PART SIX
The Book of Life
Franny’s funeral had been small, with only the immediate family gathered at the Owens cemetery, a woodsy plot of land surrounded by a black iron fence no one outside the family dared to cross. Two weeping willows grew in the center of the graveyard and yellow-green moss covered many of the old stones. There was a time when people in their family were banned from the town cemetery, and even though that time was over, this small burying ground was still preferable to most of the Owens relations. Franny’s husband had been buried here, and now she had come to be beside him. A hundred white candles had been lit to celebrate her life and the end of the curse. What begins can end. What is done can be undone. What is sent in the world comes back to you three times over. They all wore white, a tradition among the family. White for funerals, black for every other day.
Vincent had returned to the States for the first time since he was a young man, and oddly enough, Massachusetts looked as familiar as a recurring dream. The oak trees with their enormous star-shaped leaves, the huge drooping hemlocks and pines, the magnolias with their waxy black-green leaves. The pond in the center of town where the swans nested, the houses with their gables and wide front porches, the weeping beeches in the town cemetery, the landscape of Vincent’s past. He wished his sisters were with him as he made his way along the narrow roads, with Franny complaining about the damp weather, and Jet pointing out the fireflies in the trees. He regretted the many years they’d spent apart, and now, just when he’d found his way to Franny again, he’d lost her. From the time they were small, he could always hear Franny’s thoughts, and she his, and he knew she was not the ferocious individual she presented herself to be. They had called her the Maid of Thorns when she was young, for she hid her true emotions. Stone-heart, cold-heart, no-heart, biggest heart he had ever known. The red-haired girl who saved him time and time again, who knew him when no one else did. Her love was the fiercest part about her.
On the morning of Franny’s funeral, Antonia found Vincent in the second-floor bedroom he’d occupied when he’d first come to Magnolia Street, sitting on the edge of the bed, weeping. She sat beside him and let him cry, black tears falling on the white quilt and the hand-knotted rug. Antonia’s bedside manner had improved after her visits with the Reverend. She patted Vincent’s hand and nearly wept herself, then she handed him a tissue from the bedside table and watched as he wiped his eyes. “All better,” Antonia said calmly. It was a statement not a question, reminding Vincent of his beloved no-nonsense sister. “All you have to do is get through today.”
* * *
Now, a year had passed since that day, and the world had changed. The dark spring had taken its toll, but this season the lilacs had surged with masses of blooms. Sally’s wedding took place on the first of June, the ceremony held beneath the tree that had been brought to town three hundred years earlier by a man who believed in love. Women still whispered his name, as if the words Samuel Dias were a prayer that could bring them the sort of love Maria Owens had found with him. They were buried together in the Owens family cemetery, sharing a single headstone decorated with an etching of a magnolia tree, the oldest tree on earth, here long before men and women lived and died, before there were bees. Men still got down on one knee and declared their love beneath the magnolia’s branches; women said their vows here and meant every word.
Reverend Willard, now the oldest man in the county, officiated at the wedding and was proud to do so. He was carried across the lawn in his hospital bed by the Merrill brothers, George and Billy, now close to seventy themselves, and he was clearly overjoyed to still be alive on this glorious day. The Reverend had agreed to perform the service if it took under five minutes and Chocolate Tipsy Cake was served afterward, a bargain that was quickly agreed to.
The cake for Sally’s wedding took three full days to bake and was the size needed to feed fifty people. It was the largest of its kind ever made, with so much rum involved that half the town was drunk merely because they breathed the air. Bees found their way into the kitchen, their wings dusted with powdered sugar, but they didn’t linger on the day of this joyous occasion, and strays were chased away with dish towels, for no one wished to be stung on a day of celebration.