“He looked so peaceful, you know? He was so good,” she said. “I’m okay. Really I am.”
“As soon as the arrangements are made, please let us know,” I said.
“Depend on it,” Traum said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I knew he meant that he was thinking about the project and wavering about a decision to pull out. I would call him first thing.
After that horrible task was done, we were all feeling the blues.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Ed said.
“Right,” J.D. said. “Well, I guess I’ll follow Betts and Adrian to the phone store.”
“Drowned my phone,” I told Adrian.
“It’s okay. It was for a worthy cause,” Adrian said.
“I love this kid!” J.D. declared.
After I had a new cell in my hands and we were back at the condo, J.D. made an announcement.
“I’m leaving home,” he said. “I’m moving in here.”
“When I go back to school, you can have my room,” Adrian said innocently.
“And you’re going back on Tuesday, probably with me,” I said. “And, J.D., I think you moving in here is something we might want to, I don’t know, discuss?”
“I’m giving Rosie and Mickey my house.”
“Well, that’s very generous of you, but what about Valerie?”
“I’ll move all her stuff to the caretaker’s cottage and give her a cash settlement. Listen, whatever, I’ll work that out.”
“J.D.? Good. You work that out. But, no. You’re not moving in here. I’ll find you a condo nearby or something downtown, but we’re not living together until everything is settled. It’s too much. Besides, who said I was staying? This condo is on loan.”
“Oh,” he said, “okay.” He looked at the floor and then back to me. “Right. Well then, can I stay for a night or two?”
“Yes, on the couch.” I looked at Adrian and giggled. “He’s really forceful, isn’t he?”
“You two are so weird! What’s the rest of my family like?”
“The rest of the family? You know those dioramas at the Museum of Natural History with the cavemen?” I said. “Dragging their women around by their hair?”
“Well, that’s a gross exaggeration,” J.D. put in, “but when you throw us all in one room, an anthropologist can have a field day. You’ll see. Especially my mother.”
“Especially my sister, your aunt Joanie. I’d better call Sela and warn her.”
“Good idea. So, Adrian, want to drive out to the plantation with me to get some clothes and things? Plus I gotta get Goober and Peanut.”
“Dogs?”
“Not just dogs. They’re my best friends.”
“Can I go, Mom?”
“Why not? It’s your ancestral home, too. Sort of. I’ll see you two at Sela’s? Six o’clock. Don’t be late, okay?”
“Deal.” J.D. nodded. “Can I have a key?”
“Adrian can have a key. You may not have a key.”
I got an extra key from the drawer and threw it to Adrian.
“Don’t let him make a copy,” I told him.
“Right,” Adrian said, and smiled.
I watched them walk down the steps toward J.D.’s truck and they looked like a “junior” and “senior” if ever there was a picture of one. My heart was so filled with an undeserved happiness. I wanted one more date with a crying towel, but I shook my head and denied myself the indulgence.
In the first place, it was rather miraculous that neither J.D. nor Adrian had screamed his head off at me for keeping him in the dark about the other’s existence…but maybe my day of reckoning was yet to come.
Move in with me? There were other looming monsters to be slain first. Louisa, for one. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Louisa Langley’s face when she saw Adrian. I knew Big Jim would adore him, but Louisa was another matter. Daddy would love Adrian, too. Perhaps Adrian was just what Daddy needed to take a new interest in life. And Joanie? Well, she was a crackpot. Who knew how she would react?
But J. D. Langley was not moving in with me. Period. Well, maybe comma. But I was determined to take any and all steps related to deciding my future slowly. Very slowly.
I wasn’t prepared to decide my entire future on the turn of a tide. Too much had happened in too short a time, and each incident that had occurred and each decision needed careful consideration. And as far as I knew, I still had a job in New York and a home as well.
Yes, Adrian deserved a father and a family. But I was holding back until we all adjusted to the new realities.
I called Sela.
“You’re my first call on my new phone,” I said.
“Girl? How? Are? You? Doing?”
“Oh, Sela, Sela! It’s been one helluva twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?”
