“Right,” Emma said. “Well, tell him I’ll be there.”
Lara scoffed. “Of course you will be. I’ll send the flight information to your phone. Welcome back!”
Emma clicked off the phone and curled up under the blankets, hoping to stave off the encroaching realities of her departure at least a little while longer. You get used to a place when you stay there for ten days. Especially when that place is called “home” and you haven’t set foot there in years.
She smelled the aroma of fresh paint wafting up from the main floor, and heard Michael and her father talking. Emma got up, dressed, and headed downstairs. She wasn’t about to spend her last day in Juneberry in bed.
“Can’t a lady get any sleep around here?”
Emma smiled at Will as she met him downstairs. He carefully painted the trim around the doorway inside the office.
“Sorry if we woke you, hon. Come on down and take a look.”
Emma walked into the office. The new, larger windows were in, and they flooded the room with October morning sunlight. At the other end of the room where the kitchen pantry used to be, Michael guided a roller brush, laying the first coat of a lively yellow that reminded Emma of the Oval Office in the White House.
“Honey, we’re going to have the new office completely finished by lunchtime. I can’t believe how quickly everything’s been made over.”
“Me, neither.”
“Once we’ve got two coats down, the last thing to do is buff this floor. We’re going to clean the original hardwoods first and then seal it.”
“Is the wood in good-enough condition?” Emma asked.
“See for yourself.”
Will pulled up a section of the lavender drop cloth. Beneath it was a rich cherry hardwood. It looked amazing.
“Some of the imperfections will be visible, but this house has been here a long time. I see no reason to cover up the dings and scars. We’ve all got ’em.”
Emma watched her father as he spoke with excitement about the new office. She wanted to freeze this moment in her memory for the inevitable time, just a day away, when she would have to fold him up and store him away until the next time they could spend time together. She put her arms around him and hugged him.
“Hey, what’s that for?”
“It’s for saying good morning,” she said.
If this week had taught her nothing else, it taught Emma how precious life was—that life could be taken away when you least expected it. In less than twenty-four hours, Juneberry would be taken away from her. Emma felt like she was living the answer to one of those “if you only had one day to live, what day would you choose?” questions.
She walked to the other end of the office where Michael was standing, eyeing the revitalized space, imagining where the furniture would go.
“You’ve done wonders with this space, Michael. I can’t believe it was a cramped bedroom when we started.”
“Do you want to go with me to pick out office furniture later, Emma?” Will asked from the other end of the room. “I’d like you to be there to help me pick it out.”
“Sure. We can go after lunch.”
o o o
Samantha held her newborn son, Jimmy, while an RN met with her, asking if she had any questions about the care and feeding of a newborn baby. This was standard procedure, but certainly not necessary since Samantha had plenty of experience.
In the speedy modern world of hospital birthing, the bill had already been dropped off in her room, slid under her door like at a hotel, before Samantha woke up. Doctors signed her release time for just before noon.
In another room at Wellman, Christina awoke in a small baby blue recliner she and one of the night shift nurses had dragged from the lounge into Bo’s room around midnight. She’d dozed on and off through the night, getting up to check on her beloved, who’d transitioned from anesthesia to the deep sleep of recovery without ever waking.
Other than some stiffness in her petite frame, Christina felt reborn. She’d spent what were for her precious moments watching him sleep through the night, lightly touching his hand or his forehead, careful not to wake him, and praying over and over again her thankfulness to God.
In the early morning, when the sun rose again and light commuter traffic moved past their window, Christina realized she had all she wanted. Bo was alive, sleeping safely in a bed next to her, the very thing she’d prayed for. Words could never adequately express the gratitude she felt. Christina only knew she’d never be the same.
Bo’s eyelids twitched once, then slowly opened. He gazed around the room. The early-morning sunlight was just bright enough for him to find the one object in the room he recognized, the woman he most wanted to see.
“Have you been here all night?” Bo asked, trying to sit up.
“Honey, don’t move. Just lie still,” Christina took his hand, stood at the side of his bed.
“What time is it?”
“About seven thirty. How do you feel?”
Bo looked at the cast on his leg and felt its cool roughness with his fingers. He wiggled his toes sticking out at the other end.
“Like I just fell off a house.”
“Not funny.”
Bo rallied himself from sleep, slowly raising his hands to his face, scratching the end of his nose. He looked rough and unshaven. There were creases in his skin, bruises from the fall, redness from the long sleep.
“I feel like I’ve been sleeping a million years.”
Christina sat on the edge of his bed, smoothing rogue curls in his hair.
“Yesterday was an exceptionally long day,” she told him, her voice languid and peaceful.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Christina smiled.
“It’s too early for talk, but I’m so glad we’re together right now.”
“I scared you a bit, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
He cleared his throat. “How bad am I?”
