We all laughed again, and Caroline, Emerson, and I crowded around Grammy, who was lounging in a pile of pillows at the dining table banquette. “This really is the way to ride, girls,” she said.
I noticed Jack coming out of the cabin, and when, a few minutes later, Mom followed, Emerson, Caroline, and I all shot each other looks. “That looks pretty suspicious,” I whispered first.
“We all see what’s happening here,” Emerson said. “We aren’t twelve.”
“Maybe you girls should talk to her about it,” Grammy said.
“Maybeyoushould talk to her about it,” Caroline said. “She’ll listen to you.”
“She never has before.” Grammy exhaled, and we all laughed. Then she added, “But now I’m dying, so she has to.”
Just like that, our laughter turned to tears, as quickly as a summer rain shower bursting from a stray dark cloud.
“Oh, girls,” Grammy said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. You have to remember I’m very, very high right now.” We erupted into watery giggles.
As I looked over to Starlite Island, I thought about the fairy stones Caroline had found for us there, how we had kept them in our pockets, how Grandpop said they were a gift to us to keep us safe. We had lost them on that same island where she had found them—and we were devastated, to say the least. And Grandpop had said to us, “The fairies gave your stones to someone else, someone who needed them more than you did.”
I had found that comforting, but it still hurt to remember what we had lost. They were more than a toy. They were a gift given to us by the land, by the sea, by this place we got to visit every summer that we loved so much.
I looked up at Caroline, whose eyes were on me. It didn’t matter now. It had been so long ago. But I still wondered who that man was that Mom was arguing with that day on the beach when we left the stones.
“What are y’all laughing about?” Mom asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, looking around. Amidst this strange, sort of sad, sort of funny, sort of happy day, I had to pause to realize how incredibly lucky my mother was. These people were here today because of her. They were here, in the morning, on a gorgeous summer day, when they could be doing anything else, because they were that devoted to her and wanted to give her an amazing memory with her dying mother.
I walked inside the boat, where Taylor and AJ were examining how one of the hatches opened and closed, and pulled them both onto my lap, wiggly creatures that they were. I knew this wouldn’t be the last time I held them, but I breathed them in anyway. I squeezed them to me, savored their warmth, memorized how good it felt to hold my children.
It was a fleeting moment. AJ, with his Superman cape tied around his neck over his life jacket, wriggled free and, yelling, “I’ll save you, Gransley!” was back on the stern in a flash. I kissed Taylor and set him free too.
The beach looked truly beautiful. Caroline had a trellis set up, about triple the size you would see in someone’s wedding, and it had yellow-and-white-striped paper lanterns—yellow was Grammy’s favorite color—hanging from it. The table underneath the tent was overflowing with flowers, and Kimmy was fussing over the trays of delicacies I’m certain she had been up all night creating. I hoped Grammy would be able to eat a bite or two.
I put my arm around my sister. “You’re really something, you know that?”
She grinned at me, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. “I am, aren’t I?”
I noticed how Kyle fussed over Grammy, how he helped Kimmy, how he talked intently to Jack—anything to keep from watching the Mark-and-Emerson lovefest taking place in the corner.
“It’s like they never broke up,” Caroline said.
“Wait,” Mom said. “Maybe that’s what’s happening. Maybe it’s really 2008 again.”
We all laughed.
“They look pretty together, though,” Caroline said.
Mark was super cute. Not scorchingly hot like Kyle, but cute. And Emerson looked happy. That was all that mattered. “All I’ve heard from her,” I said, “is how she doesn’t have time to worry about relationships because all she can think about is her career.”
“Well she doesn’t look worried...” Caroline said.
Emerson took a bite of a ham biscuit Mark was feeding her. She didn’t look worried at all.
I walked over to the table, poured us each a glass of champagne, handed one to Grammy, one to Caroline, one to Mom, and said, “Here’s to love.”
“Here’s to love!” Grammy said.
Tears caught in my throat with the realization that, in no time at all, this beautiful woman, this head of our household who had done nothing but love us, would be gone.
Grammy had said earlier that the accent was the secret to Southern charm. But she was wrong. This putting on a brave face, carrying on, helping others, being kind and humble and giving, believing with all your heart that the world could be a better place and that maybe you could make it that way... that was Southern charm. Looking around at these women who all embodied those qualities so well, I had to think that maybe Grammy was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a secret at all.
