I treaded water with my feet and leaned my head back to make my hair trail perfectly down my back in one long, straight line. When I was little, it used to make me feel like a mermaid.
“You are perfect, Kyle,” I said. “Why haven’t you found someone to settle down with?”
Kyle shrugged. “Oh, you know . . .” He trailed off.
“Just waiting to find the right one?” I filled in for him.
He shook his head. “No, Em. I’m waiting for her to find me.”
TWENTY-NINE
ansley: starlite sisters
When I woke up that morning, the first thing I did was the same thing I did every morning: I looked out the window and thought about how incredibly lucky I was to live in such a beautiful place. I was so distracted by the sun and the glittering sea, which is always most beautiful after a storm, if you ask me, that it took me a few moments to realize that the person I was watching hug Emerson on the dock wasn’t Mark. It was Kyle.
I held my breath as he picked her up and threw her in the water. Had he told her? They were both laughing, but that was all I could see. Not that I thought she would call things off with Mark under any circumstances. But honestly, this was Emerson. She was impulsive. Who knew what she would do? I couldn’t wait to test the waters at Caroline’s brunch.
She was so sullen when we all gathered to celebrate my firstborn’s birthday that I had to assume he had told her, that she was grappling with a major life decision. I wanted to help, but I presumed if she wanted my help, she would have told me.
James had set up a gorgeous bar on the huge lawn of the house that he technically owned, even though Sloane and Adam were currently living in it. Ellie Mae the goat, who had become a treasured family pet, had to be tied up in the yard to keep her from eating the provisions at the Bloody Mary bar.
I did wonder why there was only a bar. But then he said, “Actually, guys, we won’t be eating here.”
The twelve of us dutifully followed James like baby ducklings behind a mother duck. We started down to the docks, and I looked at Jack, assuming that we were going to the boat, but he shrugged.
But as James led Caroline aboard a pristine Hinckley Picnic Boat, I realized that we weren’t boarding Jack’s boat after all. Three girls in matching white dresses were fussing over a huge spread of food on a table that had been set up across the stern, and as I stepped over onto the boat’s deck, James pulled Caroline to him and kissed her head. “Happy birthday, baby.”
She smiled up at him. “Brunch looks amazing. Thank you for going to all this trouble.”
“No, no,” he said, laughing. “The brunch isn’t the present. The boat is.”
Caroline and I gasped in unison.
“We can keep it here or in the Hamptons. Wherever you want. I thought it was high time you had a boat of your very own.”
Caroline kissed him and smiled. “James, that is the most thoughtful thing you’ve ever done for me.”
I agreed. It was extravagant, sure. But it wasn’t really about that. It was more that James had put so much thought into getting something that Caroline would really enjoy. It wasn’t another piece of jewelry to adorn her; it was something she would truly use.
As a mother, that meant a lot to me, but not nearly as much as when I heard Caroline say, “Oh, my God. The name.”
“The name?” I asked.
“Starlite Sisters,” Caroline said quietly, pointing to where it was painted in beautiful script on the boat’s stern.
James kissed her again. “I figured this boat would really be yours, Sloane’s, and Emerson’s, so it seemed like the right choice.”
Caroline put her hand to her heart. “Honest to God, James, I’ve never loved a present more.”
I was close enough to hear him say in her ear, “I’ve never loved a person more.”
They weren’t all good moments between these two. The damage that had been done cut deep. But this was one of the sweetest things I’d seen in a long, long time.
I put my arm around Emerson and said, “I am so excited for tonight.”
In typical mother fashion, I was worried that my eldest daughter’s extravagant birthday would take some of the shine away from my baby girl’s prewedding celebration. It was too late to call it an engagement party, really. But in essence, that was what it was.
She pursed her lips and said, “Your sleepover with your real family looked fun last night,” and pulled away from me.
Great. “Emerson,” I called behind her, but she was already on the other side of the boat, cuddled up to Mark. At this point, I figured it had to mostly be for show. She couldn’t honestly think they were my real family and she wasn’t. But oh, my Em. She had always had a flair for the dramatic. It actually surprised me that she didn’t have a whole mantel full of statuettes. There was no point in forcing her to talk about it. She was my child who had to work things out in her own time.
Sloane was scolding Taylor and AJ as they chased each other around the table, and for a heartbeat, I couldn’t help but understand how Emerson felt. These grandchildren were biologically mine and Jack’s. That had to hurt.
Jack handed me a plate overflowing with crepes and eggs Benedict; thick, crispy bacon; and a salad of dragonfruit, strawberries, and kiwi.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “But you know I’ll never be able to eat all of this.”
“Oh, I know,” he said, his mouth full. “This one is mine. But I thought I would look like less of a pig if I pretended we were sharing it.”
Caroline was sitting in the captain’s chair with Preston on her lap, who was pretending to steer. It took my breath away to think that seven entire months had gone by since these girls had first come home to me, since my Caroline had been as hurt as I had ever seen her. It made me think that maybe time could heal this latest wound. It had healed all the others.
