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  Darby retraced her steps, Willie at her side, to the flower garden in the middle of the Horseshoe. The three aunts had made the garden when she was a little girl. It was beautiful as well as colorful, adding just the right touch to the shoe. It also smelled heavenly, with the Confederate jasmine and honeysuckle that climbed over the huge rocks the boys—Russ and Ben—had rolled to the garden. They’d all been part of the garden, and, as children, it was their job to weed and water the bright blooms, a responsibility all four of them took seriously. Even though there was a full-time gardener for the Horseshoe, he never touched the garden in the center of what the children had nicknamed the shoe.

  Willie nudged her leg closer to the little garden. She sat down cross-legged. Willie dropped to the ground to lay his golden head in her lap. She stroked him, trying not to cry. She was so consumed with her own grief she didn’t see the lights go on in all three houses on the perimeter of the Horseshoe.

  They came from three different directions. Willie growled, remembering it was these three women who had given him that hateful bath. He growled, but it wasn’t a serious growl. He knew he was safe with Darby.

  No one said anything for a few minutes until Diddy spoke. “We’re going to getpiles if we sit here.”

  “Hemorrhoids,” Ducky said.“Piles is an old-fashioned word. It dates you, Diddy.”

  “Ask me if I care,” Diddy said.

  “I guess you dug up the flowers, huh?” Dodo said.

  “I didn’t do the Gerbers yet. For some reason Willie nudged me over here. It’s so pretty here, and peaceful, especially at night. Do you remember how we used to run around the shoe catching fireflies?”

  “Of course,” Ducky said.

  “Ben always let them out of the jar when we weren’t looking. He could never stand to see anything confined. How long is he staying, do you know?”

  “I guess he’ll stay as long as he needs to stay. Mary’s leaving sometime today. They’re supposed to come over in the morning. We need to talk to you about something, Darby,” Diddy said.

  “Can’t it wait till later? I don’t much feel like talking right now. I just want to sit here with Willie and my memories.”

  The three sisters looked at one another. Dodo shook her head.

  It was Ducky who took a deep breath, exhaled, then cleared her throat. “No, you need to know this right now. In the morning…you might change your mind about going to the cemetery. That’s not Russ in the grave. Well, it is, but it isn’t. Bella donated all of Russell’s organs. It was on the evening news, two hours after the accident. They just buried his bones. For all we know, Bella donated his brain to science.” She huffed and puffed to show her total disapproval.

  Darby pushed herself erect until she was on her feet. A sound, unlike anything the three sisters had ever heard, escaped from their niece’s lips. A second later, Darby was running across the shoe to Ducky’s house.

  “Maybe we should have waited till morning. Darkness seems to make everything worse,” Diddy said sadly.

  Minutes later, Darby returned with a powder blue envelope. She waved it threateningly. “I have Russ’s will right here. There’s a video, too!” Darby screeched. “It’s called a living will. You can’t ignore a person’s last will and testament. Especially a living will.”

  “Bella did just that,” one of the sisters said quietly.

  “No, no, you have to be mistaken.” Darby waved the blue envelope again. “It’s against the law.”

  “It’s done, baby,” Dodo said softly. “It can’t be undone.”

  “But…do Ben and Mary know? Did they okay it?”

  “They knownow. They arrived after the…after the arrangements were made. The funeral service was almost immediate. At best, there were only a few hours between the time they arrived and the time of the…the burial. Neither Ben nor Mary knew about the…the donor part. Baby, I don’t think Russell ever told anyone. I can’t be sure of that. For all we know, Russell may have changed his mind,” Dodo said.

  “No, no, Russ didn’t change his mind. It was the only thing he and I ever argued about, and we really didn’t argue as much as disagree. We discussed the donor program at great length. I believe in donating one’s organs so that someone else can have a chance at life. Russ didn’t want any part of that. His exact words were, ‘I don’t want someone ripping out my heart and kidneys. I came into this world with all my parts, and I want to leave the same way.’ He trusted me to see that his last wishes were carried out, and I failed him. Oh, God, I failed him. How am I supposed to live with that?”

