homemade rolls and ambrosia salad when they come. Caroline and Heath are bringing a green salad and homemade cranberry sauce. Polly and Lorne are finishing up a few last-minute things in the shop. Trey is going to pick up his dad, buy a couple of bags of ice on the way, and be here by one. As far as the rest of it,” Pris said, making a motion with the potato peeler, “everything’s covered. Calvin’s in charge of the turkey, I’m on potatoes and the green-bean casserole, and Teddy is baking the pies.”
“Apple’s all done, pumpkin just went into the oven,” Teddy reported as he rolled out a circle of pastry. “Pecan and sweet potato are next.”
“But you’ve got to let me do something,” I protested. “It’s my kitchen.”
“Yeah, but it’s our dinner,” Calvin said. “And Thanksgiving only comes once a year. I’m not taking any chances.”
“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll be in charge of setting the table.”
Pris shook her head. “Mom already did it, when she brought over the flower arrangements.”
“Wait till you see them,” Calvin enthused. “Chrysanthemums, yarrow, thistle, and dahlias the size of dinner plates. They’re fabulous!”
I planted my hands on my hips, silently vowing I would never sleep late again. “Well, this is ridiculous. There must be something I can do to help.”
Teddy looked up from his pastry. “Would you take Pebbles for a walk? Bug is sleeping but Pebbles is getting under my feet and making me crazy.”
“I’m on it,” I said, and grabbed a leash from the hook.
A dog gives you a reason for being wherever you are, but I didn’t need an excuse to visit the churchyard at St. Philip’s. In the wee hours of the morning, after putting down my pen and climbing into bed, I’d made up my mind to return. There were things to be said.
Fall in Charleston is different from fall in New York. The sky is blue and clear instead of gray. The air is cool rather than crisp, chilly enough for a sweater but soft as a caress, especially when the breeze picks up, rattling the heart-shaped leaves of the redbud trees, sprinkling a shower of yellow gold to guide your footsteps, like a flower girl at an autumn wedding.
The ground over Calpurnia’s grave has settled now. The grass is even with the earth, a dense, spongy carpet of green with no patches of threadbare brown or sign of seed. But just to the right of the headstone, perhaps a foot away from the white marble cross, I spotted a bare circle of soil, recently disturbed. Teddy had planted a tuber there a few weeks before. In the spring, if all goes well, a bright-pink peony will bloom to soften the hard edges of marble and let people who pass by know that the woman resting beneath the ground was remembered well, and loved.
“Well. It’s just something I wanted to do,” Teddy said, shrugging off praise when I told him that was kind. “I wanted to tell her thank you for never forgetting, and for bringing me home.”
I took the flowers I’d brought with me—mums and thistles and yarrow that I’d plucked from the two massive arrangements Happy had left on the table—then placed them in the cone-shaped vase at the foot of the grave and added my thanks. I thanked Calpurnia for bringing me up, for never forgetting, for bringing me home. I promised her I would always live well, always remember, always take care of my family, those I was bound to by blood and those I had gathered by choice. And I said I would return willingly, and often. “After all, Auntie Cal, all the best people are here.”
I made a kiss-kiss noise to let Pebbles know it was time to move on. She wagged her tail and led the way, kept to the path as if she already knew where I wanted to go, and then lay down on the ground when we arrived, muzzle resting on her paws, watching and waiting patiently as I placed three more bunches of flowers at three more graves.
Standing before my father’s headstone, it was harder to know what to say, hard even to know what to think, but I believe that in time I will, and that peace will come. Love is complicated. Restoration takes time.
As I turned away and walked toward home, the breeze troubled the redbud branches. The stalwart old trees of Charleston released showers of golden-yellow hearts that fell upon me like a benediction,