“Ed said you’re bringing the whole gene pool for dinner? I’m closing the door to the public. It’s a private party tonight, but you’re going to have to eat a lot of pigs in blankets, you know.”
“Sela? Adrian’s here.”
“No. Way. For real?”
“I’m getting dressed and coming straight over. I’ll help you set up.”
“I’d better do inventory on the bar. Gonna be a big night. Sandi’s here, by the way, with one of Ed’s hunkier specimens. They’re folding napkins. Her coat’s shiny.”
“Sela? You are so bad!”
It wasn’t long before I arrived at O’Farrell’s, Sela and I were caught up, and everyone began to drift into the restaurant.
J.D. took me aside before we all sat down and said, “Listen, Doug Traum called as soon as they landed at Teterboro. Carol Bruton feels very strongly that she wants Bulls Island to go forward, especially since it was Ben’s last project. Traum is putting up two million in Ben’s honor to build a park in his name and another million to dedicate the dock to Smitty. And here I thought the guy was a big blowhard…”
“See? You never know. That’s wonderful!”
I kept Adrian by my side as each person was introduced to him.
Joanie said to me in a whisper, “I knew it, you know,” referring to the existence of my son.
I said, “I know, Joanie. Remember?”
Then she turned to Adrian and blew my mind. “Well, you certainly are a handsome young man, Adrian. Welcome to the family! Daddy and I can’t wait to get to know you!”
Wait a minute, I thought. Was that Joanie? Who kidnapped my sister and replaced her with a nice person? Then I had an epiphany. Joanie was sleeping with Cam! Sex had caused a personality change!
Daddy was an angel to Adrian.
“Oh, my dear boy! Look at you! You are the spitting image of your father, but you have your grandmother’s dimples! What a joy it is to know you! What a joy!”
“Now don’t hog my grandson, Vaughn! Let’s let your paternal grandfather look at you!” Big Jim held Adrian’s chin up to the light. “Ah, yes, he’s a Langley all right. Look at that patrician profile!”
Then came the aria of Sweet Louisa the Diva from the sidelines.
“I demand a DNA test before I will even consider changing my will,” she said.
“Oh, come on, Mother!” J.D. said. “All’s well that ends—”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she sniffed.
I was so stunned by her rudeness that I wanted to slap her. But Adrian surprised us all by saying, “Suits me.”
“It does?” I said.
“Heck, yeah. What do I care? Don’t you think I’d like to be sure, too?”
Big Jim stepped forward and took Louisa by the arm, and for the first time in his entire existence and for everyone to hear, he said, “Louisa? Why don’t you learn to shut your arrogant damn mouth? Step away from my grandson. You poison his air.”
Everyone in the room took a collective gasp.
“Whew, Dad!” J.D. was flabbergasted…there were a lot of flabbergasting things afoot. “Son? This seems like the perfect moment for you to come meet your, uh, uncle Mickey!”
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I thought we would have to call for oxygen when young Mickey stepped up and shook Adrian’s hand.
“Uncle Mickey,” Adrian said, towering over his uncle whose voice had only recently changed. “Do you happen to have an Xbox?”
“Nope. Do you?” Mickey said.
“Yep. The Three-sixty. And Rock Band.”
“Oh, this is very cool news.”
“Holy cow,” Joanie said, recognizing another truth. “What’s next?”
What followed was a lot of laughter as the flame of our ages-old family feud sputtered to a final fizzle. I watched them all as love bloomed and old wounds healed as though bathed in the waters of Lourdes. It was like nothing I would ever witness again. Or that any of us would ever witness again. Generations of ghosts roamed the room, whispering warnings of eternal unrest, please free them from all of it. I could hear Bruton’s voice in my ear: Don’t be a fool, Betts. Life is short. My mother’s breath was all over my neck: Love him, forgive them, bring my family back together, please do this for me, for all of us. It was up to me, up to everyone. Most of us were game. Something larger was at play as, God help us all, Louisa herself had once said.
