Part 25 (1/2)

I stared at her.

”I didn't mean like that....”

”Will you give me a hand, Anny?” she said, faintly. ”I've got a splitting headache. I think I'll have a nap until dinner. Are they staying?”

”They don't have to.”

”Oh, by all means, ask them. Henry will be disappointed if you don't.”

I helped her to bed and covered her with her comforter, and turned off the lights. I had thought Camilla would come to feel differently about the child when she had been in her presence for a while; the change in Britney was apparent. But it had not happened. I would have to curtail the visits. It was not fair to Camilla to force upon her a child she found so distasteful. She was one of us, too, and she could not, as we could, simply walk away. I would suggest to Henry that he take Britney out for hamburgers occasionally, instead of having her here for dinner so often. But it was strange....

”Cammy's really not well,” Henry said when I brought up the topic of Britney and Camilla. ”She's not herself. I'm going to get her in for a physical before this week is out, even if I have to carry her. Meanwhile, can you find something to do with Britney in the afternoons away from here? Isn't there something she might like to do?”

”I think we'll form a book club,” I said lightly, and then realized that it might be a very good idea.

On a Sat.u.r.day morning in late February, Linda Cousins called me.

”There's been some men from some kind of real estate company out here, looking around the house and woods,” she said. ”They said Dr. Aiken told them back in the fall they were welcome to come look around. It doesn't sound right to Robert and me. Would you like us to tell them to leave?”

I started to say yes, and then Henry came into the room and I put my hand over the phone and told him what Linda had said.

”Tell her not to run them off,” he said. ”I'm going to get out there right now and see what's going on. You know as well as I do that Lewis never told them that.”

”I'm going with you.”

”Anny, I know how hard it is for you-”

”It's my house now, Henry. I've been letting it slide for too long. I don't want real estate people at Sweetgra.s.s. Not now and not ever.”

We were starting for the truck when Gaynelle brought Camilla out, dressed for the day.

”You're not going out this close to lunch,” she cried.

Briefly, Henry told her what was happening.

”Anny, you really ought not to go out there. Henry can handle it.”

”It's my house, Camilla,” I said. ”I'm grateful for Henry's company, but if anybody tells them to get off the property, it's going to be me.”

We got into the truck and Henry started it up. Over the engine's noise we heard Camilla call, ”Be home before dark!,” and there was real anxiety in her voice.

”She's so anxious now,” I said worriedly to Henry on the way to Sweetgra.s.s. ”So fretful, and so weak. And it's happened so fast. I didn't think people aged that fast.”

”They don't generally. Usually you can see it coming long before there are such definite signs. I'm serious about getting her in for tests. This is getting really hard on you.”

”Oh, no. No more than on you. Gaynelle makes all the difference. I just want Camilla well.”

”So do I,” he said. We were silent the rest of the way.

When we turned off the road and onto the long driveway into Sweetgra.s.s, my heart lifted at the sheer underwater green of the long tunnel through the live oaks, and the splashes of wild honeysuckle and dogwood standing like stilled snowfall in the dusky green. I remembered the first day I had ever seen it. It was hard to believe all that time had pa.s.sed. Out here, the marsh, the river, and the deep woods stopped time. I could just as easily be the wild-haired young woman in the too-new tennis shoes Lewis had brought here for the first time, and he could easily be waiting for me on the dock over the river, with fresh comb tracks through his wet red hair and a gla.s.s of wine for me, as he had done so many times before. I swallowed hard.

”Is this going to be okay?” Henry said.

We rounded the last curve and the house came into view, at once rooted in the earth and lifted into the air like a sail, and I nodded. This first glimpse had always borne me up in joy.

”Yes.”

And after all, it was. It was easy to walk with Henry up the steps of the house, and through it, and out onto the dock, not like it had been with Lewis, never like that. But easy. I kept putting out all my sensors for him: in the beautiful, light-paneled library, in the dim upstairs bedroom where I had last seen him, at the end of the dock, where we had made love and swum naked in water as warm as blood. Where we had seen the bobcat. And I did feel him near, I thought: a diffuse, enveloping sense of him. But he did not walk hungrily just behind me, as he had done on Bull Street. I thought that he must be truly at rest here, and said so to Henry as we stood beside Lewis's grave in the deep live-oak grove. The stone I had ordered still had not come, but the ferns Linda and I had transplanted were flouris.h.i.+ng, and the little white azalea was in bud.

