In many ways, Ellison, Alabama has changed. The roads are paved, for one thing, and the population has risen to just over seventeen thousand. Downtown has more than one intersection and features both a McDonald’s and a Starbucks. On the lake, a company rents out kayaks and paddleboards to summer tourists—because now there are tourists. Uncle Robert and Aunt Cara’s house is different too: when they died, Ethan’s cousin Henry moved in with his wife, Hannah, and they completely redecorated. Now, there’s a sixty-four inch flat screen and stainless steel kitchen appliances.
The church, though, is just as Ethan remembers it: small, house shaped, and white, with a clapboard roof and a simple steeple topped with a cross. He arrives at the funeral several minutes late and sits in a pew near the back just as a man steps up to the podium and begins a eulogy. Ethan half listens, all the while keeping his eyes on the closed casket in front of the altar, which is topped by an elaborate flower arrangement and pictures of the deceased. It makes his heart contract. This is not a grand funeral by any means; it seems that most of the attendees are townspeople who hardly knew the man in the casket, and even the pastor looks disinterested. But it is far better than what Juniper had received.
“You don’t have to go,” were Henry’s first words when he opened his front door and found his cousin standing on the porch, suitcase in hand. “You don’t owe him anything.”
Ethan replied, “I know.” And smiled. “It’s difficult to explain, but it’s something I need to do.”
He still feels that now, as the service ends and he rises on shaky legs. A lot was left unfinished sixty years ago. He watches as six men carry the casket down the nave and out the front doors. People begin to spill from the pews to join the procession, but Ethan lingers for a moment, watching them pass. A few do a double take when they see him, surprised even now by the shade of his skin. But then they just look away.
It’s not that everything is fixed now—not here in Ellison, or at home in Arcadia, or anywhere else in the world. But it’s better in so many ways, and always changing. And the fight that Ethan’s mother instilled in him at her kitchen table all those years ago is the same fight he found in his wife, Eleanor, and the same that they passed down to their children, and then their grandchildren. The revolution is a fire set to burn for generations. Ethan feels this fire even now, as he follows the slow procession and his knees groan in protest. He can hardly believe that once he ran through this town with ease.
“Gets harder every year, doesn’t it?” someone jokes, and it takes Ethan a moment to realize that the comment is directed at him. He looks up to see a woman with short gray hair and brown eyes set into wrinkled cheeks. She grips the arm of a middle-aged man in one hand and a handkerchief in the other—as Ethan examines her face, she dabs delicately at the corners of her eyes.
Rather than responding, Ethan tilts his head and frowns curiously at her. “Are you his wife?” he asks.
“Ex-wife,” she corrects, smiling wryly. “We split up decades ago. This is our son, Robin.” The man, who has his father’s blond hair but not his beady eyes, murmurs a polite greeting.
“Nice to meet you.” Ethan nods at them both. He continues walking, realizing only when the woman stares at him that he hasn’t explained his own reason for being here. He purses his lips and says, after a pause, “I knew him in high school. I haven’t seen him in sixty years.”
It is enough of an answer for the woman and her son, and they say nothing more.
When they reach the grave, Ethan remains at the edge of the crowd and watches silently as the casket is lowered into the earth. There are few tears shed: no woman rushes forward, gasping for breath as her husband is put to rest; no grown children kneel beside the grave and wail a final good-bye to their father. Noah O’Neil’s burial is grossly starved for love.
And though he has every reason not to, Ethan feels the slightest bit of pity for this man who, after seventy-seven years of life, was only human enough to earn some halfhearted eulogies and a few bouquets left on his grave. Juniper would have felt sorry for him. But then again, Juniper would have been here if not for him.
The last scoop of dirt is shoveled onto the grave, and, one by one, the apathetic mourners pay their final respects. Noah’s ex-wife is one of the last people to walk back to the church, and she nods at Ethan as she passes. He remains where he is. Just as he did sixty years ago, he lingers beside the freshly dug grave. And just as she did sixty years ago, a woman passes the stragglers and makes her way toward Ethan. This time, he is expecting her. She is much older now—they both are—but her face is still familiar. There are no pink roses in her hands.
“Hi, Courtney,” Ethan says. She looks tired; her shoulders slump beneath her black shawl and her gray-brown hair hangs limp around her face. Wire-framed glasses perch on her nose.
Still, she manages to smile.
“It’s been a long time,” she says. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Ethan looks long and hard at the grave, letting himself accept that the monster who killed his best friend is finally gone. “Maybe I shouldn’t have,” he murmurs eventually. “But I think I needed to see this through.”
Courtney nods. “Yeah. So did I.” She sighs and steps next to Ethan, her eyes on the engraving. “It’s so strange that he’s gone,” she says. “I haven’t seen him in ten years, you know—not since our fiftieth high school reunion—and when I got the invitation to the funeral, I almost wanted to ignore it. But I knew I couldn’t, there’s too much history. And I thought you’d want to know too.” She glances up at him, squinting slightly. “But, like I said, I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Ethan says nothing. He looks away from Noah’s grave and up the hill. Courtney’s gaze follows his.
“I know it doesn’t change anything,” she says softly, “but he regretted it every day of his life. The doctors said it was a heart attack, but I think it was the guilt that killed him, in the end.”
“Good,” Ethan says, then sighs. “I came here thinking I might be able to forgive him. I don’t think I can.”
