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Ms. T gives me a light smack on the knee. “I ain’t talkin’ about them, sugar, and you darned well know I ain’t. You’re bright as a button, so don’t go pretendin’ you’re stupid now.” She raises a knowing eyebrow. “Rowan seems like a decent sort of man, Summer. If you say ‘jump’, he’s going to be halfway to the sky before you’ve even told him how high, but he’s been raised right, too: he ain’t gonna pursue you if you’ve made it look like you don’t want to be chased. Right now, seems to me you’re blowin’ hot and cold, and I just don’t want you freezin’ yourself out when there’s somethin’ warm to wrap your arms around and hold onto for dear life.”
“Rowan doesn’t want to get tangled up with me. I’m a mess,” I insist, my gaze falling on the unfinished cypress carving that should’ve cemented my and Ben’s love forever. I brought it out here without really knowing why, and now it’s leaning up against a rock, staring at me like an accusation of betrayal.
Ms. T snorts. “You’re not a mess. You’re a work in progress. We all are. And, Rowandoeswant to get tangled up in the likes of you, in every meanin’ of the word. I don’t mean to be crass, but there it is, and I ain’t takin’ it back to spare your blushes.” She gives my arm a gentle squeeze. “He likes you, you like him, and the only thing standin’ in the way of you havin’ yourselves a fine old time is him bein’ too decent and you bein’ too afraid. Again, I don’t mean to be blunt, but I ain’t takin’ that back, neither. It’s somethin’ you ought to hear, and there’s no one but me with the stones to say it.”
“How do you know there’s something between us?” I have to ask. I’ve often thought Ms. T was a little witchy in her ways, but I need to hear something more tangible than a hunch. After all, she doesn’t know what happened with me and Rowan, so what is it about us that makes her so sure? Maybe, I need to hear it from an outside voice, to finally allow myself to hear the voice in my own head.
“You think I was born yesterday?” Ms. T tuts like I’ve offended her. “I’ve been on this Earth enough years, read enough romances, been in enough romances, to know when there’s somethin’ blossomin’. My shop ain’t called the Climbin’ Rose for nothin’—I know the scent when there’s love in bloom, and the two of you are like buds in Spring, waitin’ to unfurl. Trouble is, if neither of you does a darned thing about it, there’s gonna be a cold snap, and what’s growin’ between you will wither and die.
“Now, hon, you might feel like you deserve to let it wither because you’ve got this lastin’ loyalty to that beautiful, strappin’ Highlander of a man who wasn’t with us for nearly as long as he ought to have been, but you have got to let him go,” she urges, continuing at a breakneck pace. “It’s a tragedy that’ll crush you for a lifetime if you let it, but you mustn’t. If you do, there’s no point in the rest of it—there’s no point in livin’ this life if you don’t have a lick of love in it. Maybe, Rowan ain’t your second shot. Maybe, he’s just a passin’ fancy, but mercy me, if you don’t let yourself enjoy a bit of a tumble to get you back into the real land of the livin’, then hand over those fine looks and that figure of yours, ‘cause they’re wasted on you. A ghost doesn’t need ‘em, and that’s what I’m scared you’re turnin’ into.”
I’m breathless as she comes to the end of her rambling caution. Somehow, she’s hit the nail on the head, while I’ve been wildly swinging a hammer, trying to figure out the root of the emptiness inside of me. Iambecoming a ghost of sorts, unable to find joy in anything, feeling numb when I should be over the moon, going through the motions of living without actually doing any living.
Why else would I feel so guilty about that night in my apartment?She’s put the missing piece into the puzzle, and tears sting at my eyes as I see the whole picture for the first time. I feel guilty because I felt happy. I feel guilty because I felt something. I feel guilty because Ben couldn’t have been further from my mind. I feel guilty because I wanted it, I wanted Rowan, and I liked the way he made me feel—like a woman, like my own person, like Summer instead of Mrs. DuCate, like someone to be adored instead of pitied.
“I told him he should come to you,” Ms. T adds, “but I don’t think he’s the sort of man who will unless you ask. So, like I said to him, I’ll leave the decision up to you. I trust you’ve got his number? I have it, if you don’t.”
I swallow the lump of painful understanding in my throat, and hurry to brush a stray tear from my cheek. “I have it.”
“And what else do you have?” Ms. T nods toward the cypress board, missing that vital date. “You’ve not taken up woodworkin’, have you?”
I shake my head. “Cybil gave it to me. She found it in Ben’s things.”