  Dodo looked around at the dark night surrounding them and struggled to find the right words. She knew her sisters were struggling, too. Sometimes only the truth worked. She knew what it was like to fail someone you loved so completely. Feeling it and talking about it was not something she was prepared to do. Her heart started to ache at the memory. Yet she had to say something to her niece. Something meaningful. If not meaningful, at least comforting.

  “I don’t know, baby. What happened was beyond your control. Do you think for one minute either Bella or Marcus would have listened to you, an outsider? It’s too late to do anything. Now we all have to grieve and move on. It’s the only thing that’s left to us.”

  Darby waved her arms, stamping her feet at the same time. Russell’s will flapped in the humid night breeze. “Like hell!” Darby shouted. “Russell gave the Gunn Foundation a copy of the video and his will. I was with him when he delivered it. The foundation was the reason he made the will in the first place. He made it the day we graduated from college. That means his father and Bella knew about it. Russ said his father was adamant about his making that will. It was tied into some trust and his coming of age, that kind of thing. Someone has to pay for this. Don’t think for one minute I’m going to let this matter drop, because I’m not.”

  The aunts huddled together. Willie whined at Darby’s feet.

  Darby squared her shoulders. “Good night, every one. I’m going to take Willie in the house, and we’re going to bed. I don’t intend to sleep. I’m going to think about all of this. We’ll talk in the morning. Diddy, I’ll be at your house for breakfast at seven o’clock. If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like some banana-macadamia pancakes.”

  “This is good. I mean, it’s really good. This is the Darby we know and love,” Ducky said after her niece rounded the corner of the house and was lost to sight.

  “I told you we needed to make a plan,” Dodo hissed. “That damn Bella will chew her up and spit her out. The woman’s middle name is Vicious. Darby is no match for that witch. We might have to call in ourbig gun.” Both Ducky and Dodo fixed their gaze on Diddy, who stepped backward.

  “Oh, no. No, no. Don’t either one of you two go there. Just forget it. Both of you gave me your solemn word of honor, you promised never to bring that up. No. Do you hear me? No, absolutely not.”

  “Of course we can hear you. Half of Baton Rouge can hear you,” Dodo snapped.

  “Sometimes in a crisis, people have to do things they don’t want to do. That’s another way of saying you’ll do it, Diddy, if it comes to that,” Ducky said quietly. “And you’ll be doing it for all the right reasons. In this particular case, the end will justify the means.”

  Diddy stared at her sisters in the silvery moonlight. In that one moment she realized the vast difference between herself and her sisters. She considered herself the sane, stable sister, preferring to stay home, making her one-of-a-kind quilts, cooking, canning vegetables and fruits, reading, studying the history of Baton Rouge, knowing that someday she would write her memoirs. A homebody in every sense of the word. Until that one time when she’d stepped off her chosen path.

  Ducky was and always had been a wandering gypsy, traveling here and there, soaking up other cultures, meeting new men, never marrying, and living the good life, returning to her roots only when she needed to be rejuvenated by her family. If that didn’t work, she treated herself to face-lifts, implants, and anything
else she could think of to make herself feel better.

  Dodo was a free spirit but in a different way from Ducky. Dodo, perhaps because of her diminutive size, had turned to the martial arts and even studied with some of the great masters in Japan early on in her life. In her own right she was almost as famous as Bruce Lee. Dodo had a fourth-degree black belt. At the age of fifty, she’d hung up her belt and proceeded to teach the art to the people of Baton Rouge. To this day, she still returned to Japan once or twice a year to judge various martial arts exhibitions and trials that garnered worldwide attention and publicity. In doing so, she always made the front page of theBaton Rouge Advocate. Dodo knew how to kill with just thumb pressure. She could fell an ox and never break a sweat.

  “Be on time for breakfast, and I don’t take orders, so you will eat whatever I prepare. I cook, you clean up. Good night.”

