The Southern Side of Paradise

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  As I walked to meet him, I wondered what this was going to be about. I was on board with Mom and Jack taking my wedding. I mean, it was only practical. Mom had spent all this money, and when I really thought about it, it did seem more like them than Mark and me. They were the ones who had met on the sandbar, who had fallen in love on Starlite Island.

  “Could you come to my house for a minute?” Jack asked once I reached him. He seemed nervous.

  I shrugged and followed him into the kitchen. He motioned toward the barstool at his island and poured us each a cup of milk and pulled out a bag of Oreos once I sat down. I could have told him that I didn’t want any—I had to watch my figure, after all—but I found myself dipping the cookies into the milk anyway. They seemed to soothe the butterflies in my stomach.

  He looked at me for a second and took a deep breath, looking down into his cup. “Kyle told me what you said about your mom, Sloane, Caroline, and me being a family,” he said slowly.

  Snitches get stitches ran through my mind. Kyle was going to get an earful from me later.

  “That’s not how I feel,” he said. “I don’t feel like we’re our own family and you aren’t—”

  I cut him off, saying, “But you aren’t me, Jack.”

  “Right,” he said. “That’s where I was going with this. I’m not you. And even though I don’t feel any differently about you from how I feel about Caroline and Sloane, I can see how you would feel that way.” He took a bite of Oreo and grinned at me—without teeth, thank goodness. A cookie smile is not cute over the age of five. “I want to fix that. And I might know how.”

  I was going to tell him that there was no way to fix it. No matter what, I was never going to be one of them, not like they would be to one another. But I was intrigued. So I cocked my head to the side and let him continue.

  “I want to adopt you,” Jack said.

  I burst out laughing. “That is literally the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.”

  I felt a little bad when I saw how crestfallen he looked. But only a little. It was a laughable idea.

  “Jack, I’m a legal adult. You can’t adopt me.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. He took a sip of his milk. “I’ve looked into it, and you can adopt a person of any age. And I’d like to adopt you.”

  I felt very flustered by all of this. I mean, my dad was my dad. This man, no matter how cute my mom thought he was, was never going to be my father. My father was my father, and that was that. I was almost offended that he would suggest something so insensitive. But then I was also a little bit flattered.

  “You are absolutely insane,” I said. “You and Mark’s mom could be friends.” But I smiled when I said it.

  Jack smiled, too. “Just think about it,” he said.

  “It’s so sweet, Jack, but I don’t know what it would change.”

  “It would change a lot.”

  I patted Jack’s hand. “Again,” I said, “I’m twenty-six. I had a father, and he died. I’m fine. I don’t need a new one now.”

  Jack nodded, and I ate my final bite of Oreo and got up off the stool.

  “Hey, Em,” he said. I turned to look at him. “Just think about it, OK?”

  I was surprised to find that I was. But ultimately, I felt like maybe it would be a betrayal of my father. And, really, I didn’t need a piece of paper or a legal document to change what I already knew in my heart. Jack wanted to adopt me. He wanted me to be his. He wanted to fix this so it didn’t hurt me anymore.

  I realized as I walked through the yard and back to my house that just knowing that was enough. It meant more to me than any piece of paper ever could.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ansley: jump

  The old drawbridge that led from Peachtree Bluff to Pecan Beach had a very large No Jumping sign when I was a kid. And all I can say is that it was a waste of taxpayer dollars, because no one ever obeyed it. Jumping off the Peachtree Bridge was a rite of passage, something that all us kids did at one point or another. But I, being the rule-following teenager I was, would never have even considered it. It was too scary, too risky, and there was a sign, for heaven’s sake.

  But one night, the summer I was sixteen and Jack was seventeen, Sandra, Emily, Jack, three of his friends, and I were on his Boston Whaler. It was past curfew, but there wasn’t really all that much trouble we could get into around Peachtree Bluff, and our parents never waited up, so we thought of our curfews as more of a suggestion than a rule.

  I wasn’t much of a drinker, but sipping lukewarm beer out of red Solo cups was a summer tradition, so that’s what we were doing that night.

  “We have a surprise for you,” Sandra said.

  I raised my eyebrow at her.

  “You’re not going to like it!” Emily sang.

  I was sitting beside Jack, who was captaining the tiny vessel. He squeezed my shoulder. “Oh, yes, she is. She is going to absolutely love it.”

