Page 60 of Dreams of Falling
Ceecee nodded. “Yes. To me, sometimes the houseisMargaret, and if I tell myself that she’s fine and well and at Carrowmore, I don’t have to remember the night of the fire.”
Bitty faced her, her eyes unreadable. “You were asleep for most of it.” Bitty’s gaze didn’t leave Ceecee’s face.
Ceecee nodded slowly, recalling herself saying that more than she recalled the actual event. But that made sense, her doctors told her. They said her brain had blocked out most of her memories of that night, and they wouldn’t return until she was ready to remember everything. And she still wasn’t. She’d been found with her body thrown over Ivy’s on the front lawn while the fire burned behind them. They told her she’d saved Ivy’s life. She glanced away from Bitty’s probing stare. “I dream about that night sometimes. I hear Ivy crying, and I smell burning wood and feel the heat of the flames. And then... nothing.”
“But you still feel the guilt.”
Ceecee jerked her gaze from the river to stare at her friend. “Guilt? For what happened to Margaret?”
Bitty slowly shook her head. “No. For what happened after she died.”
Ceecee’s head hurt. “That’s the thing that scares me, Bitty. I never did. But I still miss her. Every single day.”
“I know. And I’m glad you don’t feel any guilt. Because I think I have enough of that for both of us.”
“What are you talking about? You weren’t there.”
Bitty stood, bracing herself on the arm of the bench. “You say you don’t like to go to Carrowmore because you like to think of it as still whole, with Margaret still there. You know what I see in my head when I think about it? I see the ruin exactly as it is and as it should be. It’s a burned-out shell. A perfect reminder of ill-advised dreams and wishes and broken promises. The only reason I don’t go and set a match to the rest of it is because of Larkin. In my dreams, I like to think of her as the salvation not just for the house, but for all of us.”
Ceecee remained seated, Bitty’s bitter words like dull arrows pricking her skin before ricocheting to the ground. “You never told me you felt that way. All these years, and you’ve never told me.”
“Because you never want to see the ugly parts of people, so you pretend they’re not there. You insist on seeing everyone, with very few exceptions, as perfect with good intentions. Frankly, it’s been exhausting protecting you from a lot of ugliness, and I’m simply not going to be around forever to keep doing it, so it’s time you start figuring it out yourself.”
Ceecee stood so fast that her head swam for a moment. “I’m going to forgive you for saying that because you’re old and sick and feeling crotchety. But none of that tells me why you feel guilty about Margaret’s death.”
Bitty pressed the palm of her hand against her chest as if it might help her breathe. She took a deep breath through rattling lungs and said, “Because on that day at Carrowmore when we heard about Reggie enlisting, I put another ribbon in the tree.”
The chirping of the insects and a cicada’s whirring in the magnolia tree suddenly seemed to stop. All Ceecee could hear was the blood rushing in her head and Bitty’s breath wheezing in and out of her chest. “What did it say?”
Bitty closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s funny, the things we remember, isn’t it? I remember each and every word, so much that I sometimes dream about it.” She took two rattling breaths. “I wrote, ‘Iwish to be there on the day that Margaret Darlington’s bill for the price of a promise broken comes due.’”
“What broken promise?” Ceecee asked, although she already knew. She’d called it so many other things so she’d never have to call it that. Which meant, of course, that Bitty was right.
She reached for Bitty’s hand, and they sat down on the bench again, their fingers entwined, their hands papery and veined, yet still strong and capable. They sat for a long while, watching the sun dip in the sky, and the river skimming past them as it always had, finding its inevitable end in the deep waters of the Atlantic.
•••
Ceecee
1951
It had been a month since they’d learned of Reggie’s enlisting. The days had grown longer and hotter, the mosquitoes more plentiful. Ceecee would normally have been miserable, as all bloodsucking insects had always loved her, and the humidity made her hair frizz. But she barely noticed. Even her mother had commented on her bright mood. As long as she didn’t slack on her chores, her mother left her alone to daydream about Boyd and their future together. Ceecee’s parents had both met Boyd during his earlier visit and, given that they had invited him to supper twice during his stay, had apparently approved of him.
Although there was nothing official yet, old Dr. Griffith had invited Boyd to work in his practice to meet the existing patients and to take over gradually. It helped that Boyd was a veteran, since the doctor had lost his only son in Guadalcanal. Boyd was staying temporarily with the doctor and his wife in the carriage house on their property, and they had offered it to him as a permanent place to live should he be interested in staying long-term.
All of this meant that Ceecee had started thinking about her wedding gown, and what flowers she’d have at the service, and how her father could walk her down the aisle and perform the ceremony.Surely that had been done before? The only part she couldn’t decide on was who would be her maid of honor; she switched between Bitty and Margaret with almost the same frequency as the turning of the tides. She had time to decide, she knew—she didn’t even have a ring yet. But every single night she dreamed of her wedding day, and even the shadow of Margaret’s misery couldn’t dim her happiness. It was odd to have their positions inverted, and even if she wasn’t given any satisfaction over the reversal in fortune, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit it was exhilarating to be the lucky one for a change. Still, she remembered the promise to be friends, come what may, and she’d been raised to believe that a promise made was a promise kept, so she tried. She really tried, no matter how hard Margaret made it.
Margaret had finally shared the contents of Reggie’s letter. Although it had been filled with vows of his undying love for her, he was enlisting to do his duty, to build a better future not only for him and Margaret but also for the country. If she would still have him when the war was over, he would come back to her and they would be married.
By the time she’d read the letter, he’d already been shipped out for basic training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. He’d given her an address to write to and promised he’d wait for her letter before writing again to her. He didn’t want to bother her if she didn’t wish to hear from him. As far as Bitty and Ceecee knew, Margaret had not written.
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, Bitty and Ceecee walked slowly down the sidewalk on Front Street with Margaret tucked protectively between them. She wore sunglasses and a hat to protect her skin from the sun, but neither hid the fatigue under her eyes or the sallowness of her skin. Even her arm where it was linked with Ceecee’s felt like thin flesh against bone.
Mrs. Darlington had tried tempting her daughter with a trip to Paris and London, or even a short shopping trip to Charleston, but Margaret showed no interest. As a last resort, Mrs. Darlington had asked Bitty and Ceecee to take her to downtown Georgetown—anything to get Margaret out of the house and into the sunshine.
The lure of a shopping trip had done nothing to perk her up, norhad the Darlington cook’s best efforts enticed Margaret to eat. Ceecee had always thought the term “pining away” was something found only in fairy tales and the gothic romance novels Bitty would pull out of the donation bins at the school’s library. But here was Margaret, fading right in front of them, to the point where Ceecee was reminded of the shadows of the A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were forever embedded on the pavements. She was afraid that would be Margaret’s fate, one day just slipping away from them and leaving behind only a pale shadow.
“You should write to him,” Bitty said, chewing on a Tootsie Roll. “It’s time to swallow your Darlington pride. Tell him you love him, and that you will wait for him. Tell him you’d like to set a wedding date. Because if you keep going this way, there will be nothing left to fit into your mother’s antique lace wedding dress.”