“Broken bones, you lost some blood. The doctor says you’ll recover, you’ll just need time to mend and get your strength back.”
“My appetite’s already back.”
“That’s a good sign,” Christina laughed. “I heard one of the nurses asking when the breakfast trays would be delivered. It shouldn’t be too long.”
Bo reached up with his right hand and touched Christina’s face, lightly rubbing her cheek with the back of his fingers.
She held his hand in hers against her face.
“Listen, something happened to me yesterday,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing I think you’ll appreciate.”
“Don’t tell me … you fell for me …?”
Bo started to laugh, then winced. “Now who’s being funny?” he said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry, Bo. I just wanted you to smile …”
He smiled.
“So … tell me. What happened to you yesterday, besides the obvious, I mean?” she said.
“I was talking to Mike on the roof just before I fell. I told him he needed to watch out for Emma, and the minute I said that, I felt convicted. Like, even though I believed what I was saying, it still wasn’t right for me to say it. During the next few hours I kept thinking about it, and I got angry … with myself. Then the storm blew in, and that made me even more upset. I finished the last shingle just as the rain started to come down. I stood up, and when I did, I felt this wall of air hit me in the chest. I lost my footing, but I thought I could adjust my weight. The next thing I knew there was nothing behind to catch me.”
Bo stared into Christina’s eyes.
“Have you ever felt like time just stopped or slowed down for you?”
Christina nodded her head.
“I was sorry I said those things to Michael,” he continued. “I’m going to tell him that the next time I see him. Life’s too short to play it safe sometimes. If he feels something special about Emma, he should go for it.”
Bo shook his head like he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought otherwise.
“I forgave my ex for everything she did, right at that moment, and I believed it was possible for everything to work out, I mean, to be all right.” Bo’s eyes began to squint shut. He paused, offering an expression of deep reflection. “I thought about what it would be like if I never saw your face again.”
Bo looked into Christina’s eyes, a look of repentance sculpting his wounded face. “Christina, will you forgive me?”
“Yes.”
She’d waited so long for him to come around. Prayed and waited.
“And I can’t—wait another minute to ask you this,” he said, entwining his fingers with hers. “Will you do me the distinct honor of marrying me?”
o o o
Will scrubbed new yellow paint from his hands in the upstairs bathroom. Emma sat at the vanity in her bedroom across the hall, getting ready for their shopping excursion.
“Honey, it’s your last day,” Will called to her. “Anything you’d especially like to do?
Emma ran a brush through her straight shoulder-length hair.
“I just heard from Jim that Samantha and the new baby are coming home around lunchtime. I’d like to stop by for a visit. I also promised to stop by and see Janette Kerr before I left town. I really don’t know how I’ll have time, but I said I would.”
“How do you know Janette?” he said, peering around the corner, drying his hands on a towel.
“I met her at Samantha’s party. Didn’t I tell you? She’s a friend of hers. I’m surprised you don’t know her.”
“I know Janette, just didn’t know that you did. Have you ever seen any of her movies?”
“I don’t think so. From the sound of it, she was kind of a small-time actress in the ’50s and ’60s.”
Will stepped over to Emma’s doorway, tossing the towels over his right shoulder. “That’s not how I would describe her. When are you going over there?”
“This afternoon. Whenever I can fit it in.”
“Well, we’d better get moving if you’re going to get in all these stops.”
An hour later, they were in Columbia shopping for furniture. At Will’s request, she picked out a traditional-looking cherry wood desk with ornamental drawers and brass pulls at an upscale antique shop. A modern office supply store sold them a new computer, desk light, a comfortable cloth swivel chair, and a cordless telephone.
By this time, they were hungry and decided to walk somewhere for lunch. It was light fare, chicken salad at a local restaurant in Columbia a block from Will’s law office.
“Emma, I don’t mean to sound pushy or anything … but do you have any idea when you’ll come home again?” he asked, sipping from his iced-tea glass, then setting it back on the table.
“I’ll have some time around Christmas. That’s probably the soonest I could come back. The firm has been more than generous, giving me all this time. But I’m going back to a madhouse. Our senior partner has a new corporate client and we’re already preparing to respond to a major lawsuit. We usually serve litigation this large in teams, but we’ll be up to our ears in it before long.”
Will frowned, an expression Emma had rarely seen on her father’s face.
“I’m just gonna shoot honestly with you, Emma. You’ve really come alive this week. Are you sure you’re ready to charge back into the fray? I’ll admit I don’t know much about your Boston life and I’m sure it’s wonderful. But what I’ve seen? You fit so perfectly here in Juneberry.”