  I was very, very wary then. And when he nosed the boat onto a tiny spot of sand right beside the Peachtree Bridge and pulled it up onto the beach, I got the sickening feeling that I knew exactly what this surprise was going to be.

  “No,” I said, before we had even gotten out of the boat. “No, no, no, no.”

  “Oh, come on, Ans,” Jack’s friend George said. “We’ve all done it. It’s fine.”

  Jack took my hand and pulled me toward the bridge. I was trying to stand firm. We were all still in our bathing suits, and the night had turned chilly. The water would be freezing.

  “Yeah, Ansley,” Peter chimed in. “It’s just a fifteen-foot jump. It’s no big deal.”

  “Summer is for making memories,” Emily said, pushing me from behind, while Jack pulled.

  Jack turned and winked at me, and I finally smiled. I didn’t want to seem like a wimp in front of him. I wanted to be brave and strong and independent. I could make my own rules, bridge sign or not.

  The seven of us lined up on the edge of the bridge, Jack and me in the middle.

  “We’re all going to do it together on the count of three,” Jack’s friend Marshall said, as Jack took my hand.

  My heart was pounding, and my mouth was dry. But Jack was there. My best friends were there. It was summer. I was in my favorite bikini. I was invincible.

  “Let’s do a cannonball!” Jack shouted.

  Our friends counted. “One, two, three, jump!”

  And then I did it, the thing I hadn’t thought I could ever do: I jumped. I screamed as I hit the water, and then I came back up. We were all shouting and laughing, and it felt absolutely amazing. I had faced my fear, and it had been fun.

  Today, now, with my three grown daughters crowded around me in the guesthouse that had been dubbed “wedding central,” I realized that Jack was making me face my fear again. When Carter had died, I didn’t think I would ever be able to move on. There was no way. And now, here I was, in my white silky robe, Caroline putting flowers in my bun, Emerson swiping blush on my cheeks, and Sloane steaming all our dresses one final time.

  “You look beautiful, Mom,” Emerson said.

  I mouthed Are you OK? to her.

  “I promise,” she said out loud.

  Still, I knew today was hard for her. I knew she was trying to pretend it wasn’t. And honestly, that made me feel proud. I would always put my daughters first, but I liked to be reminded that sometimes they could put other people first, too, even just their old mother.

  “Of course you look beautiful,” Caroline said. “No one has to promise that.”

  When they were finished, I stood up and motioned for my girls to come to me. “Thank you for giving me the gift of this amazing day,” I said. “I am so grateful to all of you for your love and your friendship and your maturity. I wouldn’t be here without you.” I cleared my throat. “And I want you to remember that, with me, you always come first. Always.”

  “See?” Caroline said, pulling away from us. “This is why you need champagne in the br
idal suite. There needs to be toasts now, and there is nothing to toast with.”

  It was a very hot day, and I was afraid that if everyone had champagne, someone would faint.

  “No toasts,” I said. “They would ruin my beautiful makeup.”

  Vivi came running up the stairs, her voice ahead of her. “Gransley!” she shouted. “It’s time, it’s time!”

  I slipped into my beautiful pale-blue lace gown, and with a zip and three final kisses, we were off.

  Twenty minutes later, I stood beside Jack on the sandbar where we had met, up at a makeshift altar of two wooden crosses covered with peonies. As I was about to pledge my life to him, I noticed the scar above his right eyebrow. And for just a second, I was back in that teenage night when we had jumped off the bridge, when I had felt so alive. It hadn’t been until we got back to shore that I’d realized there was blood pouring out of Jack’s right eyebrow. When he’d grabbed his legs, his knee had jerked up, his head went down, and the force had given him a cut that resulted in three stitches at the emergency room and a scar forever.

  That was the moment I knew, the moment I knew I was in love with him, the moment I knew that everything else I would ever do would pale in comparison to this love I felt for him. He had helped me face my fear—and had gotten hurt in the process. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was me. And when I saw that scar over his eyebrow now, it was a reminder of that fact. I had never felt so sure about anything as I did about this.

