She hoped it was innocent, but she knew Jim Graham. Jim wasn’t a hand grabber-or he hadn’t been-with anyone except for Ann. He used to grab Ann’s hand all the time: when they were dating, when they were engaged, the first few years of marriage. It was his gesture of affection; it was his love thing.