”Why wouldn't he be? This is paradise,” Henry said. ”I always thought Fairlie and I might get something like this. Lewis always said he could find us a place....”

We were both silent. I remembered what he had said about seeing Fairlie's family farm for the first time. I knew that he did, too.

There had been no other car in the driveway except Linda Cousins's Jeep when we arrived. Linda, in the kitchen as she always seemed to be, said that she had gone out and called to the real estate people that if they'd wait, Dr. Aiken's wife was on her way, and shortly after that they had left.

”We knew they weren't up to any good,” she said. ”People do come down the driveway sometimes and stop and look at the house, but they don't get out and prowl around. I'm going to get Robert to get a security gate with an alarm put up out at the road. If it's okay with you.”

I agreed that we should do it, and thought, not for the first time, that I really had to make myself get more involved in the day-to-day running of Sweetgra.s.s. You could walk out of the little house on Bull Street and lock the door, and be fairly sure all would be as it had been when you returned. But not this vast plantation. It needed day-by-day tending, and I was deeply grateful to the Cousinses for staying on, as I had asked, and overseeing the property. But I could not let the load get too heavy for them. Both were old now, older than Lewis, older than Henry, though they were still active and vital.

”I need to get you some help out here,” I said. ”I've let it drag on too long. I'm going to start looking right away. Henry will help me.”

I looked up at him, and he nodded.

”Well,” Linda said, ”if you could use him, I think Tommy might like to do that. He's getting married...did I tell you? No? To a premed student at MUSC, Jennie. We're crazy about her. She loves this place, and of course Tommy grew up out here, and they were thinking that if they could buy a little piece of land from you, they'd like to build a house on the river down near us. She'd keep on at school, of course, but Tommy thinks now that he wants to go into some sort of land management or conservation work. He'd be good at it, I think. He's followed his dad around out here ever since he could walk. And he's been keeping an eye on the longleaf crop, and talking to the extension agent when he thinks he needs to. He didn't want to presume, but we knew you weren't up to that yet, and it's been a pleasure for him to keep up with things. So I said I'd ask you-”

”Oh, yes, please!” I cried before all the words were out of her mouth. The plantation had been heavy on my heart in the time since Lewis's death. I knew that Linda and Robert could manage the house and grounds, but the vast longleaf plantings that were the plantation's cash crop needed constant nurturing, and were beyond my ken.

”I can't tell you how relieved I am,” I said to Linda Cousins. ”It's like I've been given a gift. Tell Tommy I'll have Fleming Woodward-he's our lawyer-call him this week, and we'll set it up. Oh, to have it go on with you all...Lewis would love that.”

”So would we,” Linda said, and hugged me.

We ate the velvety cold asparagus soup she had made for our lunch, and walked back out on the dock one more time before we left.

”Lewis and I saw a bobcat here the first night he brought me out here,” I told Henry. ”Right over there. Lewis said not long before...not so long ago that he saw tracks again right on this spot. It couldn't be our bobcat, of course, but I've always liked to think one of his offspring didn't want to leave the river, either.”

”Probably got fifteen grandchildren by now,” Henry said comfortably. ”Anny, can I ask you what you intend to do with Sweetgra.s.s? Ultimately, I mean. You said you were okay for money, but I know you don't want to let it just sit here and deteriorate....”

”No. I think I'm going to deed the whole thing to the Coastal Conservancy, with the stipulation that whoever is in the big house, and the Cousins and their kin-like Tommy-stay for their lifetimes, if they like. Lewis always wanted to see this stretch of the river safe from development.”

”It's just what he'd do himself,” Henry said warmly. ”Want me to call Fleming Woodward about that, too?”

”Well,” I said hesitantly, ”it probably ought to be me.”

Henry began to laugh.

”Of course it ought to be you. What was I thinking? But can you really afford to do all that? You don't need money from the sale of Sweetgra.s.s?”

”I'm fine,” I said. ”Besides the trusts for the children and bequests to Robert and Linda, and a separate trust to maintain Sweetgra.s.s, it all came to me. There was more than I thought. Lewis was good with his money. I know that the lovely and talented Sissy had a go at my inheritance, but Fleming blew her out of the water and only told me about it later. People have been doing my work for too long. I don't want to start to dislike myself.”

”No. Don't do that.”