It also reminded me that next month, Carter, my husband and my love, would have been gone for sixteen years. Sixteen years since the world had changed. We had moved forward—my family, the country. We would never be whole in the same way we were before those towers fell, and I knew that didn’t only mean me or my family or those who knew the victims. It meant all of us, the citizens of this country, who, when it really mattered, when our backs were to the wall, could join together in one united pulse, a voice singing a song that broke all of our hearts and yet, at the same time, put us back together again.
I walked into the cabin to find Sloane alone.
“AJ had to use the bathroom,” she said, making air quotes. Toddlers were endlessly fascinated by new bathrooms, and I could imagine that this one was pretty novel and exciting.
I could see Adam outside, laughing with Jack. “He seems like himself again,” I said quietly.
Sloane nodded and smiled, and for the first time in a long time, I sensed that it was an actual smile, a real one. “He’s so strong, Mom. He’s getting better every day.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “I am so blessed to have him here. I can’t believe it.”
I smiled at her, and she continued. “He thinks he’s ready to start talking about the future. For a while, he said he wanted to stay in the Army, that he would serve in some other way. But now he says he can’t bear to be behind some military desk if he can’t be in the action. He thinks it would kill him.”
“And you?”
Her eyes locked with mine. “I know it would kill him. And I just got him back.”
I felt that lurch in my stomach that this was really none of my business, but it worried me anyway. Adam had planned a career in the military, and I was fine with him now choosing a different path. But he had gone to only one year of college. What would his future hold? Of course, between her art sales at Sloane Emerson and Sloane Emerson New York, Sloane could support her family—and certainly while she was living for free in Caroline’s house.
“I can see something starting to shift in him,” Sloane said. “I know when he was finally rescued and going through the worst days of hi
s treatment and PT, he felt trapped, but now, in Peachtree, it seems like he’s starting to feel free.” She paused. “I know it seems weird, but I remember that feeling.”
I nodded. Growing up in a small Southern town, I used to feel a bit under a microscope. It wasn’t all bad. I was a good girl who made good grades, so there was a bright light that shone on me, for sure. But there was also that keen awareness that people were always watching me.
For me, moving to New York was freedom. No one knew me. No one was watching. I could succeed or fail as I saw fit, and no one was commenting on it or even noticing. But I realized in raising my girls there that their story would be quite the opposite. By the time they were born, we had friends and a church, schools, and sports. We had a community who was watching their every move, waiting to talk about what they did right or wrong.
But when we moved to Peachtree Bluff, life became different for them. Their Peachtree Bluff was my New York, a clean slate where no one knew who they were or what they had done. No one had seen them take their first steps or heard stories about how they refused to eat mashed peaches or washed their hair with finger paint. No one knew the exact time and place of Sloane’s first kiss or knew the name of Caroline’s homecoming date or had seen Emerson in her first stage production.
So I understood what Sloane meant about a clean slate for Adam and for her family. Sometimes it’s too hard to go back to an old life that will be forever altered.
I told Sloane all of that and said, “You know, in a lot of ways, places are just places. The South and the North aren’t really all that different.”
“Well,” she replied, “Georgia is the Empire State of the South, after all.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? That’s a thing?”
She nodded. “It is indeed.”
Jack walked in and looked around. “I really need to upgrade,” he said. “This makes my boat look like it’s ready for the burn pile.” Then his eyes widened. “Speaking of boats, I have a present for Vivi. I didn’t want to steal anybody’s thunder, but it is her twelfth birthday tomorrow, and I thought she deserved something special.”
I leaned into his side, and he put his arm around me. He was the best man.
“Emerson saw us all asleep in my room this morning,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” Sloane said. “That couldn’t have gone well.”
I shook my head. Jack and I had been going through our calendars earlier that morning, trying to pin down a date for our own nuptials. Since Emerson was basically having the wedding we had talked about, we decided to get married just the two of us and then have a nice dinner with our families afterward.
“Jack,” I said now, “I’m so sorry. I know we were planning earlier, but I think we need to put off setting a date until I can make things right with her. I don’t want our marriage to be the source of this unhappiness.”
For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t read his expression. “Ansley, look,” he said, “I’m fine with being fourth. I get it. I will always come after your girls, and I am good with that. But if we are going to be together, you have to be willing to fight for me the way I have always fought for you. And if you can’t do that, then I’d rather know now.”
As he turned around and walked out the door, I thought about what I had put him through over these past six months. Not wanting to be together because of the girls. Then not wanting to introduce him to the girls. Then, when we were finally giving this thing a shot, breaking up with him because Adam was MIA and Sloane needed all my attention. He took the backseat to them regularly, and he handled it with ease. I guessed this was the tipping point for him.
I sighed and turned to say something to Sloane and realized that Emerson was standing there, too, holding AJ’s hand, looking white and not in the bridal way.
I bit my lip. “I didn’t know you were there.”
She didn’t say anything but walked past me, too. “Great,” I said to Sloane. “That’s just great.”
“Gransley!” AJ said, with so much excitement that it took my mind off what was going on. “I got to go potty on a boat! It was so fun!”
I scooped him up onto my hip and kissed his round cheek, as ripe and juicy as a fresh peach. “I love you so much,” I said.
