Chapter 19
Claire would have had feelings about this.
A year ago, Claire would have shown up three hours early and reorganized the entire table with Mason jars and twine. She would have brought dahlia stems in colors complementing the season. But Claire was not hosting this party. Nina was, and Nina’s version of hosting was this.
There would be food. There would be people. Nobody would have an assigned seat, and if you needed a fork, you could open the drawer and get one yourself.
The food was Elena’s, all of it.
Elena had arrived at eight in the morning with the Honda rattling and a trunk full of food.
She had an expression that suggested she had been cooking before the sun came up, which she had, most likely, because Elena didn’t believe in doing things halfway.
And she especially didn’t believe in doing things halfway when the occasion was her daughter-in-law’s birthday.
Pollo asado, frijoles refritos, plátanos fritos, and empanadas that she guarded on the counter as if someone was trying to break in and steal them.
Of course, if Harper got there, they would cease to exist within a few minutes.
She made flan, a recipe she had been making since before David was born, from a card in her mother’s handwriting that was so old the edges were brown.
And, of course, the mole. Not Nina’s mole, but Elena’s mole, the very original one, the one David had grown up eating.
“You always make way too much food,” Nina said, putting her hands on her hips and looking across the counter.
“There’s no such thing as too much food. There is only not enough people,” Elena said.
She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at Nina, checking her for weight, color, and signs of life. Whatever she saw apparently satisfied her because she nodded once.
“You look good.”
“Thank you, Elena.”
“The man is coming?”
“Sam?”
“Yes.”
“Sam is coming.”
“I will behave, don’t worry.”
“Elena…”
“I said I will behave. I did not say I will not have opinions or thoughts to share with him.”
Lucia appeared from her room in a dress that was far too old for her because she was now seventeen, and that’s what seventeen-year-olds did. Her dark hair was down, and she was carrying a laptop.
“The slideshow is ready,” she announced.
“What slideshow?” Nina asked.
“The slideshow of the pact, all those photos from the year. I put it all to music.”
“What music?”
Lucia smiled.
“You’ll see.”
“Lucia—”
“You’ll see, Mom.”
They arrived in waves, Claire and Greg first, which didn’t surprise anybody because Claire was constitutionally incapable of being late. Greg had apparently decided in this new chapter of their marriage that showing up on time was his only option.
He was wearing a button-down shirt, not the College of Charleston T-shirt, but a real shirt with a collar. Claire hadn’t asked him to wear it. He had chosen it himself, as he had been choosing many small things lately, trying to pay attention.
He carried a cake, not a gift card, but a cake from the bakery on Bay Street that had reopened under new management.
Claire had watched him go in that morning and come out carrying a box.
She didn’t ask what was in it because Greg was really trying, and she wanted to let him try without trying to manage the outcome.
The cake was chocolate, Nina’s favorite, not Claire’s.
Greg had bought Nina’s favorite cake for Nina’s birthday party, which meant he had asked Claire what Nina liked, which meant he had paid attention to the answer.
And all of that meant more than the cake itself.
Claire found Nina in the kitchen and handed her the box.
“This is from Greg.”
Nina opened it and looked at the chocolate cake.
“Greg bought me a cake?”
“Greg bought you a cake.”
“Greg, who gave you the universal gift card, bought me a chocolate cake.”
“He’s a work in progress, what can I say?”
“Well, we’re all works in progress,” Nina said.
She put the cake on the counter next to Elena’s flan.
Harper and Jordan arrived next.
Jordan’s truck pulled into the crushed shell driveway, and Harper got out wearing linen instead of silk, which was an improvement so significant that Claire had texted Nina from across the yard.
She’s wearing linen.
Nina texted back:
The end times are upon us.
Jordan got out of the driver’s seat, carrying a bottle of wine and a small wrapped package. He wore jeans and a faded blue shirt.
He shook Greg’s hand on the porch, and within three minutes, they were talking about the table Jordan was building, and Greg was asking about wood. Jordan was explaining the reclaimed church beams from Georgetown, and Claire watched her husband lean forward in his chair with genuine interest.
Sam arrived at noon.
He parked on the road because the driveway was full. He walked up the path to Nina’s house carrying flowers for Nina and a separate, smaller bunch for Elena. He’d learned over the last few mont of very careful courtship that Elena was the gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper needed her own offering.
Elena accepted the flowers like a queen and then inspected the bouquet, smelling it. She looked at Sam over the top of the stems.
“You remembered I like gardenias,” she said.
“You did mention it.”
“I mentioned it once.”
“I was listening.”
Elena looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.
Sam found Nina in the kitchen. He kissed her on the cheek the way he did everything, gently.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for inviting me.”
He looked around the kitchen. It was overflowing with food, and then there was the cake from Greg, the white napkins in a pile, and the napkin they’d all signed a year ago framed on the wall.
He’d heard the story of the pact. He’d heard all the stories over dinners and phone calls and long walks through his garden on James Island, but he’d never seen the napkin.
He walked over and looked at it.
“So this is it, the famous napkin.”
“That’s it.”
“It’s smaller than I imagined.”
“The biggest things usually are.”
He looked at her, and Nina thought about David looking at the marsh through that same kitchen window and saying, this is it.
She thought that maybe a person could have more than one this is it in a lifetime.
Maybe the first one didn’t cancel out the second, and the second one didn’t dishonor the first.
Maybe a life was big enough for two of them.
The party was everything a birthday dinner should be, loud and messy.
There were no place settings, no color-coordinated napkins, no Pinterest Mason jars. People sat where they wanted, ate what they wanted, and spilled things everywhere without any apology.
