They buried Marney at noon three days later. It was the Saturday Julia was scheduled to marry Simon. She had called him the day she met with Marney for the last time and told him what she had decided. And then she called the dean of the fine arts department at Hunter College and explained why she would have to resign.
The dean was dumbfounded, and Simon was somewhere between outraged and distressed.
“You can’t throw it all away.” He flew down the day she told him and sat with her on Aunt Dot’s front porch steps as the cars whizzed down Broad Street. “It’s your whole life.” He had taken her hand and made her meet his gaze. “And our future, Julia.”
“I can.” Julia squeezed his hand back and let it go, returning it to his knee. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you, Simon. I’m really sorry.”
He studied her face as if she were a horrible mystery. “You’re not going to be persuaded, are you?”
She shook her head gently, then carefully pulled the sapphire off of her finger. He opened his hand to receive it and exhaled deeply, holding it up to the afternoon light before calling a cab to take him back to the airport.
As she watched him leave, curling his long body up into the small Prius taxi, she knew he thought she had lost her mind, but she wasn’t bothered by that. She had made a sacred promise to Marney. And in a way, she felt that her entire life had been leading to this moment. To shrink back now would be to deny the unusual charge to which she had somehow been called.
Her mother and Nate spent one night at Bess’s, then took the morning train back to Charleston, where they spent the next day helping Meg and Preston prepare for the reception at Aunt Dot’s house while Julia took the children to the aquarium. They spent several hours wandering through the dark corridors peering into windows of jellyfish and sea horses and watching the fish and the sharks and the sea turtles in the enormous two-story tank glide round and round.
The burial was at Magnolia Cemetery in the Bennett family plot next to her father’s headstone and below the headstones of Julia’s paternal grandparents. Only a handful of people were there to say their good-byes: Skeeter and Glenda, Jane Ann Thornton, a few neighbors from Edisto, Brooke, the babysitter, Meg and Preston, some nurses from hospice and MUSC, and, of course, Jed.
Julia’s mama and Meg set up the reception at Dot’s house. Jed helped them in the kitchen. Then he and Nate threw the football with Charlie in the backyard when the little boy grew restless from all of the whispers and the clinking of silver on china.
Marney had made all of the arrangements. She had drafted a will last summer with an old attorney friend of Julia’s dad’s, citing that Julia would be the one to raise the children.
“She knew you would,” Aunt Dot said when she explained it to her the evening after Marney’s passing. “She believed you would. It was like a kind of faith she possessed. She put all her hope in it.” Aunt Dot patted her hand. “And she was right.”
In the three short days between Marney’s passing and the funeral, Julia had figured out what homeschooling curriculum the kids were using and she had ordered the updated materials. She would teach them through the spring and enroll them in school in the fall. And she had an interview at the fine arts magnet school for the visual arts director position. “You’re a shoo-in,” her former art teacher (who was retiring from the school this year) had said. “They’d be crazy not to take you.”
THE NIGHT OF THE BURIAL, AFTER THE CHILDREN were put to bed and the silver trays were washed and set on the drying rack, Jed took Julia’s hand. He pulled her out onto the piazza where he lifted her chin up in the moonlight and kissed her tenderly.
She pulled back and caught her breath. “That was unexpected.” Then she couldn’t keep herself from falling back into his sturdy arms. She felt so very vulnerable. As vulnerable as the kids, perhaps, and scared. And while she knew she could count up her times with Jed over the last two decades on one hand, she was sure he was someone she could be vulnerable with. Be honest with.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said as he embraced her tightly. “You knew it was coming. And you also know I’ve been waiting twenty-five years to do it again.”
She smiled through her tears and pulled back.
“I meant what I said, Julia.” He gazed at her with his soft brown eyes. “I want to help you raise these kids. And I want to court you too. And I know that’s a whole different event, and I’m willing to wait for you until you’re ready.” He rubbed her back with his large strong hands and continued, “And if for some reason you don’t think we’re right for one another, I’ll understand. I don’t want to push you. All I want to do is help and be a part of your life. No matter what.”
She felt her heart pounding in her chest. And even though it was an unseasonably chilly night in Charleston with a low of thirty-five degrees, she felt warmer than she’d felt in a long time. As if there was a kind of heat radiating from her core, knocking off the chill and all the years of sadness she’d become so accustomed to lugging around.
“Why not?” she said. “This has been a year full of unexpected turns, but the truth is I feel more at home and at peace than I ever have.” She squeezed his arms. “I just want to do right by the kids. I want to raise them well. I always wanted a family of my own, and I guess this is the one I have now.”
“It is,” Jed said as he leaned down and kissed her once more. The warmth between them grew so strong she had to pull away and say good night.
“I’m heading out to Edisto this coming weekend,” he said as he stepped down the steps toward his car. “Can I cook you all dinner on Friday night? And maybe wet a line with Charlie on Saturday?”
“Yes,” she said. She cocked her head and tried to contain her grin. “That sounds great.” And then she closed the door and stepped back into Aunt Dot’s old house, which had hardly changed at all since her childhood. She turned off each lamp, gathered up the few linen napkins from the reception that had been crumpled up and discarded around the living room, and put them in the laundry room. Then she took off her pumps and padded up the stairs to check on each child. Both Heath and Charlie were sound asleep, cocooned in their thick comforters, but Etta was up with the bedside lamp on, drawing, and when Julia tapped on the door, the girl pulled the sketchbook to her chest and looked longingly at her big half sister.
Julia came in and sat on her bed and patted her legs beneath the covers.
“We’ll pack up tomorrow and head home to Edisto, okay?”
The girl nodded gently.
“I know your heart is broken, Etta,” Julia whispered as the child continued to meet her gaze. “But I’ll be here for you, sweetheart. If and when you’re ready to talk, I’ll listen.”
Etta nodded as she bit her rosy bottom lip. Then she stood and plopped down into Julia’s lap, curling up each long and gangly limb of hers until she was a tight ball, a ball just the right size to nuzzle into Julia’s chest. Julia held her this way, tightly, for a long time as she rubbed her knobby back and rocked her back and forth on the end of the bed. When she felt the child’s breathing slow and then turn to a light snore, she lifted Etta up and laid her on the old mattress where she tucked her tightly beneath the covers.
Then, before she turned out the light, she lifted up the sketchbook so that Etta wouldn’t crumple it in her sleep, and as she instinctively turned it over, she saw an image of a bowl with light emanating from it, ray upon ray shooting out far and wide to the ends of the page and beyond.
As Julia stared at the rays, she was struck with a knowledge that though there was much mourning ahead for each of these children, they would be all right. They would get through it. And she would be all right too. And the unlikely family they would form would provide healing and strength for one another, and most of all, a place for this light to grow. Then she uttered as she did when there was nothing more to say, Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. And she leaned down and kissed Etta on the forehead before pulling down on the metal string of the old lamp.