Page 56 of Dreams of Falling
She was shaking as if with fever, and Ceecee admired Mrs. Darlington’s poise as she gracefully stood and put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “Margaret, I think you might be ill. Let Delphine draw you a bath...”
Margaret pulled away. “No, Mama. I need to know. I cannot go on pretending that this is just another day and that everything is all right.”
Boyd placed his cup and saucer on the coffee table and walked to stand in front of Margaret. Taking a sealed envelope from his pocket, he said, “Neither I nor my parents have been able to reach him for several days. When I went to his friends’ house today to see him, they gave me this note addressed to you from Reggie.”
She took the note, but didn’t open it. She stared at it for a long moment before raising her eyes to meet his. “He enlisted?”
Boyd nodded. “Yes.”
The sound that came from Margaret’s slim frame seemed filled with all the grief and sorrow of a hundred wounded souls, from a heart pierced by as many arrows. Her knees buckled, and it was Boyd who held her up and allowed her to press her sobbing face into his chest to be comforted. And when the wailing didn’t stop, Mr. Darlington went to call Dr. Griffith, and it was Boyd who lifted her and carried her upstairs to her bed, the letter still clutched in her hand.
Bitty and Ceecee clung to each other, unsure of what they should do or how they could give comfort, staring after Boyd’s departing back. And Ceecee, who loved Margaret like a sister, felt the sharp stab of jealousy wedge its way like a blade into her own heart.
nineteen
Larkin
2010
On Friday morning, I waited on Ceecee’s front-porch steps for Bennett to pick me up and take me to our meeting at Carrowmore, his cleaned and folded red T-shirt in my lap. Even my father conspired against me, saying he and Ceecee would drive together, leaving directly from the hospital after visiting my mother. I’d tried desperately to convince Bennett that I was happy driving myself, fairly confident that I couldn’t take the awkwardness of sitting alone in his truck for the drive to Carrowmore following my disastrous date night with Jackson.
Flashes of my conversation with Bennett kept up a constant rotation in my brain, making me cringe each time I remembered how drunk I’d allowed myself to become, and some of the things I’d said to Bennett. I still had no idea how Jackson and I had gotten separated or how it was Bennett who’d walked me home. Mostly, I remembered his lips and how appealing I thought they’d seemed, and how I might actually have closed my eyes in anticipation of a kiss. Which hadn’t happened, I was pretty sure. Because he was Bennett, who wouldn’t have been thinking about kissing me unless we’d both happened to lose our minds on the same night.
Jackson had called twice—once to apologize for not being the one to see me home safely, and once to extend another invitation to go out on the boat with him. I’d put him off, saying I’d let him know, since it was hard to make plans now, considering my mother’s situation. He said he had to go out of town on business for a few days, but would call me to set up another date when he got back. I was excited by the thought of seeing him again, but was just as excited that I had a few days’ reprieve. I was like a child leaving a gift unwrapped, the anticipation more exciting than the reality.
Bitty, sitting next to me on the steps and smoking her morning cigarette, elbowed me. “Why are you puckering?”
I stopped as soon as I realized she was right—I was puckering. “Just thinking. I usually pucker when I’m thinking.”
She snorted and sucked on her cigarette. “You still wearing that necklace I gave you?”
I reached under the neck of my shirt and fished it out. “I never take it off. Still not sure what it means, but I like it.”
She nodded. “Have you thought much about what you’re going to do with Carrowmore?”
“Not really. I’m still surprised to know it even exists, much less belongs to me. I guess we’ll have to see what the preservationist has to say and go from there.”
A bee landed on her arm, and she didn’t move, allowing it to crawl to her wrist and turn in a circle as if it might find pollen. “All the bees you see out of the hive are female—they’re the worker bees. And you should never kill one.”
“Because it’s bad luck?”
She frowned. “No, because it’s a living creature. And they’re endangered. If bees go away completely, it’s been said that they’ll take the human race with them. They’re responsible for so many of our food sources.”
“Ceecee always told me it’s bad luck to kill a bee.”
Bitty took another drag from her cigarette. “Ceecee would know about bad luck, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer right away. “The Darlingtons were so lucky for so very long. It’s as if they always knew ahead of time how to protect their interests. Rumor had it that one Darlington was a blockade runner during the Civil War, and he had managed to not only squirrel away his earnings, but he had also asked to be paid in gold and not Confederate dollars. That’s how they survived the war still prosperous when many if not most of their neighbors didn’t.”
“What’s that got to do with Ceecee?”
Bitty waited for coughing fit to pass before speaking, the bee keeping its ground. “She and I were allowed in the Darlington inner circle, so we could experience their good fortune firsthand.”
“And then my grandmother died, and the house was ruined. Sort of the beginning of the end.”
Bitty watched the bee fly away, tracing its path before it landed on Ceecee’s tea roses. “Not really. It had started a bit before that. Before your grandmother married your grandfather. Sort of the rumblings before an earthquake.”
