The service was a blur. The priest, who had known Ginny her entire life, but apparently not at all, delivered a service that felt like it was composed entirely from captions written in her high school yearbook. There was a forced anecdote or two, a lot of “gone too soon” rhetoric, some unfortunate allusions to heaven.
“We may find the present moment more than we can bear,” he said. Father Tom was a sturdy man with ruddy cheeks and fine, coppery hair that had been arranged and sprayed with impressive precision. He found Betsy’s eyes in the back of the church, which were locked on his with seething resentment, and looked away. “Jesus knows that, and so He meets us here. He offers us Himself, promising that our loved ones will rise again, and that our greatest flourishing is yet to happen.”
When he finished speaking, Ginny’s high school soccer coach said a few stumbling words about her spirit and dedication. One of her high school friends talked about her being the most beautiful of all of the Royal Dames at the debutante ball. And then, to Betsy’s horror, Caroline took the pulpit.
She wore a simple halter-neck dress, exposing the muscles and tiny bones of her slim, strong shoulders, and pearl earrings, of course. Her hair was pulled back off of her face. Even from the back of the church, Betsy could sense her calm. Caroline had a note card in her hand, but put it down quickly and shook her head.
“Ginny was my roommate and my sorority sister for the last few years,” she started, her voice clear and strong. “Some people might say that she kept me in line, maybe even made me a little nicer, but I doubt it.”
There was a low grumble of muffled laughter.
“I know that she was the sweetest person I’d ever met. And every day we were friends, I was impressed by her kindness. She was funny, too, in that beat-up convertible. Everyone in Gainesville seemed to know Ginny Harrington. She was my best friend. Ginny and Betsy Young and me, um, and I.” Caroline searched the pews of the church for Betsy, who looked down at her lap immediately, intensely. She could feel Caroline’s eyes scanning the crowd for her, and she tried to will herself to disappear, to condense her body or melt onto the floor of the church somehow. She felt Gavin’s leg press against hers and tried to control her quickening breath. What would Caroline do if she knew that Betsy was at the apartment the night Ginny was murdered, that she heard something, anything at all, and didn’t try to stop it? Betsy couldn’t bear it. It was a mistake, a fuckup of colossal proportions, and she would never tell a soul what had happened. She was high and paranoid, convinced that she imagined she was hearing something: That was her excuse? She felt unforgiveable, small, pathetic, scared. “We had some of the greatest times, and you know, I thought we would have more.” Caroline finally started to break, her composure dissolved, and she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.
“I don’t know if Father Tom can help any of us make sense of this, why this happened, why Ginny, why five college kids had to die in this way. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand. But my hope, for Ginny’s sake, is that justice is served, and served quickly. I know that I won’t find any peace until they catch that . . . the person who did this to my friend. But I hope Ginny does. I hope she’s at peace now. At least that’s what they say happens. I . . . I really don’t know. I don’t think any of us do.”
With that, the priest put his hand lightly on Caroline’s tan shoulder and she walked slowly back to her seat.
GINNY GREW UP in Winter Park, but her father was born and raised in Ocala, in the house where Nana Jean still lived. Her family had settled there back in the late nineteenth century, and the Harrington family plot at the Evergreen Cemetery was large and overgrown with vines. Ginny would be buried near her grandfather. Betsy knew Nana Jean never suspected that her lovely Virginia, the youngest of her five grandchildren would get there first.
There was a plaque at the front of the cemetery that identified it as a historic place, stating that Civil War veterans and former slaves were buried there. That may explain why the land was divided into two parts by a road, segregated even in death. There were low, crumbling walls, some of the state’s only real ruins. Betsy wished that everyone she’d ever met who denied that Florida was part of “the South,” the proper South of mint juleps and formal stationery, could see that place. The moss-draped trees, the decaying headstones, the constant buzzing chorus of insects that played in the background all felt as Southern as it gets. And the dark thunderheads rolling in (the Harringtons planned the service and burial for the morning, no doubt, because of the likelihood of afternoon rain, but Florida weather wasn’t a system that was easily beaten), cast a heavy, damp pall on the day that made Betsy feel the presence of the past, all of those souls surrounding her, intensely.