Chapter Four
FOUR
CATERERS MILL ABOUT WITH GLEAMING silver trays of sparkling champagne, deviled eggs dusted with bright red seasonings, golden, crispy corn fritters, and fried green tomatoes.
On the buffet table tiny chicken salad sandwiches sit piled atop bronze serving tiers alongside pickled sprouts and some kind of pomegranate pastry.
My grandmother planned everything in advance.
Her cremation and the arrangements to be turned into a tree and planted on the estate.
The caterers and hors d’oeuvres. The dress code (semiformal) and color palette (jewel tones).
She never shied away from talk about death, specifically her own, but sometimes it doesn’t matter how much something gets planned or prepared for, it hurts just the same.
I take my small cream-colored plate with lilac etching into the kitchen before making my way to the courtyard behind the house.
It’s easy to get lost among the towering stalks of snow-white bugbane and violet lobelia grown nearly to hip height. Clumps of powder-blue asters brush against the pinks of blazing stars and butterfly weed.
Gigi had an eclectic approach to gardening, and now, even in her absence, the heart of the estate is late-summer lush, fat bumblebees lazing from pistil to pistil, drunk on nectar and dusty with yellow pollen.
My feet sink into the wet earth as my legs move without my consent. The sun is relentless in the wake of the earlier storm, and the hair at the nape of my neck dampens, the curled edges around my forehead lifting and frizzing against the melted gel.
Mourners stand, faces shielded by wide-brimmed hats and cupped hands, sniffles and light murmurs slowly halting as I weave my way through.
At the head of the gathering, Maureen’s chin dips in solemn acknowledgement when she spots me in the crowd, handkerchief blotting her eyes as she clears her throat.
“Harper Margaret Willow was a mother, a grandmother, a daughter, a friend, a mentor,” Maureen says, her voice low and wavering. “And I have been blessed enough to call her my best companion for nearly thirty-five years.”
Beside me my mother finds my hand.
“I come to Earnest by way of the coast, in search of the history my own gran spoke of. Instead, I found community. I felt a calling, a kinship to this here town. And more than that, I found a best friend.”
Maureen’s voice grows tighter the longer she speaks, and her chin trembles as tears splash against the paper she’s reading from.
“Sometimes… sometimes I think, people are born into this world, but they were never truly meant to be here. Harper was like that. She was so bright, it hurt to look at her. She was too good. Too kind. Too giving. Too earnest. She was a safe place to land. Harper was the sun, and we were all helplessly entrapped in her gravitational pull. She was everything…” Maureen shudders, “… and without her, the sky will never be as blue, the sea never as calm, the land never as plentiful.”
I don’t acknowledge how jealousy mixes with the despair inside me.
I don’t allow myself to feel the heat of rage gurgling somewhere low in my chest. It’s ridiculous, this overactive emotion, this peculiar, deep-seated anger that simmers the longer she speaks.
It’s a hungry, possessive tightness eating me from the inside out.
Maureen’s eyes meet mine, something curious swimming in them.
“On July 16, 2010, Harper’s life was forever changed.
She was born anew alongside her granddaughter, filled with a purpose she lacked for much of her life.
Harper Scott, who shares a first name with both her grandmother and great grandmother, came to Earnest like Moses down the Nile—screaming pink in a little wicker basket. ”
I can’t help but chuckle through my tears, even though I’ve already heard this story a million times from my grandmother’s own mouth.
“She was smitten. She carried that baby everywhere she went and begged the baby’s mother to let her stay summers in Earnest with her father.
” An awkward hush rolls through the crowd at the mention of him.
“Xavier was an incredible dad despite not growing up with one of his own. I know that wherever he is, he feels her loss. He’s mourning today just as we are. ”
The tips of my ears heat with indignation, and I have to bury the instinct to suck my teeth.
An incredible dad? If he cared at all about Gigi, about me, he’d be here.
If he really cared, he wouldn’t have ever left.
Even if I’m not enough to come back for, then certainly this is.
But I know in my heart that he’s probably dead by now, despite what Gigi believed or what my mother thinks.
And that’s better anyway. If he’s gone because he’s dead and not because we weren’t worth staying for.
Though that thought doesn’t help the bitterness swelling inside me. Because if he’s dead too, then that’s it. I’m really all alone. He’s dead. Gigi’s dead. Mom might as well be dead half the time anyway. And the boys, my so-called best friends? They’re dead to me too.
By the time Maureen is finished, I’ve cried half my makeup off, and my head is throbbing at the temples.
When she beckons me to the front, I finally understand Gigi’s vision.
We blend in with the wildflowers. Purples and yellows and emerald greens and topaz.
This isn’t some bleak mass of black clothing.
This is a celebration of her life, exactly as she intended.
As I start to speak, time slows, and a hollowness spreads through my chest. I blink away my tears and sweep the loose curls from my face.
“Hello,” I say, the word coming out all warbly.
Sparks travel across the apples of my cheeks, and I recoil against the strange new feeling.
“I’m not that good at public speaking—” I warn as leaves rustle in the trees behind me. I swipe the folded, sweaty paper out of my dress pocket, pressing down its edges with shaking hands until the wood of the podium groans beneath my touch.