Okay, I thought. I’ll be the fool for this generation. After all, the odds were finally on my side. I’d take the risk, the gamble, the bet. And you know me; I’m only Betts when I know I’m going to win. I like a sure thing.
EPILOGUE
2008
There are some things you need to know before we part. I am not an evil woman but I certainly committed a terrible crime. I paid for it with more cold sweats and heart-skipping nightmares than you could count. In some ways, I will probably continue to pay for it forever. Now, one year later, there are still residual eruptions of anger and resentment from J.D. and Adrian, though fortunately not at the same time.
After Bruton’s funeral, I decided to stay in New York for an extended visit to be near Adrian in case he wanted to talk. Adrian did not want to talk to me or anyone.
He kept saying, “Look, Mom. This doesn’t change the fact that I still have to study and make grades…. I have a job to do.” His tone of voice was terse and I knew his quiet rage bordered on volcanic. I did not blame him. “So do I, Adrian. I just keep thinking that there must be questions that you have…. I don’t know, things you want to know?”
“I guess I want to know how you could do this to me, to all of us? How could you?”
These are the words I had dreaded, absolutely dreaded, hearing for the past twenty years. There they were, naked and cold, spoken quietly and matter-of-factly by the one person I had ever loved so dearly. Not hurled at me like hot coals, not chucked in my direction on a tail of fire, but spoken by my beautiful son, of whom I was so proud, from a place of unimaginable pain. I wanted him and everyone—J.D., Daddy, Joanie, J.D.’s family, Sela, and Ed—to look in my face and down the tunnel of my years, to see my life through my eyes, what I had seen and lost, and the family celebrations for which I had yearned. Christmases. Birthdays. Graduations. I had celebrated them all alone, except for the company of Aunt Jennie and an occasional visit from Sela. If they could have seen with my eyes, father and son might not have been so judgmental in those early weeks, once the initial joy of knowing each other wore off and their questions became more hostile and begging for answers I could not provide.
I wanted them to know that my whole heart had been a lifelong investment in Adrian and that eventually I would’ve told them all the truth. I had planned to and I would have told them, I swear. I said so, didn’t I? The horrors of reality had beaten me to the punch.
Sela says I have to quit torturing myself, and she’s right. I could not undo what was done. Whether we want to ride the tides or not, life washes over us until the passage of time can dull the pain of our betrayals. Thankfully, eventually everyone began to come around. The thaw began to show itself at Christmas.
Adrian and I agreed to spend the holidays in Charleston, and we were actually looking forward to it. I figured the answer to happiness would be found in a higher incidence of exposure to J.D. and the family, giving us more chances to adjust and less time to consider our many regrets.
The Bulls Island construction was well under way; I still had the condo at Wild Dunes and was only too happy to spend Christmas Day morning watching the ocean rolling in. I had spent the last six months or so nursing a fantasy that time had done some healing and I could set things right. Adrian and I were walking on the beach in the morning and after many weeks of stilted conversations and without provocation I felt Adrian’s arm loop around my shoulder. I had missed that arm and that assuring hug so much. Well, just ask any woman with a son how important her boy’s love is and she will sigh with the force of a hurricane wind.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”
“Oh, son.” I stopped and put my arms around him. “I love you so! Merry Christmas.”
“I love you too,” he said. “I really do.”
With that, I could feel my stress melting away and I began to cry.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“No more tears. Everything’s gonna be okay. Trust me.”
And thus I began to recognize that the man inside my boy had decided that perhaps I had suffered enough. We drove over to the city to have our Christmas at Daddy’s with Sela and Ed, J.D., Sandi, Cam, and Joanie and we enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner and jokingly fought over the wishbone amid many toasts. If we couldn’t have peace on the whole earth, at least we could bow our heads and pray for peace among us.
