“Will she be in trouble?” Rob, Robbie’s oldest son, asked.
I leaned back and put my arm around Daisy’s chair in a way that, only after I’d done it, I realized probably felt too familiar. “Babies are a huge gift and a big responsibility,” I said, putting on my best Uncle-Mason-the-educator voice. “When you have one, you have to put a lot of your time and love into them. And you can never, ever leave them alone.”
“Mason!” Amelia said. “Did you just grasp an adult piece of the human condition?”
I smirked at her, and she smirked back.
I looked over at Aunt Tilley, whose eyes didn’t seem to be quite focused. She was staring at a portrait of my grandmother over Amelia’s head, definitely not paying attention to us.
Dad and Mr. Saxton had their heads together at the end of the table, sipping their bourbon on the rocks and whispering about something. Probably interest rates. Or Carolina baseball. Ordinarily, I would like to be discussing Carolina baseball.
But now I thought about that tiny baby, all alone in that big hospital. Jane Doe. That’s what they were calling her. It seemed so impersonal, which was the point, I guessed. But she was a real person. Not just an anonymous lost baby. She deserved a family. I looked up at Trina. Robbie had said no, but Trina could talk Robbie intoanything.Hence the four kids.
Daisy held her phone screen up to me with a text with a picture of a sleeping Jane Doe. I found myself envisioning something brand-new: what a life with a family could be like. Sure, it would be a huge change and, yes, I would need to step up in ways I never had before. I looked back down at Jane Doe. And, in that moment, I couldn’t imagine her ever being anything but mine.
TILLEYThe Bourbon
They know, Tilley thought. She didn’t know why she wasn’t in her normal seat. And where were Mama and Daddy to protect her? Because these people, they were all here to get her. They knew what her sister Elizabeth had helped her do. And now she was going to pay.
She heard Ms. Theodora saying, “Well, we just have to pray for mercy on whoever’s soul did this horrible thing,” and, like being swooshed through a tunnel of light, Tilley was back in the here and now.
She wasn’t a twenty-year-old girl, she remembered. She was in her late fifties now, a fully grown woman. And these people around her were her family. Mama and Daddy were dead. No one was here to get her… It had been decades. She slowed her breathing and picked up her glass with a shaky hand. The bourbon would fortify her. It always did.
Robbie, her favorite, was next to her. She knew she shouldn’t have a favorite, but she had been through a lot in her life and, damn it, she’d do as she pleased. Mason was across from her with a girl she didn’t know but who had very nice hair. Robbie’s oldest, Robbie Junior, was to her left. She looked down at her hands. The hands of awoman caught between middle age and old age. It still shocked her sometimes to realize that she had lived all this life, so many years since her beloved Robert left her, passed away so suddenly, leaving her with nothing but the disappointment of broken dreams and a class ring she wore forever on her left hand.
Her mama and daddy, when they were still alive, tried to convince her to make a fresh start, even date again, but who would want her now, as she was? She couldn’t imagine. Dogwood was her home, then, now, and forever. Even in her death, she knew she would roam the halls of Dogwood, crying out for the love she’d lost, all the family that never was. But if that was the price she paid for love, she’d do it all over again. She knew she would. And that was the thought that allowed her to sleep soundly at night.
Or, she thought, as she took a sip of her tea, maybe that was the bourbon.
DAISYScandalized
Dinner was absolutely delicious, Amelia,” I said, stretching in my chair because I was so full.
“First butter beans of the season,” Elizabeth said. It was a very Southern way of letting me know that she had actually been the one to do the cooking.
“Well, they were perfect,” Mason said.
“And, Aunt Tilley, that pie,” Parker said.
“Strawberry pie is my Parker’s very favorite dish in the world,” Aunt Tilley said.
“It is that,” he agreed.
“And fried okra is my Robbie’s,” she added.
“Not just any fried okra,” Trina chimed in. “Aunt Tilley’s fried okra.”
Aunt Tilley beamed as Robbie squeezed her arm.
I stood to help clear the dishes, to which Olivia protested, “Guests are not allowed to help with the dishes!”
“Oh, but I’m still in my scrubs and you all look so pretty.”
“Ordinarily,” Amelia said, “I would argue with you, but if we don’t let you help, you’ll be stuck in here with all the men.”
“I’m off for a cigar,” Mr. Thaysden said. He and Mr. Saxton excused themselves quickly as Trina, Elizabeth, Olivia, and Aunt Tilley stood to join me. The kids had long since scattered, and the preacher’s wife had excused herself when the men brought out the bourbon. I wasn’t sure if she was offended by the alcohol or just full from the pie. Either way, the room seemed a little lighter in her absence.
I gathered a plate and place setting of silver in each hand, afraid to try to balance more. I could tell everything around the table was a family heirloom, some pieces as old as this house, and I wasn’t going to be the one to call time of death on any of them.