“Well, if I didn’t think she could match me in a fight, I’d be havin’ an old-fashioned brawl with her for doin’ that. What was she thinkin’? Forgive me for speakin’ about you like you ain’t here, but how is that supposed to help you?” Ms. T sighs, eyeing up the board like she might burn it and chase away the hold it has over me.
I shrug. “She gave me the same ‘second chance’ lecture as you, so her heart was in the right place. I think it was supposed to inspire me to… let go, but I can’t do it. I’ve been staring at this thing since I got back, trying to decide whether to hang it in the cottage, take it back to New Orleans with me, or just… bury it somewhere, unfinished.” I look away from the cypress. “But you should be proud of me for making one step in the right direction.”
“Oh?”
“I think I’m going to give the cottage to Mae,” I tell Ms. T, seeing how I feel now that the words are out in the open for someone else to hear. I still like the way the idea bubbles in my chest, warm and fuzzy. “She’s retiring soon, and I’m not going to live in it, so… she’s the obvious choice. She loves the place, and she definitely deserves something good after a lifetime of service, you know? I don’t want her to have to worry about anything, ever again.”
Ms. T brightens. “That sounds like a fine idea to me.” She kisses my cheek, no doubt leaving a smudge of red. “I’m proud of you, hon. So proud. Even if it means I have to stop hoping you’ll move back and keep me company.”
“Between you and Cybil, how can I hope to move on?” I tease, nudging her in the arm.
“And you’re set on this?”
I nod. “Pretty set on it, yeah. I was half-and-half until I just told you now, but I’m ninety-nine percent now. It feels… like completing something, if that makes any sense at all.”
“More sense than you think.” Ms. T chuckles softly, but I’m not laughing as she stretches across the sand and grabs the cypress carving, putting it gently in my lap. “But nothin’ is gonna be complete, and you’re gonna have yourself no closure, if you don’t let go. Not just of this here carvin’ but of him, sweetheart. You can’t keep it. Any of it. You can remember it, sure, and cherish that memory, but it’s high time you started that next chapter of your life… on fresh pages.”
A strangled sound catches in my throat, remembering the last words ever written in Ben’s journal:This is where I’ll end this chapter. On fresh white pages, I’ll start anew, to tell the never-ending tale of the greatest love of my life. My Summer. My endless Summer.I think I thought that if I refused to let it end, then it never would, not truly, but I’m starting to realize that Ben and I didn’t end a chapter together; the entire book of who we were and what we might have been came to a close when he died. I kept hoping that I might be able to write more of us, new chapters of us, on those fresh white pages he spoke about, though I obviously knew it was impossible.
It's me who needs to start anew, or I’ll be stuck in an endless winter without him, and I never did like the cold. Our tale wasn’t never-ending, though hewasthe greatest love of my life. It did end, and I can’t change it, but, as with real books, I’ve never been able to throw them away. It goes against my very nature. So, I don’t know what to do.
“Let it go, Summer,” Ms. T says, like she’s reading my mind. “Take this memory and let it go. Put all of your old hopes and your grief and your pain and your loss on this carvin’, all of those things that are never gonna be, through no fault of your own, and you let it go. See if it’s not just a little bit cathartic.”
“Here? Now?” Panic grips my heart, and my fingertips tighten their hold on the carving, like it doesn’t want to be released.
Ms. T stands up and puts out her hand to help me to my feet. “Nowhere and no time better, if you ask me, and I’m gonna be standin’ right here with you, helpin’ you.”
“But… what’s the harm in keeping it?” There’s desperation in my voice, high and tight with the stressed squeeze of my throat.
“I think you know the harm, sugar,” she tells me softly, as I put my hand in hers and let her lift me up. “Don’t be a livin’ ghost in a world that’s got everythin’ to offer.”
On shaky legs, with the board tucked under my arm, I walk toward the lapping water. On the horizon, clouds are rushing in, and as I stand on the edge of the shallow shore, a warm wind whips at my face, scented with the salt and metal of a storm. I’ve gotten used to the way the weather changes along the Gulf, to the point where I can almost predict when the first raindrop is going to fall, and, right now, the sky is braced for a downpour. Although, there’s a suspension in the thickness of the air, as if it’s holding its breath, giving me a moment to say this farewell before the heavens open.
Away from the safety of the sand, the wavelets are cresting in all directions, churning in a tidal turmoil that feels like a reflection of the bittersweetness that’s jittering and twisting inside of me, desperately trying to keep ahold of the cypress board while knowing it has to be set free.
