“More than worms,” Alix said. “Oh … kay.”
“You’ll think this is odd,” I said, “but Joe wished to be composted with the worms.”
Alix stared at me. “Composted with the …”
“Oh, not his body,” I hastened to assure her. “But his ashes. What they call the ‘cremains.’ He looked it up, and they’re very alkaline. This can be helpful in a garden, particularly for asparagus. I love asparagus more than anything, you know, and of all his beds, he took the most care of that one. He said that if I mixed his ashes in with his worms, he’d feel that he was still taking care of me.” There went the handkerchief again.
Alix said, “Hang on. I’m getting the tea. This isnotwhat I expected.”
“Don’t tell your mother,” I cautioned as she splashed milk into our mugs and brought them over.
“Oh, the entertainment value,” Alix said. “But I’ll restrain myself. So what was in that urn you and the parents and I scattered outside the windows? Was that just sand? Youcried.Was that acting?”
“No,” I said, “that was indeed Joe. I compromised. I put a small amount of him only into the worm bin, merely a tablespoon or two. But I’d like you to do the same with me. Quietly, if you don’t mind, because your mother certainly wouldn’t understandthat.Your grandfather loved you so much, you know, and so do I, and this way, we would be with you still. Well, the worms would be with you.”
Alix said, “This is the most startling conversation I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve had some doozies.”
“Ashes to ashes, as they say.”
“Well, there’s that,” she conceded. “All righty, then. I promise to feed you to the worms.”
Oh, dear. I said it was the eve of Alix’s wedding day, didn’t I? How I’ve wandered. It was the first of March, and tomorrow, Alix and Sebastian would be married in front of those impractical windows Joe and I had insisted on, in this house that was every bit as much our “forever home” as the palace had been to my parents. Tonight, Alix and Sebastian were staying in the trailer, while Elise and Niles were in the guest room and Ben and Lexi, the Golden Retriever, on an airbed in the office. Not quite a royal wedding; how disappointed that reporter would have been! But as Alix had said, “I’ve done the whole big-wedding deal before—well, I’vealmostdone it—and I hated it. I don’t really want togetmarried. I mostly want tobemarried.” Elise might not have understood that, but I did.
Maybe I understood it a little too well, because I thought part of the reason for this quiet wedding in my home was Alix’s understanding that my age had finally caught up with me in a way it hadn’t before. A bad winter cold that had turned to pneumonia had left me weak, and I couldn’t seem to strengthen. One has very little “bounce back,” you know, at ninety-three. So I sat in Joe’s easy chair before the fire and let the others talk and laugh and cook, and the dog, Lexi, lay sprawled at my feet.
When the dinner had been eaten—we’d had asparagus with it, althoughnotfertilized by Joe—and we were sipping tea, Sebastian said, “There’s a thing I need to do right now.”
“Oh?” Alix asked. “Run for the hills, you mean? You’vefinally figured out that a guy with two Super Bowl rings can do better?”
“Nope,” Sebastian said. “Hang on a minute while I grab something.”
He was back in less than that, looking rain-spattered, tough, quiet, and strong, and for a moment, he looked so much like Joe, I caught my breath. Not the shape or the size or the look of him, but thefeelof him. Sebastian was solid, the same way Joe had been. A reliable man. Adecentman, and what is more important than that? At the moment, he was carrying a rather large, flat, square velvet box with a name stamped in gold on the top, which he handed to Alix. “I thought hard about what would be right,” he said, “and I kept coming back to this.”
Alix said, “What is it?” Her eyes wide, and for once, not laughing.
“Open it and see,” Sebastian said, as tenderly as Joe would have done.
She opened the lid, and then she sat and stared.
“How—” she said, then cleared her throat and said again, “How?”
“What is it?” Elise asked.
Alix turned the box around wordlessly and showed her. Showed me. Showed us all.
My heart seemed to leap in my chest.
It was the necklace.
“Oh, my,” I said, trying to control my breathing. “Oh, my.”
“Oma.” Alix was at my side in an instant. “Are you all right?”
“Just—” My voice wouldn’t come. “Just—I haven’t seen it for so long. My mother used to dress for the opera,and when Lippert would put the tiara on her head and fasten the necklace around her throat—oh, how like a queen she looked then!Like somebody from a fairy tale, so beautiful she almost didn’t seem real.”
“Sebastian,” Alix said, “how did yougetit?”
“I didn’t,” Sebastian said. “Truth time. I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it. Then I did what I should have done in the first place—consulted with some jewelers of the very high-end variety, and found that I could never have afforded it. They gave me crazy estimates. Fifty million. Ahundredmillion. But one of them said, ‘One could, of course, recreate it.’ So that’s what I did. With lab diamonds and emeralds, I’m going to tell you right now, because again—millions and millions.”
