Jed took the elevator up to Rick and Dana’s condominium. He had gotten roped into a dinner with Stephanie, the wedding planner, and he feared Dana’s mealy shrimp creole was on the menu, so he brought a little side dish to add to the mix, an avocado and crabmeat salad sprinkled with a lemon vinaigrette dressing, and his new favorite dessert to make, a buttermilk pie.
Dr. Maria Tambsberg, the head of oncology, was also going to be there, as was her husband, Boris Zelenko. Boris was a cellist and professor of music at the College of Charleston, and Jed enjoyed his company because he always had something interesting to share about music or about food or about the state of politics in the Ukraine.
Jed knocked on the door, and Rick and Dana’s daughter answered. She must have been about seven and she had a book in her hand and glasses on.
“Hey there.” Jed repositioned his pie and salad and put out his hand. “I’m Jed.”
The little girl grinned largely. “You’re my cousin’s date.”
“I guess you could say that.” He nodded.
The little girl tucked the book beneath her arm and put out her opposite hand. “I’m Eliza.”
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Eliza.” He shook her delicate hand and she motioned for him to follow her.
“Jed!” Dana said as he ducked beneath the brass chandelier in the foyer. “Welcome.”
Jed was relieved to see what looked like a hired chef in the kitchen preparing the meal.
“Hi, Dana.” He handed her the salad and the pie. “I brought a few things to add.”
“Wonderful!” She took his bowl and pie plate and put them on the kitchen counter. Then she led him through the den and out to the large deck where they had a beautiful view of the Ashley River. Sailboats and motorboats were coming and going, racing home before the sunset.
Maria and Boris stood to greet him, and Rick asked him if he’d like red or white wine.
He was thankful that Stephanie had not yet arrived. It would be nice to catch up with his colleagues for a moment.
Maria took an oyster on the half shell from the appetizer tray and turned to him. “You have a place out at Edisto, right?”
“Not if I can help it,” Rick said as he uncorked a bottle of pinot noir.
“Yeah.” Jed rubbed his hands across his jeans and leaned toward Maria as he said quietly, “I’ve been meaning to ask you how Marney Bennett is doing. She’s my neighbor out there and I know her family.”
Maria winced as if in pain. “Glioblastoma multiforme.”
Jed shook his head and his heart began to pound. “Where?”
Maria pointed to her forehead.
Jed exhaled slowly. They all knew the prognosis for ninety percent of all glioblastoma multiforme cases, and it was decidedly grim. He thought of Charlie, Etta, and Heath, and he thought of Julia. What would this mean for everyone?
Just as he leaned in to ask more, Dana popped her head through the sliding glass door and clapped her hands. “Look who’s here, Jed.”
Everyone stood as Stephanie stepped onto the deck. She was all dolled up in a short, strapless zebra-print dress, a made-up face, candy-red dangly earrings, and red patent leather platform heels. While he guessed this was the latest look, it seemed a little over the top.
“Hey there!” Stephanie leaned toward him for a cheek kiss.
He leaned forward and pecked at the air beside her, then he discreetly wiped her lipstick off of his cheekbone. He still yearned for Julia Bennett. Had hung her tomatoes painting above the fireplace in his bedroom. It was the first thing he saw when he woke up every morning. And yet he knew he needed to move on.
THE EVENING WAS RELATIVELY PLEASANT. THE CHEF, Hector, served a brightly colored and delectable meal—salmon and beef satay, an assortment of roasted root vegetables, a citrus and tomato salad, and a creamy asparagus risotto.
Stephanie seemed to dominate the evening with stories about weddings. She had just helped coordinate one in Charleston for a teenybopper star on the Disney Channel, and she’d had to hire guards to keep the screaming adolescents away from the rehearsal dinner at McCrady’s and the ceremony at St. John’s Cathedral on Broad Street.
Boris had a good run too, and Jed enjoyed hearing about his childhood in L’viv and how he ended up at the Moscow Conservatory before meeting Maria during a trip to the States where he served as a visiting artist at Cornell University while she was in medical school there. They had met in the cafeteria one afternoon, each vying for the last stuffed cabbage in the food line. They ended up splitting it, and the rest was history.
Toward the end of the night, Eliza came out from her room and settled herself in Rick’s lap, folding up her gangly arms and legs like an accordion. Rick rested his head on his daughter’s dark mahogany crown as everyone devoured Jed’s pie. Jed watched as Eliza showed her father a little cut on her finger. Rick examined it lovingly and with concern before pecking it and pulling her closer. The child brought out a whole different side of Jed’s tough-man colleague, and it was good to see.