“I love you, too, Gransley.”
Finally, someone who wasn’t mad at me.
Vivi ran into the cabin. “Gransley, Gransley, you have to come see what Jack got me for my birthday!”
I couldn’t even imagine, but as soon as I walked outside, I saw it. I gasped for the second time that morning and put my hand over my mouth, scrambling onto the dock.
“Jack,” I said, “is this the one?” The night Jack and I had met, we kissed for the first time standing in his tiny thirteen-foot Boston Whaler.
He nodded, reaching his hand out to me. As I stepped into the boat, now perfectly restored with new teak and a new engine, I let myself, for a moment, be that fifteen-year-old girl again, the one who had met Jack at the sandbar party, who had stayed late with her friends, who had been so swept away by that boy from the second her eyes met his.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know you want everything to be perfect. It’s just that I only want you. Under any circumstances.”
It wasn’t a moon tide. And it wasn’t the sandbar party, but I leaned into Jack and kissed him right there, in the broad daylight, where everyone could see, even my own family. The birds were chirping instead of the cicadas humming, but either way, this man, this kiss, these sounds, this had become, for me, the cadence of summertime. And I vowed right then and there to make sure that no matter what else happened, Jack knew he was my priority. What he wanted mattered.
“September 22,” I whispered, as I pulled away from him.
Jack smiled and nodded.
“That’s the day I want to marry you,” I said. “September 22 is the harvest moon, and I think we should get married underneath it.”
Jack teared up as he kissed me again. “September 22,” he said. “The day I’ve been waiting for since I kissed you on this boat for the very first time.”
I heard a screech from the Starlite Sisters. I looked up to see Caroline wrestling a magnum of Veuve from James.
“But we have to christen the boat,” he was saying.
“You are not smashing that bottle and ruining the finish on this perfect boat.”
“Forget the boat,” Emerson said. “You’re not wasting all that Veuve.”
She hoisted it onto her hip and handed it to Mark. “There, honey,” she said.
He kissed her softly. “You’re going to let me do it? Spear the magnum with the sword?”
She nodded. “I was hoping you would do it tonight instead of at the wedding, since this is sort of our kickoff.”
That clever, clever girl.
“September 22 is going to be the best day of my life,” Jack said in my ear.
I would drink to that.
THIRTY
emerson: a love like that
I still remembered the morning of September 11, 2001, like it was yesterday. I was a bundle of excitement, prancing around the house in my angel costume. For some unknown reason, Mom had finally decided to let me act, even though she had been so against it for years. I had gotten the starring role of the littlest angel in the school play. I straightened my halo one more time before I walked into the kitchen, where, as usual, it felt like more was happening than on all the streets of Manhattan combined.
I thought Caroline looked so cool in her lace-up jeans and popcorn shirt that were all the rage. Mom was saying, “Take the eyeliner off, right now,” and Sloane was saying, “Mom, I totally forgot that I have to take two dozen cookies for the field trip today, and I told them you would chaperone.”
She sighed. “After Emmy’s play. We’re all going to Emmy’s play first.”
That was when my dad came in and swept me up off the ground and said, “We sure are.” I gave him a big kiss on the lips and threw my arms around his neck.
“I love you, my little angel,” he said. “And I’m so proud of you.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
Then he kissed Caroline’s cheek and said, “I love you, too, even if you’re wearing too much makeup.”
And he kissed Sloane’s cheek and said, “And I love you, and I will bring the cookies for your field trip to the play so Mom doesn’t have to do that.”
Mom put her hand over her heart and said, “My real-life Prince Charming.”
He winked at her, pulled her close, and kissed her on the lips. “You, my darling . . . I may love you best of all.”
“Hey!” I protested.
“Not as much as I love you,” Mom said. She kissed him one more time and then went back to making sandwiches and packing backpacks and cleaning up breakfast. I remember thinking then that I wanted to be just like my parents when I grew up. I wanted to find a love like that, a marriage like that. I wanted to have a home and kids and a family who loved one another, who created mass chaos in the mornings.
“See you in a couple of hours,” Daddy said. “Break a leg, Em!”
Those were the last words my father ever said to me. That had to mean something, didn’t it? At least, it did to me. It was those last words I heard echoing in my mind when I boarded a plane to LA instead of going to UGA. It was what I heard when I spent all my tips on acting lessons and endured the humiliation of the worst parts imaginable because I believed that they might lead to something bigger. I always believed that my dad was leading me, that he was guiding me down the right path. He had wanted me to act, hadn’t he? Could there possibly be any other reason those had been his last words to me?
It was almost as if I could hear my late father’s voice in my ear now, saying, “Break a leg, Em!” as I stood in the guesthouse bathroom getting ready for my engagement party.
I had thought that after years of auditions and getting parts and really putting myself out there, I was beyond jitters. But my hands were shaking so badly I could barely get my earring in. Caroline had surprised me that morning with a huge pair of mother-of-pearl flower earrings, which were the only accessory I needed with my loose bun and white maxi dress.
The Southern Side of Paradise Page 21