This would all take time—years, decades even. But time was a slow song in a place where the memories of more than two centuries still whispered in our ears.
Min was appointed to invite Emory back. He immediately assumed the family had decided to accept his proposal. We went to the chapel to wait for him. We set up a celebration in its charred interior, spread fresh rugs on the floor, brought in folding chairs and picnic tables covered in antique Cameron linens, the best china and silver, bottles of champagne, and a feast of FeeMolly’s food.
And we waited.
When Emory arrived he brought a slender leather folder containing what he called “just a simple two-page agreement to agree” that he expected everyone to sign. And he brought corpulent, smugly smiling Joseph, and an even beefier stranger whom Emory introduced as a security expert he had already hired to begin overseeing the property. “Since no one except myself considers Aunt Olivia a serious threat to our lives or property,” Emory said, “my first priority will be installing an alarm system and sprinklers. My security man advises placing locks on the chapel door once the renovation is underway. Also encasing the stained-glass windows in Plexiglas shields.”
Emory snapped his fingers. Joseph handed him a small wooden box with a gold latch on it. “A gift for you,” he said to Olivia, who sat in one of the chapel’s heavy, ornate, smoke-damaged armchairs. Bea stood beside her. Emory bowed slightly and put the box on her lap.
“My own letters cannot be a gift,” she said. “You’ve merely returned stolen property.”
Emory snapped upright. He gaped at her. His gaze darted to the rest of us. “When did she start talking again?”
“When the truth needed a voice,” Olivia said evenly. “And the truth is, Emory, we’ve brought you here to make it official. You’re banished.”
“What? Again? Now really, this is ludicrous. We had an understanding.”
“Blackmail is no understanding, you bloody bastard,” Bea intoned.
She stepped forward and cuffed the side of his head so hard he lurched into Joseph, who caught him. Mouths open, stunned, both men stared at us. “You can’t back out now,” Joseph said. “There’s a clear agreement.”
“No one agreed to anything,” Gib said. “You made your own assumptions and they were wrong.”
“Perversion,” Emory rasped, clasping the side of his head and staring at Bea and Olivia. “You’ve lived your lives in perversion and have always been a goddamned embarrassment to my family and to all of our relatives who are decent-minded—”
“You’re banished,” Gib said. He took Emory by one arm. Carter bounded forward and planted a hand on Joseph’s arm. Gib jerked his head toward the chapel door. “Take your father out of here and get him out of this valley before I forget he’s kin and hit him myself.”
“I can’t allow this—” the security man said, stepping in-between.
“I think you better keep out of it,” I said to the man.
“Sir, remove your hands from Mr. Emory.” The security expert pointed to Carter. “You, too.”
“I think you better stay out of this,” Gib agreed calmly. “This is a family argument. It could get more violent.”
The security man thrust an arm around Gib’s chest. The next moment the security expert was lying on the floor with his nose broken, courtesy of Gib’s right fist, which had the compact effect of a punch with the end of a thick stick. Gib helped him up. The man clasped a hand to his bleeding face. “I don’t want to work for Camerons,” he said grimly, and walked out.
With much sputtering of obscenities and righteous indignation, Emory and Joseph were escorted by the whole group of us down the chapel steps and to their car. “You can’t do this!” Emory shouted. “None of you! And you—” he pointed a finger in Gab’s face, “you’ll come to me in a year or two begging for help. You have no authority! You have no business trying to manage the Hall or this valley or be the head of a family! You’re disabled! You’re pathetic!”
“You’re banished,” Gib repeated. “It’s permanent.”
“You have no right to make these ridiculous pronouncements! Who do you think you are?”
Gib turned his back, walked to our group, nodded to Min, who nodded back, and to Olivia, who stood with Bea at the top of the chapel mound. She inclined her head. Gib pivoted and looked at Emory quietly.
“I’m The Cameron,” he said.