Then we exchanged gifts. I bought J.D. a spotter lens to be used in the ongoing efforts to find Gatorzilla. We all had a good laugh about that, except that the poor fellow who had been a gator snack had passed away, so we sadly toasted his memory wishing him eternal rest. Then J.D., whose divorce papers had damp ink but would be final any moment, handed me a small velvet box from Crogan’s Jewel Box. I held my breath as I opened it, thinking perhaps it was an engagement ring, but it was not. Inside was a stunning pair of diamond stud earrings with removable pearl drops. They sparkled and flashed and I didn’t know what to say. Simply gorgeous!
“I planned to start with your ears,” he said. “Like them?”
Start with my ears, indeed.
“You know I do! Oh, J.D.! They’re beautiful!”
“A man who gives a woman a gift like that had better have honorable intentions,” Daddy said.
“Yes, sir,” J.D. said. “I think you know this is not the first time I have attempted to declare my intentions.”
We swapped sweaters and books, bottles of perfume, DVDs, and all manner of remembrances until we had exhausted Santa’s booty for 2008. There had been thoughtful gifts for everyone and it became clear that J.D. and I were not the only ones taking one step closer to a commitment. Joanie and Cam were looking very cozy, too.
A week or so later Daddy announced that he had taken an interest in the Bulls Island housing and was considering buying something spectacular for himself, saying that Joanie and I could have the house downtown if he relocated full-time. He thought he might open a grocery store on Bulls Island, nothing very complicated, a high-end greengrocer that also carried eco-friendly household goods.
“I can’t see people taking a boat to go get milk, can you?” He would say.
“No, and no one understands the business as well as you do, Daddy.”
“Maybe my grandson would like to have, I don’t know, a summer job? Work his way up? You know, he would have to sweep the floors. Pay his dues like everyone else in the world. What do you think?”
“I think Adrian would be tickled to pieces, Daddy. I really do. But I’ll have to ask him.”
“I’ll call him myself,” he said. Then he smiled.
I thought it showed great optimism and tremendous love that Daddy wanted to be involved in something that might forge another link in our chain. After all, Bulls Island had brought us all together in one fashion or another.
&n
bsp; What about J.D. and me? Well, J.D. divorced Valerie, and I’m sure that comes as no surprise to anyone. Louisa refused to discuss it, not that she spoke to me very often, which was the perfect arrangement in my opinion. I felt enormous pity or sympathy or call it what you want for Valerie because here was a woman who got dealt a lousy hand and went on to make her life worse. She went back to her family in Georgia, who underwrote and guided her to one rehab facility after another until around Easter we heard that she finally met a sympathetic psychiatrist and they fell head over heels in love. Her most recent communiqué said that she was looking into becoming a counselor herself. I wished her all the best.
But back to J.D. and me? Well, there’s no rush. I resigned from ARC, staying on with Triangle until our island paradise would be completed. McGrath, Pinkham, and even Traum understood and offered me return employment any time the mood struck.
“I envy you, McGee,” McGrath said. “All that free time? But I understand.”
“So do I,” Pinkham said. “You’re a young woman and there are many roads to heaven.”
“Thanks, y’all. I’ll miss you like crazy!”
“That’s some bull,” McGrath said.
“He’ll never stop with the bull jokes!” Pinkham said.
Somehow, I couldn’t see myself in New York anymore. I didn’t have a lick of enthusiasm to return to the craziness of private equity and all that that lifestyle demanded, so I put my co-op on the market and went back to Charleston. Just like that. No one was more surprised by my actions than I was. And as everyone except me probably would have expected, the more I gave into my past, and the more I brought Adrian along on the journey with me, the happier we all were.
I had given the woman I had become so much thought and there were some radical changes I wanted to make. I didn’t want to be cynical anymore, strapped to a sword, doing battle with currency markets, housing markets, or any market at all. I wanted to wipe out the suspicious, calculating side of myself and see what it would be like to trust somebody else’s judgment for once. And that somebody was J.D. It always was J.D. At some point you might receive an invitation in your mail. The pleasure of your company is requested…and then you’ll know what I have always known. Life’s design is only drawn up to a point by your hand. The rest looms out there by the sea. All you have to do is face west at sunset or east at sunrise or walk out on a crisp night and look up at the sky. Especially on Bulls Island.