Emma wiped her face with a paper napkin, crinkling it in her palm before setting it on her plate. “I don’t think anyone is ever ready to go back to work, but I feel like I’ve accomplished all I came here to do. It’s been an amazing visit, Dad, but it shouldn’t take long for me to get back into the swing of things back home …” The moment she said “home” she regretted it. Not because Boston hadn’t been a good home for her all these years, but because it didn’t quite sound right to speak of Boston as home while she was in South Carolina, while she was sitting across the table from her father. “But I won’t stay away so long this time,” she promised, hoping these words might distract him from her uncertainty.
Will dropped his napkin across his plate and leaned back in his chair. “One of the hardest things a parent is ever asked to do, Emma, is to let go. I’d like to ask you to do something that’s probably going to be an even bigger challenge for you. When your career gets busy again, and your free time seems to evaporate—and it will. Hey, I’m an attorney too, and I know the value of an hour. But when that happens, I want you to stop for a second and remember where you came from, and hang onto it. And, honey … I want you to know, Juneberry will always be your home too.”
~ Twenty ~
When I give my heart, it will be completely.
—THE LETTERMAN
“When I Fall in Love”
In 1958, Janette Kerr left Juneberry, South Carolina, to chase her Hollywood dreams. The eighteen-year-old had starred in enough high school musicals, lived the drama of being chosen homecoming queen, and been asked to walk the runway in a chamber of commerce charity fashion show, to be certain she would be a huge star if just given the opportunity. She even won a statewide beauty contest in Columbia and was awarded a grand prize of three hundred dollars. Against her mother’s wishes, Janette used her prize money to buy a one-way Greyhound bus ticket and rent a studio apartment in West Hollywood.
Fourteen years later, she packed up her belongings, climbed into her powder blue Cadillac convertible, and left Hollywood for good.
She’d seen the studio system up close as a contract actress at Paramount Pictures. She’d played the nightclub cigarette girl, a passenger on a train, and a chorus-line dancer. She’d even acted opposite Clark Gable in Some Go East, taking his money on-screen at a soundstage newspaper stand and delivering her one line “Don’t forget your change, sir!” right on cue.
“Oh, I may have never become a star, Emma, but I tasted lots of success. I’ll bet you’ve never seen this.”
Janette handed her an issue of LIFE Magazine from 1961. A beautiful, younger Janette Kerr graced the oversized cover. The twenty-two-year-old beauty, a Paramount contract actress, cover girl, and aspiring movie starlet.
“You look beautiful,” Emma said.
“That was when the publicity department at Paramount was trying to break new stars by getting us different kinds of exposure. They wanted to find the next big thing, but it turned out not to be me.”
“Still, it’s an amazing accomplishment,” Emma said, setting the magazine back on the coffee table.
“I don’t know what I accomplished. I think God just gives us little tastes of something so we know what it is. That was my little moment of fame.”
Janette sipped her tea. In honor of Emma’s visit, she’d gotten out her best tea service, a white porcelain set with colorful, hand-painted daffodils on the teapot, cups, and sugar bowl. She and Emma sat in Janette’s living room at her mobile home by the lake. It was clean and comfortable, the perfect living space for Janette and her sister Claudia.
“I danced with Cary Grant once
at a birthday party for a Paramount Studios VP,” she said, delighted with the memory. “He was so charming and witty. Those were the kinds of experiences I’d hoped for when I went out to Hollywood, and I had many.”
“You must have wanted success as an actress, too?” Emma said.
“Yes, but like I told Beth, success is something you can’t hang onto. You might have that spotlight shining its bright round beam on you for a moment, but the next minute it’s gone. Oh, I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t great fun to have that spotlight on me, but you can’t keep it, and chasing after that light can make a person crazy.”
“I can tell by your smile, you must have had some good times.”
“I made seventeen pictures, appeared on television shows, Gunsmoke, Dr. Kildare, Perry Mason, Star Trek. I did lots of things like that.”
“But you came back?”
“I came back home, Emma. I came back to people who really knew and cared about me. There’s no other place like Juneberry in the world. Did you know that? Have you ever really thought about just how special this place is? To me it’s the most precious place in the world, and do you know why?”
Emma shook her head.
“Because it’s where I’m from. It’s where my roots are. Everyone knows me here, and I’ve known them for a lifetime. When I was in pictures, nobody really knew me. Sure, I worked with the other actors, and was friendly with everyone, but it was just a group of people going ’round and ’round on a carousel. Everyone doing their best to enjoy the ride all by themselves.”
“Is that why you came back?”
“Something like that. Both my mother and sister were living at the time and we had such fun together. I was the adventurer—always the one to take a risk. You’re that way too, aren’t you?”
Emma smiled. “I think so.”
“Emma, I wanted to see you, not to change your mind about anything, that’s not my place, but just to tell you something it took me years to learn.”
Emma set her teacup back on the saucer and leaned forward to listen.
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