“I don’t think you have to. Noah died a better man than he was when you knew him, but that’s not saying much. It doesn’t excuse the things he did or said back then.”
Ethan nods. For a long moment both are silent. Ethan wonders if Courtney, too, is thinking about that summer sixty years before.
Eventually, she takes a deep breath and tells him, “There are two reasons I told you about the funeral. The first was closure. The second was because, well—all those years ago there was something I wanted to tell you, but I was too scared.”
Ethan glances at her, and for a moment he sees the seventeen-year-old Courtney, with her bright eyes and high ponytail, who watched uncomfortably as Noah harassed Ethan all those years ago.
“Noah said he told you about Cole Parker,” she continues. “How he was a black boy who had a relationship with a white girl in town and ended up—ended up lynched in the woods. And maybe you guessed this already, when you saw me leaving flowers at his grave, if you even remember that day”—Ethan does—“but I was that girl. And no matter what anyone says, he didn’t trick me into anything. I cared about him, and I knew everyone would think it was wrong, but I didn’t give a damn.”
When she says the words, it’s as if she grows three inches: her back is straight and her jaw is set. Ethan did wonder, once, if she had been the girl, but he hasn’t thought about it in years. The thought of it doesn’t surprise him, but her honesty does.
“Noah and Alex didn’t know it was me. No one did, besides my family. All anyone knew was that a nice white girl in town was tricked into sleeping with a black boy, and that was enough for them to think he deserved to die. My father covered it all up—he swore Noah’s uncle and the other Klan members to secrecy.
“Afterward, he even insisted that I date Noah. He said no one could ever be suspicious if I was dating someone like Noah O’Neil.” She smiles, wryly. “I broke up with him at the end of that summer, right after you left. Best decision I ever made.”
Ethan shifts from foot to foot to keep the blood flowing in his legs as Courtney closes her eyes for several seconds. “I’ve been keeping that secret almost my whole life.”
“Courtney,” he begins, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
She shakes her head to cut him off. “I know you’re probably wondering why the hell I’m telling you this sixty years later. I promise, I’m not trying to make you think better of me. I was—and still am—on your side, but when I was young, I was a coward. I was too afraid of what the townspeople would think to stand up for what I knew was right, and that was wrong. I was part of everything that happened to you too. If you hate me, that’s fine.” She smiles slightly, then goes on, “Anyway. I’m telling you this because, for a long time after Cole died, I blamed myself for what had happened. I convinced myself that his death was all my fault. It took me decades to realize that wasn’t true.”
With troubled eyes, Courtney examines the line between grass and dirt on Noah’s grave. “And I know you feel the same way about June. When I saw you that day, I could tell you were blaming yourself. Even now, I see it. You know that it was Noah’s fault, but you hate yourself for it all the same.”
Ethan turns to her sharply, startled because he knows that she is right. For sixty years he has been plagued by ‘if onlys.’ If only he had taught her how to swim. If only they hadn’t gone out that night. If only he had never befriended her, maybe she would still be here.
“Sixty years is a long time to live with someone else’s guilt,” Courtney says quietly, looking Ethan in the eye. “At some point, you just have to let it go. It wasn’t your fault. And you shouldn’t regret letting people into your life who changed it for the better, even if they didn’t stay.”
This makes Ethan’s heart hammer. He misses Juniper more right now than he has in years.
When the seconds tick past and he says nothing, Courtney turns away. “Anyway,” she murmurs, “just wanted to put in my two cents.”
She begins to walk away, but Ethan halts her in her tracks with a sharp, “Courtney, wait.” She looks back at him, and he softens his voice. “Thank you,” he says simply.
“Yeah.” She smiles. “I hope it helps.” She starts to turn again, then pauses, adding, “And hey—I’m sure you were planning on it already, but you should stop by her grave before you go. The sunflowers grew in beautifully.”
They did, in fact. It takes Ethan several minutes and a lot of crackling joints to reach the top of the hill, but it’s worth it when he sees the rows of tall yellow flowers standing guard over her gravestone.
He touches one of the petals and grins. Juniper would be proud.
Ethan says nothing as he stands there—he’s never been one to talk to graves—and marvels at how strange it is that, after all these years, he is finally returning to Juniper Jones. He has spent so many summers without her, thinking that the emptiness would kill him. People are funny that way, he muses, examining the fading inscription in the stone. They find it in themselves to pick up and move on after the worst of tragedies. And so has he. Despite it all, people are quite invincible.
Ethan leaves the cemetery sometime later, as the sun brushes the treetops, and there is a lightness in his bones that he hasn’t felt in years. He flies out tomorrow morning, back to Arcadia, and he knows that he will most likely never come back. But he doesn’t mind. Of course he misses Juniper, but no matter how many miles he puts between himself and Ellison, Alabama, he’ll never forget their summer.
Sometimes he dreams about riding his bike through the Ellison he knew in 1955. He stands up on his pedals and coasts down the forest paths, leaving a trail of dust behind him. Juniper is up ahead, biking so quickly that she doesn’t seem to be touching the ground. Sunlight filters through the trees and sets her hair on fire. In his dream, he calls her name in a voice that is younger, lighter. She does not stop pedaling, just glances quickly over her shoulder with a wide smile. In her big blue eyes is the promise of an unbeatable adventure.
The end.