  Without another word, Diddy turned and walked across the lawn, aware that her sisters were watching her. They were probably, right then, that very second, talking about the weight she’d put on, how she hadn’t colored her hair, and the frumpy one-size-fits-all dresses she wore. Her plump cheeks burned with embarrassment as she waddled along. She looked this way because she’d been a fool. Not just a plain old fool, areally big old fool.

  Diddy hated going down memory lane. It was simply too rocky a path to follow. But if she had to get back on that miserable road for Darby, she would. Her plump shoulders slumped but only momentarily. They squared almost immediately as she let herself into her old-fashioned comfortable kitchen. She sighed as she set about making herself a cup of black rum tea. She knew there was no point in going upstairs and back to bed. She might as well sit in the kitchen and plan her breakfast menu.

  Across the shoe, in the shell pink room on the second floor, Darby Lane paced, her shoulders rigid, her eyes hot and dry. She looked down at the golden retriever, who was dogging her every step. Dropping to her knees, she started to cry as she told the whimpering animal what she was feeling. “What do I do now, Willie? How am I supposed to go on with my life knowing someone else is viewing life through Russ’s eyes? His kind, generous heart is beating in a stranger’s chest.

  “Will any of those recipients take Russ’s fifth-grade class white-water rafting in Colorado next spring the way he planned? Will whoever has his heart know that he planned on giving Claire Bannon an engagement ring this Christmas? Oh, God, Willie, I don’t know what to do. I can’t think. Why can’t I think?”

  A second later, Darby was on her feet, running down the hall to Russ’s old room. She flung herself into his old, brown, cold chair. With a joyful bark, Willie was next to her, snuggling hard against her side. “It feels right, doesn’t it, boy? Maybe I can think in here, come up with some way to make up for not being here to stop Bella from breaking Russ’s will.” Tucking her legs beneath her, the dog’s head in her lap, she sighed.

  She was asleep within seconds.

  4

  While Darby and the aunts were sitting down to a breakfast of banana and macadamia-nut pancakes with banana syrup, a striking blonde carrying a briefcase stared at Ben Gunn in the mirrored walls inside the elevator of the Baton Rouge Inn. Ben was totally oblivious to the woman’s admiring looks. Clad in sharply creased khaki slacks and a crisp white shirt whose sleeves were rolled to the middle of his forearms, his dark hair still wet from the shower, he made a striking picture. He respectfully stood aside to hold the door for the young woman to step forward when the doors slid open on the lobby level. The blonde’s briefcase banged against Ben’s knee—deliberately. She apologized profusely, smiling at the same time. Ben nodded, accepting the apology before he turned left into the lobby, and the blonde turned right to the revolving door.

  Ben’s eyes raked the crowded lobby for his sister Mary. She was sitting on a dark blue chair, a small suitcase at her feet. From the tip of her head to the case at her feet, her persona shrieked L. L. Bean. Mary spotted him at the same moment he noticed her. His eyes on his sister’s face, he bent down to pick up the small suitcase. Mary stopped him.

  “You don’t have to take me to the airport. I called a car service. Actually, the driver is waiting outside. I wanted to say good-bye.”

  Ben looked nonplussed, not understanding. “You said you wanted to see the aunts and Darby. Why are you changing your plan? What about Dad?”

  Two youngsters raced across the lobby, the smaller one tripping over Mary’s suitcase. Ben bent over to pick up the little boy, who started to wail his head off. A stern-looking man delivered a well-placed smack on the boy’s backside. The boy wailed louder as his sibling smirked on the sidelines.

  Mary shrugged. “That was last night. This is now. I don’t belong here anymore. I made a life for myself in New York. Tell the aunts I said good-bye. I’ll send them a Christmas card.” Her voice was so curt and sounded so flat, Ben winced.

