The Year of Luminous Love (13 page)

The old woman dreamed.

She stood on the veranda of a grand Victorian looking down a long tree-lined driveway that stretched to a dirt road fronting the property
.

October had begun to edge the leaves with the colors of autumn. The woman felt featherlight. No aching bones. No throbbing muscles. Her mind was as clear as a bell … no muddled thoughts. She turned to the window behind her and saw her reflection in the old-time glass. Why, she was so young! Just a girl. Her long blond hair was tied with a length of blue satin ribbon and her dress was a Sunday best, white linen edged with eyelet lace. Why was she dressed so finely?

She pinched her cheeks to make them glow, nibbled on her bottom lip to redden it. Growing anticipation filled every cell in her body. Turning back toward the lawn, she saw a rider on horseback turn into the property from the road. A man sat ramrod straight in the saddle. The horse, dark as sooty wood, stepped high,
approaching in a fluid graceful motion that defined it as a Tennessee walking horse, bred and trained to perform this perfect gait
.

She squinted, unable to see the man’s face, partially covered by a fedora low on his forehead. Her heartbeat accelerated, knowing the man was coming to meet her. She stepped down off the porch, onto the ground in anticipation. Then they were towering over her. “May I help you?” she asked
.

The rider said nothing but lowered a saddlebag into her arms. It was heavy, and when she rested it on the step, bright red apples rolled from the overstuffed pouch. “Oh!” she cried, delighted. “For me?”

The horse stood absolutely statue still. The man reached down his hand, inviting her to join him on the horse. She hesitated. What if Papa saw her with a stranger? Still, the man’s offer was irresistible. She smiled, placing her youthful palm into his. In one smooth and impossible motion, she floated onto the horse’s rounded rump behind the man. Only in a dreamscape could she have moved so effortlessly. The horse snorted. She settled her arms around the man’s waist. This felt so right. She tightened her grip and rested her cheek against the man’s broad, well-muscled and absolutely familiar back. She sighed with contentment
.

“I love you,” she whispered into the rough fabric of his shirt, which caught her warm breath. “With all my heart, I love you.”

Arie punched in Jon’s cell number with shaking fingers.

“Hey,” he answered.

Arie’s voice clogged with tears, and for a moment, she couldn’t speak.

“Arie? Is that you? What’s wrong?”

She cleared her throat. “I won’t be coming this morning.
Ciana’s grandmother died in the night, and I have to be with my friend today.”

Jon was quiet. “Ciana was real attached to her, wasn’t she?”

Arie wasn’t sure how he knew this, but she said, “Yes. Olivia was more a mother to her than her own.”

“Look, don’t worry about training until you feel like it. We’ll start again when the timing’s right.”

“I have to go.”

Just before she punched off, Jon said, “Wait! Tell Ciana how sorry I am, okay?”

“I’ll tell her.”

For Ciana, the best thing about having good long-term friends was the sense of history they brought with them. She thought back to the first time Arie came to spend the day with her when they’d been kids. Ciana had been nervous—friends never came to Bellmeade on the outskirts of town. She wondered what Arie really thought of her. Did she think Ciana was stuck-up because she was a Beauchamp? Her concerns had been ungrounded. No one could be a better friend to her than Arie.

Ciana hadn’t wanted to include Eden in their twosome friendship until Arie had insisted, recognizing quickly that Eden was “a fellow wounded soul.” But once Ciana learned about Eden’s life with a mental-case mother, Ciana’s defenses buckled. She knew what it was like to live with a broken mother. Eden brought a sense of adventure to her and Arie’s mix of personalities. She was daring, a risk taker, and fun to be around. Now these two sat with Ciana and cried with her over losing her beloved grandmother.

During the visitation at the funeral home, it seemed as if the whole town turned out to pay respects to Miz Olivia, matriarch of the Beauchamp family. Especially when the town had not been able to pay respects after Ciana’s grandfather and father had perished in the plane wreckage, leaving nothing of themselves to bury.

Ciana recognized most of the mourners, farmers in their best jeans, their faces sun weathered and worn by years of outdoor work, and tradesmen who sold goods and products, often on unconditional credit, in a town down on its luck. She greeted them, thanked them for coming. What she couldn’t do was bring herself to view Olivia’s body lying in the satin-lined casket surrounded by flowers, plants, and numberless baskets at the front of the funeral parlor.

“You may regret not saying goodbye,” Alice Faye told her. The visitors were gone. Only Ciana, her friends, and her mother remained.

“I don’t think I can.” Ciana had held herself together all evening.

