Not good. Savannah didn’t cry. She’d sworn off tears the day she entered Emmanuel, and she’d only suffered a backslide once.
Okay, twice.
Get this done, child. It’s time.
“Yes. Okay.” She blew out a heavy breath. Closing her eyes, she recited a prayer and swallowed the lump of emotion that had lodged in her throat. Tears welled, overflowing to trail down her cheeks as she removed the lid from the tin and stepped closer to the guardrail.
She wasn’t a fan of heights. Gazing out over the valley was fine, but when she leaned forward and looked straight down, her knees went a little weak. The ’shine hadn’t helped.
She tested the rail. It seemed sturdy enough. Good. She needed to be able to fling Grams out beyond the rock shelf so that the ashes sailed, soared, and flew on the breeze before falling back to earth. However, she didn’t want to join her grandmother.
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she should forget the plan entirely, put the lid back on the tin, take Grams home, and put her on the mantel. Hadn’t her grade school friend Annie Hartsford kept her cat’s ashes in a shoe box beneath her bed? Hadn’t Eloise Rankin left her husband’s ashes on a shelf in the garage for almost a year before her children convinced her to put him in the vault? She could—
Savannah Sophia.
“Okay. You’re right. It’s time.” Inside the button tin lay the muslin bag containing the portion of her grandmother’s remains that she had saved for this last dispersal in accordance with her grandmother’s wishes. Grams had sewn these bags herself, filling them with soaps or salts for sale at retail shops in town. Savannah knew her grandmother would approve of her use of the bags rather than the funeral urn the mortuary had wanted to sell her. Rebecca Rose Aldrich hadn’t liked waste.
Savannah removed the bag from the button box and set the tin on the ground. She untied the bag’s blue ribbon and watched it flutter in the soft breeze, and in that moment a wave of grief struck her so hard that she swayed, then broke. Tears fell, and she released the sobs she’d held back for so long. She cried for her grandmother, for herself, for the cruel acts committed by “friends” against her family. She wept for the losses she’d endured.
It was a fierce storm, but also a fast one. Cleansed of the dark emotion, she felt a calm, warm sense of peace spread through her and strengthen her. She lifted the open bag up in front of her like an offering at an altar and said, “Rest in peace, Grams. You were my teacher, my nurturer, my family. You were my rock. I will miss you until the day I die.”
Leaning over the railing, she shook the bag, waving it back and forth like a flag, and the contents spilled from the bag and sailed away on the breeze. With a bittersweet smile upon her face, Savannah watched ashes float and dance and dissolve against the blue springtime sky. “Good-bye, Grams.”
Once the bag felt empty, she checked inside it and frowned to see a significant amount of ash clinging to the inner seam. She turned the bag inside out and, holding it by one corner, leaned over the railing once again and shook it hard.
Once. Twice. On the third shake, she lost her grip.
The muslin bag floated to the surface of the rock just beyond her reach.
TWO
“Well, fiddle,” Savannah muttered, using her grandmother’s most wicked curse, as she scowled at the pouch. She couldn’t leave it lying there. It wasn’t completely empty. Besides, she wanted it for a keepsake. But did she want it enough to climb out onto the rock?
Great. Just freaking great. At some point the breeze would certainly blow it off the ledge and it would fall to the ground. Where it would lie. And rot.
“Damn.” She glanced around for a stick or something else she could use to retrieve it, even as a gust of wind scooted it closer to the edge of the ledge.
Savannah watched the bag and knew she should let it go. It was only a bag. The ashes were ashes, the dust was dust.
She wanted it.
She gripped the railing and swung one leg and then the other over it. Without loosening her hold on the iron rail, she started to sink to her knees, planning to stretch for the bag’s blue ribbon tie while keeping