Epilogue
It was Sunday afternoon. I would be heading back to New York that evening, and I was still debating what to tell my professor.
Aunt DeeDee was making a full spread at Momma’s house for our late lunch.
Anton and Lacy were set to arrive, making it a sort of celebratory occasion, and Savilla would join us too.
Charlie would get here after he checked in one more time at the station.
Fried chicken, black-eyed peas, fried green tomatoes, and mashed potatoes.
“With margarine to keep our figures intact,” Aunt DeeDee claimed, even as she added a thick slab of bacon to the peas.
“What in tarnation are you planning to do with your inheritance?” Aunt DeeDee asked now, for perhaps the fifth time. It had become a kind of singsong statement rather than a question as she cooked.
“Who knows how much I’ll actually end up with.” I’d already explained Savilla’s financial woes, but we had found the Rose Diamond. Presumably that jewel could be sold to remedy some of the Finch money troubles.
Aunt DeeDee waved away my thinking. “When it’s all said and done, however much you’re handed, it’ll be more than the Greens have ever seen before.”
I shook my head in disbelief once again. I no longer really needed the money, after having won the pageant in the summer. I was almost finished paying for school, so what then? Momma had taught me to live frugally, to enjoy the simpler things.
“I’ll give some away,” I mused. “Probably to that animal sanctuary I’ve always loved.”
Aunt DeeDee nodded, all too familiar with my heart for creatures in need.
“I suppose you could open your own practice here in Aubergine,” she suggested, raising one eyebrow as if she wasn’t dying for me to move back.
“I suppose I could.” I gave her a faint smile, playing it cool.
“The options are endless now.” Aunt DeeDee took a sip of iced tea. “And the timing of this inheritance, I’d say, is almost providential, like the good Lord wants you to set up shop right where you belong.”
It was the last word that pulled on my heartstrings, because it pointed right at the issue that meant most to me: with Momma gone and with my future before me, where exactly did I belong?
After Lacy arrived to cheers and hugs and had shown off her ring, Anton explained how he’d bought it a year before and had just been waiting for the right time.
Then, Aunt DeeDee spilled the news about the will reading and my new sister, detailing everything that I hadn’t had the chance to tell Lacy that weekend.
Everything from Mr. Froble’s stoicism to Savilla’s tight embrace to Glenda’s fury to my inheritance.
Aunt DeeDee was in her element, so I let her have the moment.
“Well, shit,” Lacy said, as she sank into a chair. She blinked several times before her eyes landed on me. “So, you’re BFFs with Savilla? And you’re, what? Rich?”
“First of all, you’ll never be replaced, and second, it’s just money,” I said, shrugging off the word.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t glad to have the money, however much it ended up being, but I wasn’t a rich kind of person.
More of a “mostly doing okay, but barely scraping by at the end of the month” kind of person.
Wealth didn’t settle comfortably across my shoulders, and I hadn’t told anyone that I’d already briefly considered giving it all to Savilla and walking away.
But no, I could do good with the money, surely, and it gave me options I hadn’t considered: actually having the means to open my own practice here, for one.
“For real, though,” Lacy said, setting her chin in her hand that rested on Momma’s worn-out dining room table. “Let’s plan that trip we’ve always talked about.”
“To the Galapagos?” I asked, perking up.
“To Paris,” Lacy corrected. “I am not going to spend my vacation with turtles.”
I tried to recall when we’d ever talked about visiting Paris and came up short.
“Remember? On graduation night, you said that we should go to Paris and see some kind of bird?”
I smiled, understanding dawning. “That was Paris, Texas. And it was a cattle egret.”
“Aw, disappointing.” Lacy poked out her bottom lip before recovering. “Oh, well, we can do both now, maybe even stay with Anton’s family.”
“They’re gonna love you,” Anton said, taking a spoonful of banana pudding that Aunt DeeDee had asked him to sample.
“We can do whatever we want,” I said with a smile, actually loving that Lacy was inviting herself into my newfound wealth. It was as if she knew I didn’t want to do this alone.
“All that money does is give you options, sweetheart,” Aunt DeeDee said. “Other than that, nothing’s changed.”
“Except I have a sister.”
“Except for that,” Aunt DeeDee admitted, as the front door flung open and the very person let herself inside.
“Are you talking about me?” Savilla asked, hurrying in with a big grin and handing over what was likely the most expensive bottle of wine I’d ever set eyes on.
“Were your ears burning?” Aunt DeeDee asked playfully, as she took the bottle from Savilla’s hands.
She didn’t answer, but instead grabbed me in one arm and Aunt DeeDee in the other, pulling us close as she squealed, “I can’t believe that I finally get to be a Green.”
Aunt DeeDee and I wriggled from her tight grip and caught one another’s eye.
I don’t think that’s how it works, I wanted to say, but Aunt DeeDee swatted playfully at me and kissed Savilla on the cheek too.
“Welcome to the family, darling.”