Jed envied Rick and Dana. They were the same age he was, at the same point in their careers, but they seemed to have everything Jed thought he would have by now: a strong marriage, an adorable child, a dynamic home, a full life.
His patient, the forty-year-old man with the four children, had recovered beautifully, and Jed had enjoyed checking on him each day before his release, because the man seemed full of something Jed wanted and because he was always flanked by several children at his bedside who were funny and loud and boisterous and by a wife who took it all in stride. What Jed wouldn’t give now for a life like that.
Now Stephanie, who seemed to have partaken rather heartily of the libations, reached over and took his hand. Then she leaned over and whispered, “Walk me to my car?”
He tried not to wince. “All right.”
Stephanie wiped a dollop of pie from her mouth, stood, and announced she had to be going. She had a meeting with a caterer at seven a.m. the next day.
Jed thanked Rick and Dana and bid farewell to Boris, Maria, Hector, and little Eliza, then followed Stephanie out of the condominium.
She took his hand in the elevator, and he was relieved when it stopped on the next floor down and a group of elderly women piled in.
When they arrived at the garage, he walked her to her car and was thankful when his phone buzzed just as her BMW lights blinked when she unlocked the car. He wasn’t on call, but any diversion was a good one.
The message was from Jane Anne, his second cousin and Mary Ellen Bennett’s neighbor. Call immediately, it read.
He looked up from his phone as Stephanie gazed at him, flipping her thick, dark hair behind her shoulders. The smell of her spicy perfume nearly turned his stomach.
“Want to get a night cap?”
Jed knew he shouldn’t let her drive in this condition, but he had no desire to get a night cap. He took a step back. “Listen, Stephanie. Let me drive you home. I think you’ve had a bit much, and I wouldn’t feel right about letting you get behind the wheel.”
She clapped her long, brightly painted nails on his arm before he could finish. “Okay!” She examined the garage. “Where’s your car?” Then she winked as she locked hers back up. “Maybe you can bring me back to get mine in the morning.”
He lifted his phone. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a little emergency on my hands.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Great,” she muttered.
They walked to his old Land Rover, which was caked in Rascal hair and a Rascal smell that was not to Stephanie’s liking. The woman couldn’t get out of the car fast enough when Jed pulled up to her place on upper King Street. She beat at her little dress as the black dog hair fell off of it on the sidewalk.
“This is a Roberto Cavalli.”
“Sorry,” he said as he walked her up the stairs to her front door.
“Me too.” Her tone was sarcastic as she swung around on the threshold, her long, dark hair swatting him in the face. She put her hands on her curvy hips. “What a disappointment you are, Jed Young.” She glared up at him, and he shrugged his shoulders and put his hands in his jeans like a sheepish schoolboy.
“Sorry again,” he said. Then she closed the door in his face, and he could hear her mumbling to herself as her heels clapped on the kitchen floor.
“Good-bye,” he said as he turned and strode quickly back to his car.
Once he closed the door, he grinned at the dog hair and then dialed Jane Anne’s number.
“Jed,” the lady said. “You know about Marney?”
“I just heard,” he said.
“Well, I don’t mean to get in the middle of your business, but I thought you’d like to know that Marney has summoned Julia home for a chat.”
“And she’s coming?”
“Tomorrow, I believe,” she said.
“Thank you for letting me know, Jane Anne.”
The lady cleared her throat, reminding him of a schoolmarm. “And you’re going to call her, right?”
He chuckled. Jane Anne was more Southern belle busybody than schoolmarm, and he appreciated her for that. “You bet I am, cousin.”
“Good boy,” she said. “Good night!”
Jed started his car and drove back to his apartment on Rutledge Avenue. He let Rascal out, and they raced together over to the Horse Lot where he threw the ball for him over and over beneath the buzz of the streetlamps.
Marney was dying. Julia was coming home to speak with her. Jed hoped for one chance to talk with her—to look her in the eye, to see if there was any inkling of mutual longing, if there was any way he could stop her from marrying next month.
He chased Rascal back and forth across the grassy field over and over until they both finally collapsed in the center and wrestled one another beneath the clear November sky as the stars, millions of miles away and already burned out, still glimmered.