We celebrated. Gib and Carter went outside the chapel and returned, carrying the organ. Jasper lugged its stool in behind them. They set both carefully on the smoke-blackened chestnut floor, which proved itself by not giving so much as a single sigh of protest.
Ella and I smiled at each other. We went to the organ. I sat down and played “Evening Star,” while she sang the lyrics. When we finished, Min slipped out the door and walked down to the cemetery. “Should we leave her alone?” Isabel asked softly.
“Give her a minute,” Ruth suggested. “Then we’ll all go down there.”
Eventually we followed her, all of us in a quiet procession. Bo Burton brought up the rear. Before I realized it, he had stopped. He stayed back at the edge of the woods.
Min stood at the foot of Simon’s grave, which was marked by a simple gray stone. When she looked at us there were tears on her face, but she smiled. “I think he knows,” she said. “We’re all going to be fine, now. And he’s so proud.”
“I swear to you, Min,” Gib said, “we’ll build the history center. We’ll set up a foundation and work from there. It won’t be funded by moneymen using Simon’s legacy for window dressing; it’ll be built and paid for and managed by people who loved him.”
She nodded. “I know we’ll do it. This family is his legacy, and it won’t let him down.” She looked tenderly at each of us, and finally at Kelly and Jasper, who came forward and put their arms around her. “He’s already been honored,” Min whispered.
“Bo’s hitting the trail,” Ruth announced bluntly. She pointed. He was walking toward his car, which was parked in the chapel drive along the woods.
“He’s just trying to be formal,” Min said uneasily. “He doesn’t butt into family events that are this intimate.”
“Yeah,” Ruth grunted, “but if you keep treating him this way the day will come when he drives off and doesn’t come back. Is that what you want, Minnie? You think Simon wants you to be alone for the rest of your life?”
“Mama, go tell Bo to come back,” Kelly whispered.
“It’s okay,” Jasper added. “Dad always liked him. We like him, too.”
Min whipped around and gazed tearfully at Simon’s grave. “Minnie, look,” Ella said in soft awe. She bent near the tombstone and picked a small white feather from the grass.
Isabel uttered a soft oh of delight. “A feather,” she said. “Minnie, it’s a sign.”
Minnie pivoted and hurried after Bo, calling his name. He stopped. His head came up. He gazed at her with amazement as she walked up to him. She spoke to him for a moment, then took his arm. A stunned smile lit his face.
The two of them walked back together.
I wandered over to my sister and eyed her with flinty suspicion. “Did you plant that feather?”
She gazed at me innocently. “No. It fell out of my hand.”
After a moment, I hugged her. A sign is a sign, and people find their wings in the strangest places.
Gib and I sat by the spring with our bare feet dangling in the warm water. It was almost dark. The day had dissolved into soft tones. From where we sat the sky was a deep cobalt-blue above a rim of gold along the mountaintops. The bare winter trees around the spring opened our view to a wide panorama of the heavens.
“Look,” he said in a hushed voice. He pointed to the spring’s mirror-surface. At almost the center of the pool we saw the white pinpoint reflection of the evening star.
“It can’t be,” I whispered. I scanned the sky, what we could see of it. “I can’t find the new moon, much less Venus.”
“Over there,”
Gib said, gesturing through the lacework of treetops. “Just now rising.”
We gazed from the sky to the water’s glimmering reflection. “It’s true,” he said. “I always wanted to believe it could happen. Now I know.”
I held his hand tightly. “When the stars are right, we have to believe in them.”
“That’s not hard to do anymore.”
He kissed me. We slid our hands together, just under the surface of the water, mingling with the reflection. The namesake my mother had given me, and my father had preserved, when Gib was a hopeful child and I was no larger than a star’s shadow, now lay like a diamond in our palms.
About the Author
A former newspaper editor and multiple award winner for her novels and contemporary romances, DEBORAH SMITH lives in the mountains of Georgia.
Deborah Smith, When Venus Fell
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