Charlotte Chase called out from behind the counter; looked like her summer job had turned into a year-round after-school job. “Anybody wanna slice a pecan pie? Fresh outta the oven?” She held up the sad-looking boxed pie. It wasn’t fresh out of anybody’s oven, not even Sara Lee’s.
“No, thanks,” Lena said.
Link was still staring at the pie. “Bet it’s not good enough to be Amma’s worst pecan pie.” He missed Amma, too. I could tell. She had always been on him about one thing or another, but she loved Link. And he knew it. Amma let him get away with things I never could, which reminded me of something.
“Link, what did you do in my basement when you were nine years old?” To this day, Link had never told me what Amma had on him. I had always wanted to know, but it was the one secret I’d never been able to get out of him.
Link squirmed in his seat. “Come on, man. Some things are private.”
Ridley looked at him suspiciously. “Is that when you got into the schnapps and puked everywhere?” He shook his head. “Naw. That was someone else’s basement.” He shrugged. “Hey, there’s a whole lotta basements around here.”
We were all staring at him.
“Fine.” He ran his hand over his spiky hair nervously. “She caught me…” He hesitated. “She caught me dressed up—”
“Dressed up?” I didn’t even want to think about what that meant.
Link rubbed his face, embarrassed. “It was awful, dude. And if my mom ever found out, she’d kill you for sayin’ it and me for doin’ it.”
“What were you wearing?” Lena asked. “A dress? High heels?”
He shook his head. His face was turning red with shame. “Worse.”
Ridley whacked him on the arm, looking pretty nervous herself. “Spill. What the hell did you have on?” Link hung his head. “A Union soldier’s uniform. I stole it from Jimmy Weeks’ garage.” I burst out laughing, and within seconds so did Link. No one else at the table understood the sin in a Southern boy
—with a father who led the Confederate Cavalry in the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, and a mother who was a proud member of the Sisters of the Confederacy—trying on a Civil War uniform for the opposing side. You had to be from Gatlin.
It was one of those unspoken truths, like you don’t make a pie for the Wates because it won’t be better than Amma’s; you don’t sit in front of Sissy Honeycutt in church because she talks the whole time right along with the preacher; and you don’t choose the paint color for your house without consulting Mrs. Lincoln, not unless your name happens to be Lila Evers Wate.
Gatlin was like that.
It was family, all of it and all of them—the good parts and the bad.
Mrs. Asher even told Mrs. Snow to tell Mrs. Lincoln to tell Link to tell me that she was glad to have me home from Aunt Caroline’s in one piece. I told Link to thank her, and I meant it. Maybe Mrs. Lincoln would even make me some of her famous brownies again one day.
If she did, I bet I would clean the plate.
When Link dropped us off, Lena and I headed straight for Greenbrier. It was our place, and no matter how many terrible things happened here, it would always be the place where we found the locket. Where I saw Lena move the clouds for the first time, even if I didn’t realize it. Where we’d practically taught ourselves Latin, trying to translate from The Book of Moons.
The secret garden at Greenbrier held our secrets from the beginning. And in a way, we were beginning again.
Lena gave me a funny look when I finally unrolled the paper I had been carrying around all afternoon.
“What’s that?” She closed her spiral notebook, the one she spent all her time writing in, like she couldn’t get everything on the page fast enough.
“The crossword puzzle.” We lay on our stomachs in the grass, curled up against each other in our old spot by the tree near the lemon groves, near the hearthstone. True to its name, Greenbrier was the greenest I’d ever seen it. Not a lubber or a bunch of dead brown grass in sight. Gatlin really was back to the best version of its old self.
We did this, ll. We didn’t know how powerful we were.
She leaned her head on my shoulder.
We do now.
I didn’t know how long it would last, but I swore to myself that I wouldn’t take it for granted ever again. Not one minute of what we had.
“I thought we could do it. You know, for Amma.”
“The crossword?”
I nodded, and she laughed. “You know, I never even looked at those crossword puzzles? Not once. Not until you were gone and started using them to talk to me.”
“Pretty clever, right?” I nudged her.
“Better than you trying to write songs. Though your puzzles weren’t that great either.” She smiled, biting her lower lip. I couldn’t resist kissing it over and over and over, until she finally pulled away, laughing.
“Okay. They were much better.” She touched her forehead to mine.
I smiled. “Admit it, ll. You loved my crosswords.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I did. You came back to me every time I looked at those stupid puzzles.”
“I was desperate.”
We unrolled the paper between us, and I got out the #2 pencil. I should have known what we’d see.
Amma had left me a message, like the ones I left for Lena.
Two across. As in, to be or not to.
B. E.
Four down. As in, the opposite of evil.
G. O. O. D.
Five down. As in, the victim of a sledding injury, from an Edith Wharton novel.
E. T. H. A. N.
Ten across. As in, an expression of joy.
H. A. ll. ll. E. ll. U. J. A. H.
I crumpled up the paper and pulled Lena toward me.
Amma was home.
Amma was with me.
And Amma was gone.
I pretty much wept until the sun fell out of the sky and the meadow around me was as dark and as light as I felt.
CHAPTER 39
A Hymn for Amma
order is not orderly
no more than things are things
hallelujah
no sense to be made of water towers
or christmas towns
when you can’t tell up from down
hallelujah
graves are always grave
from inside or out
and love breaks what can’t be broken
hallelujah
one I loved I loved, one I loved I lost
now she is strong though she is gone
found and paid her way
she flew away
hallelujah
light the dark—sing the greats
a new day
hallelujah
EPILOGUE
After
That night, I lay in my ancient mahogany bed in my room, like generations of Wates before me. Books beneath me.
Broken cell phone next to me. Old iPod hanging around my neck. Even my road map was back on the wall again. Lena had taped it up herself. It didn’t matter how comfortable everything was. I couldn’t sleep—that’s how much thinking I had to do.
At least, remembering.
When I was little, my grandfather died. I loved my grandfather, for a thousand reasons I couldn’t tell you, and a thousand stories I could barely remember.
After it happened, I hid out back, up in the tree that grew halfway out of our fence, where the neighbors used to throw green peaches at my friends and me, and where we used to throw them at the neighbors.