I glance down at the words I’ve prepared, and my vision goes black at the edges.
Dear Bug,
No. No, this isn’t right.
These are not the words I’ve prepared.
I squeeze my eyes shut, scrambling to fold the pages back up. Because I can’t. I can’t. I can’t look at it. Not yet.
The morning I turned sixteen, I sprang from bed and halted at the lack of decorations—Gigi always decorated the house for my birthday.
I slammed through her door and nearly vomited all over myself at the state of her.
And later, when I crawled back beneath my covers, the house empty and still except for the anxious pacing of my mother downstairs, I finally saw it.
A letter addressed to me and a little box wrapped in shining silver paper and a familiar lavender bow.
The gold pendant sits at the base of my throat now, warm and growing warmer in my panic. I haven’t read the letter yet. I can’t. I can’t.
Tucking it back into my pocket, I root around for the words I meant to bring instead, but they’re not here. I must have mixed them up with Gigi’s letter while I was getting dressed.
The crowd is growing restless. I plaster a shaky, apologetic smile on my face and peer out at them, struggling to find comfort in their faces.
“Sorry—” I mumble into the microphone, pleading with my mind to come up with anything coherent.
I can’t say what I really want to. About how Gigi wasn’t so much my grandmother as she was my mother.
She was the woman who raised me, who validated me, who enabled all my wildest dreams. She was the one who made me believe in magic, even if not literally.
I shouldn’t say these things, even though they’re true.
Because they would hurt my mother. And I’ve gotten used to shrinking myself for her, just enough to spare her from her own reality.
My mother never wanted me to love Gigi like I do. To know her how I do. She didn’t want Gigi’s “woo-woo” to rub off on me. She didn’t want me to end up like my dad.
So why do I still care so much about how she feels?
If I close my eyes, I can still hear her words crystal clear. Desperate and raw from crying in the days after my father left.
“Keep your fucking nonsense magical bullshit away from my daughter, or I swear to god you’ll never see us again!”
Now a skittering like a thousand spiders’ legs runs down my back, and I glance behind myself and into the throng of trees that stretch around the property.
In the distance, so quick I almost miss it—a vaguely human-shaped flash of white weaving between the pines.
“Sorry,” I say again, rubbing my eyes carefully as I turn around. My mind must be playing tricks on me. “But I wanted to take the time to thank everyone for showing up for Gigi today. I know how loved she was here in Earnest, and I know I’m not the only one who will miss her.”
At the edge of the crowd, something catches my attention. Floating in between the mourners. Red hair deepened to burgundy in the overcast light.
The back of my mouth turns sour.
“I wish I had—that I had more to say—that I could… that there was a way to put what I’m feeling into words—”
I follow the bobbing head until it disappears, another odd thing entering my line of sight.
Three hardened sets of eyes. Assessing.
“I’m so sorry… I—” For some reason I can’t look away.
In the middle of the trio of strangers, a woman with deep brown skin glistening in the summer sun.
Locs piled atop her head, shells and gold rings woven throughout.
She’s stunning in a halting sort of way, but her gaze is sharp, and her scowl snatches the words right off my tongue.
I shake my head, mouth open and empty when a familiar trill like an alarm sounds from the woods. The answering flutter in my chest pulls me away from the woman’s hypnotizing stare.
Shame burns thick in my belly. I’ve completely butchered my speech. I’ve ruined the final send-off for the only person who ever truly, unconditionally, loved me.
Just as I’m about to give up completely, the crowd gasps, and something swoops overhead, so close to me that I duck on instinct.
It lands on the pale wooden box that holds my grandmother’s ashes. Its face, covered with a black mask of feathers, tips to the side, two beady eyes analyzing our group.
A cardinal.
I take a step back, my heart slamming against my ribs as my hand flies to my mouth. Though I’d recognized its call from the trees, salty tears still tinge my lips as I glance over at my mother, who is ashen.
Gigi always said the dead come back as cardinals.
She seemed to feel a certain affection for them, often conflating the bird with the four cardinal signs of the zodiac, her rambling nonsense curving along roads only she could follow.
Indecipherable tales about cardinals and elements and the crux of humanity.
But looking at it now, it’s just a bird.
So why am I crying?
“Well, would you look at that!” Maureen exclaims, clasping her hands together and approaching the creature. “Y’all know what Harper used to say, right? Leave it to her to visit her own funeral!”
The smile on her face is genuine as she bends down, her hand reaching toward its crimson coat.
Spooked, the bird flies away, up and into the trees at the far side of the garden.
When it disappears from sight, a sprinkling of laughter rises from the crowd, and I strain my eyes as I peer into the woods, in search of whatever else might have been hiding in there.
There’s a disturbance behind me, and I turn, lifting onto my toes in search of the source.
The three strangers from the back of the group—including the woman with piercing eyes—are stalking away. Not toward the house, but around the side like they intend to leave.
I step forward as if to follow them, though I’m not sure why, but I’m stopped by a clammy hand against my elbow. My mom rests her head on my shoulder. On instinct I wrap my arms around her.
After placing the biodegradable box into the hole in the ground, we take turns scooping fertilizer onto the base around the sapling. Once the tree is planted, we lay stones at its foot. Each holding a wish.
Secrets for Gigi to keep forever.