  A Christmas card.Ben looked at his sister. No one would ever call Mary pretty. Nor would they call her cute.Plain was a word attached to Mary by most people. Her thick brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail that brushed her shoulders. It was as lusterless as were her light brown eyes. She wore no makeup, and her clothes, while neat and wrinkle-free, were as plain as she was. The suitcase at her feet was bright red, an L. L. Bean special, probably for easy identification like their lemon yellow bags. Mary was such a cold fish that he couldn’t help but wonder how she could run a successful travel agency. Maybe she was different with strangers who plunked down money for her services.

  “What about Dad?” Ben persisted, unwilling to give up.

  “Yeah, Ben, what about him? I don’t owe him a thing, and I’m not going to pretend I do. I will not subject myself to a meeting with Bella. Not for you, and not for Russ. And as for our father, where was he when we needed him? I’ll send you a Christmas card,” she said again.

  “You know what, Mary, don’t bother.” Ben’s voice was so bitter it surprised him. “We’re all that’s left. Me and you. Russ isn’t here anymore. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  The bluntness of his sister’s statement stunned Ben. “Do you want me to deliver any message to Darby?”

  “No.” The suitcase was suddenly in her hands, the matching backpack on her shoulders forcing Ben to take a step backward. The kid who had tripped was still wailing as his father completed the checking-in process.

  “I guess it’s good-bye, then.”

  “Yeah. See you around, Ben. By the way, I left a standing order with the local florist to deliver flowers every Saturday. That’s to show you I’m not heartless.”

  Ben shrugged as he watched his sister stride through the revolving door. He waited to see if she’d turn and wave. She didn’t. Angry at his sister’s attitude, Ben made his way to the bank of elevators. The stressed-out father from the registration desk was dragging his squealing kid by his shirt collar, his sibling still smirking. When the elevator door opened, Ben stepped back to wait for the next one. He heard the father say, “You just wait till I get you in the room, Tommy.”

  Ten minutes later, Ben hung his dark blue suit in a garment bag and zipped it closed. He hadn’t really unpacked, so there was nothing left to stow except for his shaving gear. The thick zipper ripped across the oversize suitcase, the sound so loud that it jarred Ben’s ears in the quiet room.

  Ben slung the garment bag over his shoulder, snapped the handle of his suitcase, and wheeled it out of the room. He was going to the only place he could even remotely call home: the shoe.

  Outside, the hot, humid air attacked him like a sodden blanket as he made his way to the inn’s parking lot and his rental car.

  Twenty minutes later, Ben Gunn whizzed past the road in front of the Horseshoe. He slowed down to take the corner that led to a narrow cobbled lane where two old barns that had been converted to garages stood. As children, they’d played in the barns, swinging from the rafters as they whooped and hollered. In total, the two barns could now house eight vehicles. Four
of the parking spaces belonged to the two Gunn houses at the ends of the Horseshoe. With the new white paint, new doors, new windows to match the houses, gingerbread at the peaks, there were no memories here to resurrect. A different place, a different time. Ben felt sad as he parked in front of the closest garage.

  He fished out his bags and let himself through an ornate iron gate that led to the back of Ducky’s house. He followed a footpath whose cobblestones were worn smooth from many years of traffic back and forth. The path was narrow, bordered by pink, blue, and white hydrangeas. Off to the right, moss dripped, and Confederate jasmine twined around one of the old oak trees. Thick, cushioned grass as green as emeralds stretched across the shoe as far as the eye could see. Mounds of thick, luxurious green moss covered the ground beneath the old trees. He sniffed appreciatively. The lawn must have been mowed recently. The scent of new-mown grass mixed with the heady flower scent reminded Ben of his childhood. He remembered giving Darby a daisy once and watching her pluck the tiny petals. He could still hear her childish voice as she said, “He loves me, he loves me not.” He couldn’t remember what the last petal was on that particular day. What he did remember was Mary standing on the sidelines watching. He’d scurried over to the flower bed to pick a flower for her and had presented it with a flourish. She’d thrown it on the ground and crushed it with the heel of her shoe.