Page 146 of The Dravenhearst Brides
That which had once lived here—had festered within—was now, finally, dead.
49
December 19, 1933
My dearest Margaret,
Will you come home?
Forever Yours,
Pa
Thelettercamebymorning post. Margot recognized her father’s shaky handwriting.
“What does it say?” Merrick asked. His lips posed the question, but his eyes knew the answer. He hadn’t left her side since they’d watched the rickhouse burn the night before. He reached for her hand now, offering all he could give. All that he was, all of himself. For her.
Margot knew too. She didn’t need to open the letter, though she did anyway. She knew it in her soul. She knew, and she was ready.
Finally.
“He’s gone home to Greenbrier.”
Home to die.
50
“He chose magnolias.”
—Samuel Greenbrier to his daughter Margaret on her wedding day
She’dforgottenhowthehydrangeas looked in the winter, how they remained in full bloom, rotund, but turned brown and crisp. How the heads would break off and blow like tumbleweeds around the property.
It had been eight years since Margot last set foot at Greenbrier Estates, and in her mind, the hydrangeas flowered always. Blue and soft, fragrant and divine.
Like her family, preserved meticulously in her memory by the way she dreamed of them, the way she wanted to remember them—in full color, lovely, soft around the edges.
Memories didn’t lie, per se, but they didn’ttell the whole truth either.
There wasn’t much time after they arrived, barely twenty-four hours. But it was twenty-four hours more than Margot had ever been given before, and she knew exactly what to do with them.
She was brave. She said the things she needed to say. She held her father’s hand.
And when the time came, she didn’t hold on, and neither did he.
Her father let go.
And so did she.
There was much to do in those first days, but she saved the most difficult for last. Margot had never been good at staring down the hard things, the painful things. There was sweet relief in avoidance, in circumnavigating pain. Numbing it.
But she wasn’t going to live that way anymore. Margot was done granting power to ghosts.
The graves were surprisingly tidy, all in a row. Two old, covered with grass. In the spring, Margot imagined there would be dandelions, maybe chickweed and creeping violets. Maybe she would return when the ground thawed, bring flowers. Maybe plant some, dozens of them, herself.
She was avoiding again. She blinked once, long and slow, gathering courage. Then she opened her eyes and looked.
There was the third grave, freshly dug. A gaping, ugly hole in the ground. The place where her father’s casket would rest on the morrow. No headstone yet, but it would come, would be here by spring.
