She was past Super Pretty—she was beautiful, and true beauty always came with a healthy shock of odd. Part of it was that she was so little. In the NICU she’d looked like a wrinkly purple apple with a few sticks attached, everything below the neck wasted to bird bones to protect her brain. Her body had never yet caught up. She was my height but built to scale, so that in pictures where she stood alone, she looked lanky and tall. Her face was wider than it was long, with huge eyes sunk deep and razor-sculpted cheekbones. Her nose was a small, sharp jab over a wide mouth. Now her body had changed, too, and tiny as she was, she didn’t look at all childish. I hoped she wouldn’t realize how spectacular she was until she was twenty-five and safely past letting it ruin her.
We were at the square now, the spire of First Baptist visible from any point around it. Here, on the far side, a park with benches and a fountain shared space with the library. The sides were row shops that ran around the corners: the Knittery, Sally’s Hair Emporium, Read-Overs New and Used Books, Cupcake Heaven, Pinky Fingers Nail Salon. First Baptist itself took up most of the fourth side, and the center was all church grounds and the tiny, ancient cemetery. Most of the houses on the outer ring were Victorians that had been converted into offices and stores. A few were still residences, owned by the remnants and relations of the oldest families.
“That’s Birchie’s house,” I said as we turned the last corner, but Lavender’s eyes had caught on the pale blue Victorian two doors closer. Both of Frank Darian’s teenage boys were sitting glumly on the porch steps.
Frank or Jeannie Anne must have pulled them home early from camp. Was there some parental compulsion to move children across state lines when a marriage was in trouble? Or perhaps they had demanded to come home. Most of First Baptist’s youth group had been at the Fish Fry, so no doubt Hugh and Jeffrey Darian had gotten their own slew of overdetailed texts and e-mails.
I wondered who was in the house with them. Traditionally, when marriages blew up in southern small towns, the home defaulted to the wife. But, also traditionally, the husbands did the cheating, plus Frank’s law office was on the first floor. I was willing to bet Jeannie Anne had been the one to vacate.
“Cute,” Lavender said, still looking at the boys. They both looked back.
The out-loud boy noticing was new. Maybe it came in a package with the curvy hips she’d recently acquired.
“Birchie owns that white Victorian with the wraparound porch. See the turret?” I pointed. “On the second floor, that round room has a daybed and curved bookshelves. I called it the Princess Room when I was little. You can sleep there if you want.”
She glanced at it, and said, “Cool,” but then she looked back over her shoulder at the boys. I felt a twinge of sorrow. The Princess Room would have excited last summer’s Lavender, a secure and curveless twelve-year-old whose parents loved each other. This summer’s girl was thirteen—hormone-soaked and heartbroken.
We pulled in to the drive. Miss Wattie waited in the cushy porch swing, her feet pushing the boards, slowly rocking. Her hair was too short to sway with her. She stood up and came into the sun. Her little curls looked like molten silver as she made her way down the stairs. Birchie was below her in the yard, wearing her big gardening hat. She knelt by of one of the beds, planting something, turning dirt with a small trowel. She straightened when Wattie lifted one hand and then rose carefully to her feet, but she didn’t wave. She stared at the rental car, still holding the trowel, her other hand full of seeds, her face blank.
“I’ll unload the bags and then come up and meet them,” Lavender said. “Go say hello.”
“You sure?” I said, and she made muscle-man arms. I was surprised to see the stringy definition in her biceps
“I’m pretty mighty,” she told me, making me smile back. I handed her the keys.
As I came to the foot of the porch stairs, Birchie startled, and her blank eyes finally fixed on me. She blinked rapidly, puzzled, and my heart sank. I’d come to see how bad it was, and already—it was bad. She didn’t know me.
“Birchie?” I said.
She blinked twice more, confused, and said, “Oh, no, I don’t think I got the turkey. Wattie, did we get the turkey?”
I had to work hard not to cry. It was a good ninety degrees, and Birchie was right beside a host of splashy summer zinnias, but recognizing me had dropkicked her into Thanksgiving.
“The Pig delivered everything we need,” Wattie told her, coming to hug me.
Birchie bent to drop her trowel into the tool bucket. She threw the seeds behind her, and they landed on the black patch of tilled soil. They were small, round speckles of an orange not found in nature. It looked like Birchie had been planting little candies, maybe Tic Tacs. I kissed Wattie’s cheek, then went to hug and kiss my grandmother, shutting my stinging eyes, holding her a little too tightly. I wasn’t sure how to begin.
“Goodness,” Birchie said, breathless. “You’ll squeeze the life right out of me. I’m glad to see you, too.”
When I finally stepped back, Wattie leaned in toward Birchie, saying something about dinner almost too softly for me to catch, right into her ear. Birchie acted as if Wattie weren’t speaking, reporting the information as if it were her own knowledge.
“We’re having Cornish game hen.”
“Sounds wonderful,” I said. My voice sounded so thick.
My Birchie was planting candy, and she hadn’t known me. I still wasn’t sure that she’d realized it was June. I felt a small bubble of anger rising, that things had gone this far without my knowing.
Digby spun like a teeny whirligig inside me then, as if reminding me how easy it was to not tell. Even the things that really mattered. Even to the ones who loved you most. But still. But still. I couldn’t help but say it.
“You should have talked to me.” I aimed the words at Wattie, but she only looked to Birchie. So to Birchie I said, “I don’t even know what’s— Is it Alzheimer’s? And what are y—”
“I don’t have Alzheimer’s,” Birchie interrupted, suddenly present and looking quite affronted. “I have . . .” She paused and leaned toward Wattie, who was already whispering. “The Lewy bodies!” Birchie said, triumphant. “I have the Lewy bodies growing in my brain, and it isn’t Alzheimer’s at all.”
“Lewy bodies,” I echoed.
Wattie said, “It’s like Parkinson’s, but Lewy bodies are actual growths, made out of proteins. They aren’t malignant, but they cause all kinds of trouble. Also, she’s had at least two mini-strokes that have not helped one bit.” It was a bullet of neat information, delivered in a matter-of-fact tone.
“That’s really succinct, Wattie, thank you,” I said, my anger now sharp enough to cut the grief. Did she think three sentences was all it took? “I don’t know what the hell any of that means.”
Wattie’s temper did not rise to mine. Just as calmly she said, “It means Birchie says soap words, on her bad days. She gets tired and confused and ornery real easy. Now she’s started saying things out loud in public that might be better said more quietly, in private, and she sees animals that aren’t there.”
“Rabbits,” Birchie chimed in. “These days the whole town is chock-full of them. All doing what rabbits do.”