“Funeral’s tomorrow and the casket will be closed. This is your last chance to see her. She looks wonderful,” Alice Faye said, encouraging Ciana.

“Your mama’s right. Say goodbye proper. We’ll go with you,” Arie offered.

Eden nodded, although she also looked reluctant.

“This is about
you
, not her,” Alice Faye added, squeezing Ciana’s hand. “Go on.”

And so, banked on either side by her two friends, Ciana walked to the casket and looked down on Olivia Beauchamp. She lay in a royal blue dress and wore her favorite pearl necklace, looking serene, better in death than she had in the last year of her life. Ciana felt numb. As a farm girl, she’d come to
see death early with animals, but when she had realized that one day Olivia would die, she’d panicked. Grandmother knew all things and told wonderful stories. How was it possible that she, too, would die?

Olivia had wiped Ciana’s cheeks, saying, “Death will come one day, but that means I’ll see Charles once again. We’ll be so happy together.”

“She looks asleep,” Arie whispered in Ciana’s ear, dragging her into the present.

“And pretty,” Eden said.

“And gone forever,” Ciana added before turning and walking away.

Rain fell on the August afternoon Ciana and her mother went to the attorney’s office to review Olivia’s will. Barry Boatwright practiced law a block off Main Street, in a stately refurbished Victorian painted yellow with dark brown trim. His front office assistant, one of Arie’s aunts, greeted them warmly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Alice Faye said.

The woman ushered them into Boatwright’s office, which had once served as the home’s dining room. Boatwright’s desk faced a worn leather sofa nestled under a bay window. Large purple-headed hydrangea bushes drooped outside the window, shielding the room from passersby.

“Welcome,” Boatwright said. He kissed Alice Faye’s cheeks and clasped Ciana’s hand warmly. “Do sit,” he said, motioning to the sofa, issuing condolences and praising Olivia’s life. “Sweet tea?” he asked as they settled in.

“No thank you,” Alice Faye and Ciana said.

He lowered himself into his squeaky desk chair and picked
up a large file. “The terms of the will are mostly unchanged from your great-grandfather Jacob’s. The land is always passed to the family first.” He peered over the tops of his glasses. “You are joint heirs and required to pass it along to your heirs. It cannot be sold without each other’s express consent.”

Ciana grimaced, knowing that supplying future heirs was her responsibility and knowing that while the will may be simple, the “if/whens” and “wherefores” of no additional heirs filled most of the file Boatwright was holding. But Ciana silently swore that as long as she lived, Bellmeade would not be sold, even if she died a dried-up old prune without heirs.

“Miz Olivia did make one change, however,” the attorney said, rustling pieces of paper.

Beside her, Ciana felt her mother sit straighter.

“A change?” Alice Faye asked. “What kind of change?”

“A thoughtful change,” Boatwright said with a smile. “She set up a savings account for you, Ciana. Money for you to attend a college or university of your choice. Although she underestimated the cost of attending college, it’s a nice amount of money, enough that if you’re prudent, you can stretch it to cover tuition and books at a good institution.”

Ciana simply stared at him, stunned by his news.

“And,” Boatwright continued, “you have total control and discretion over it. She wanted you to have it because she said you were a girl of extraordinary good sense and therefore should never be dependent on the whim of any other person to choose your way in life.”

“It was a smack at me,” Alice Faye said, fuming, as Ciana drove her mother’s old Lincoln Town Car home through the rain.

“How do you figure that?”

“I wanted to attend college, but Old Man Jacob thought spending money on educating a woman was foolish, a waste. What was left for me? Nothing. I was trapped. So when Jackson came along, I married him.” Alice Faye offered a derisive laugh. “Neither Olivia nor your great-grandfather cared much for Jackson. Thought he was more attracted to my family name and money than to me. Jackson discovered afterward there was no vast fortune. But he stayed. They were surprised—as though no man could care for me for myself.”

Alice Faye grabbed a tissue, swiped her eyes.

“How about your daddy, Charles? Didn’t he have any say-so about his daughter going to college?”

“He stood up for me, but trust me when I say that Jacob and Olivia were formidable forces. Daddy gave up quickly.”

Did Ciana want to hear this? “I don’t remember Granddad or Daddy very much.”

“My grandfather scared the starch out of me, but your granddad, my daddy, was my guardian angel. He loved me and was good to me,” Alice Faye said. “But Olivia made me feel like I never measured up to my dead brother. Charles Junior was perfect. I was not.”

Ciana didn’t interrupt, keeping her eyes on the road through the downpour. She hadn’t heard this story before, not from Grandmother, not from her mother.