Greg talked to Jordan about wood grain for forty-five minutes and looked happier than Claire had seen him in years. It occurred to her that maybe she hadn’t been paying close attention to him either.
Harper sat on the porch with a plate of empanadas and guarded them with her life. She did let Jordan rest his arm across the back of her chair, and she didn’t stiffen or pull away.
Elena held court at the kitchen table, telling Sam stories about David as a child.
They were either true or maybe slightly improved, but Sam listened with the patient attention of a man who understood that loving Nina now meant loving David’s memory, and loving David’s memory meant listening to Elena.
Listening to Elena, however, was an endurance sport that he had apparently trained for.
Lucia moved through the party like a stage manager, refilling drinks and adjusting the music. She checked on the slideshow setup with intensity that she had inherited from her father.
She set up the laptop, connected it to the television in the living room, and at some point in the early afternoon, she stood on a chair and whistled.
The room went quiet.
“Attention,” Lucia said. “I made something. I’m very proud of it. You’re all going to watch it. Now, if you cry, there are napkins. They’re white from the Piggly Wiggly. You’re just going to have to deal with it.”
She pressed play.
The slideshow opened with a photo from last year’s birthday dinner. There were three women with their glasses raised, smiling.
This was the same photo they had looked at on Claire’s living room floor the night before the skydive.
They were smiling, but something behind their eyes was not alive.
Lucia had set it to music.
The opening notes of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” filled the living room.
Claire laughed. Harper groaned and rolled her eyes, and Nina put her hand over her mouth.
The photos continued to play.
The stage at Hank’s. Folly Beach at dawn. Their polka dot bathing suits, waist-deep in the December Atlantic.
There was a picture from Senora Morales’s kitchen. Nina standing at the stove.
There was the rock-climbing wall, with Claire frozen halfway up. She wondered who had taken that photo.
There was the tattoo parlor and their wrists in a row.
Picture after picture after picture crossed the screen, bringing back memories that none of them would ever forget.
The final picture was at the skydive, the yellow plane, and the neon jumpsuits.
The last photo, which Lucia must have gotten from Cal because none of them had taken it, was of the three women on the field, holding each other, tiny against the enormous blue sky.
The song ended, and the room was quiet.
Elena was sobbing into a napkin, which she would totally deny later, of course.
Greg was holding Claire’s hand, which he had reached for during the polar plunge photo and had never let go.
Jordan now had his arm fully around Harper, and Harper was leaning into him.
Sam stood behind Nina with his hand on her shoulder, and Nina covered his hand with hers.
Lucia finally stepped off the chair and looked at her mother.
“I know Dad would have made a spreadsheet,” she said, “but I made a slideshow. It’s still the same energy.”
Nina pulled her daughter into a hug so tight that Lucia made a noise of protest. Elena got up from the table and put her arms around both of them.
These three generations of women who had loved David Vargas stood in the kitchen, holding each other, and everyone in the room went silent, allowing them that moment.
When the party wound down, they moved to the porch, Nina’s porch, not Claire’s this time. The tide was coming in, the water creeping over the mud, the egrets settling in for the night.
Claire sat in a rocking chair with Greg beside her, not across from her. He had pulled his chair closer without being asked, and their shoulders almost touched.
“This was a good party,” Greg said.
“It was.”
“No fancy napkins.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “No fancy napkins.”
“Better this way, I think.”
Claire looked at him. He was looking out at the marsh, and it occurred to her that his face was softer than it used to be, or maybe it had always been soft, and she had just stopped looking closely enough to see it.
“Yeah, better this way.”
Someone asked a question. Claire wasn’t even sure who, maybe Harper or Nina, maybe Lucia.
“Are we doing it again? Are you doing it again? Year two?”
The three of them looked at each other, Claire, Harper, Nina, sitting on the porch, wine in hand, having just gotten through twelve scary adventures, or at least scary to them.
“We don’t need a pact,” Claire said.
“No, we don’t,” Harper agreed.
“That pact was just our training wheels,” Nina said, “and we don’t need training wheels anymore.”
“But,” Harper said.
“But,” Claire said.
“We should probably still do things that scare us from time to time,” Nina said, “just because.”
“Just because,” Harper agreed.
“Who’s picking the first adventure?” Lucia’s voice came from inside the house, where she was eating leftover flan. “I am. I’m picking. You’re all going to hate it so much.”
“She can’t pick,” Harper said. “She didn’t sign the napkin.”
“The napkin has expired,” Nina said. “New year, new rules.”
“I want new rules,” Lucia called. “Rule one, Abuela has to come.”
Elena’s voice came from the kitchen. “I am seventy-two years old, and I am not jumping out of an airplane.”
“We’re not asking you to jump out of an airplane, Elena,” Nina said.
“Good, because I won’t.”
“We’re just asking you to do one scary thing a month.”
“Oh, nothing scares me. Well, I mean, except maybe the airplane thing.”
“Abuela,” Lucia said, “you screamed when you saw a lizard on your windshield last week.”
“It was a very large lizard. I saw teeth. I swear it!”
The porch erupted in laughter.
Greg leaned over to Claire. “I want to come, too, to the next one, whatever it is.”
Claire looked at her husband, at his face in the porch light, older and kinder, at his hand on the arm of the rocking chair.
She reached for it.
“Okay,” she said.
The porch light on Nina’s house glowed warm against the Edisto dark. And inside, a framed napkin hung on the wall, faded and worn, bringing together the people who were already planning what came next.