  Today, on this makeshift altar with the sun shining and the water sparkling around us, his eyes filled with tears, and mine did, too. My one hope was that I would be able to hold it together through my vows, but I knew now that wasn’t a possibility. Because, as I stood there, I didn’t really see Jack the fifty-nine-year-old man. I saw Jack the teenager who had changed me, who had made me believe that life was full of wonder and possibility, that what we lived through and the things that changed us were beautiful no matter what. I saw the twenty-something Jack I had asked an unaskable favor, the one who had willingly given me the one thing Carter and I couldn’t have—children—without asking me for anything in return. Not even my love.

  It hadn’t all been easy between us. There had been fights and disagreements, heartbreaks and pain. But through it all, from that very first day, there had been love. I looked out all around us at the water surrounding our strip of sand. Jack and me on our own little island. Only, as I winked at my brother Scott, who was standing behind Jack, I realized that we weren’t an island. We were surrounded by our best friends, our precious family members. And now, finally, after all these years, we were going to be family, too.

  Hal stood between us, officiating, and over his shoulder the sun was beginning to set, making its way through the sky and into the marsh grass. And when Hal said, “Ansley, do you take Jack to be your lawfully wedded husband?” I said, “I do,” so quickly that everyone laughed. Jack squeezed my hands.

  With the birds chirping and the fish jumping and the boats of the people who had known us as long as we had been us anchored all around, Jack and I promised to love each other forever.

  Our vows seemed almost redundant at this point, because I knew that whether Jack and I had ever gotten together again, whether we had ever gotten married, I would have loved him forever anyway. And I liked to believe that no matter what, he would have loved me forever, too. Still, I felt the tears pouring down my face as he said, “Ansley, the first time I ever saw you, right here in this spot, I knew that you were going to be a part of me for the rest of my life. There have been times over the past forty-three years when I felt like you were everything. You were my purpose. As you well know, life can be cruel, and it can be unforgiving, and it can often be unexpected. For that reason, there’s not a whole lot I can promise. But I can promise you that I will love you until my dying breath.”

  The sand felt cool and moist beneath my feet. I felt so grounded to this place, to this moment in time, like the past and the future were converging here on this same strip of sand where I had first seen that sandy-haired boy who had stolen my heart at fifteen.

  I can’t say whether it was right or wrong, but I couldn’t help but think of Carter then, and I knew that some of those tears I was shedding were for him, too. Because I had stood in front of him this same way, and I had vowed to love him until death parted us. And death had parted us. But even though he might be gone, I knew that I would love him forever and for always, just as I would love Jack. And somehow that made this moment seem even bigger.

  “Jack,” I began, “you have proven your devotion to me time after time in all the years we have been a part of each other’s lives. And now I promise that I will love you with that same devotion, that same tenderness, and that same forgiveness with which you have always loved me. I will love you until death parts us, and then I will love you for an eternity after that, because this one life we have is simply not enough. But you, Jack, are always enough. And today I promise that you always will be.”

  Jack kissed me then to seal our vows, and it really did feel like the first time. And in so many ways, it was. For Jack and me, this was a fresh start, a new day. It was the beginning of a time in our lives that represented freedom. No secrets, no lies, no hiding. Jack and I and our life together, the one we had dreamed of for so many years. I kissed him back, wholeheartedly, and I felt the tears coming down my cheeks again, because we were here. After so many years of heartache and uncertainty, so many years when things hadn’t been right or good between us, we had made it to the other side. And it was going to be perfect.

  I grinned at each of my daughters, and they grinned back at me. They were radiant in their pale-blue gowns. I noticed that Vivi was feeding Preston, AJ, and Taylor marshmallows to keep them quiet, and I laughed.

  It occurred to me how Emerson must be feeling right now, watching her mother get married in what was supposed to be her ceremony. But when I looked over at her, my Emmy looked as happy as I had seen her in a long time.

  Jack and I walked back down the aisle, grinning from ear to ear and pausing to stop in the middle of the aisle to kiss to thunderous applause from the crowd. Hal and Mrs. McClasky gathered everyone into the boats. My brothers congratulated me.

  “Mom would be so happy right now,” Scott said, laughing.

  John nodded in agreement. “Wherever they are, Ans, I know Mom and Dad are so proud.” He squeezed my hand. “Thanks for letting me walk you down the aisle. I can’t tell you what that meant.”

  As he wiped his eyes, Scott said, “OK. We’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

  And then there were two. We sat down in the chairs that had previously held our guests and drank the champagne that had been left for us.

  “To my wife,” Jack said.

  “To my husband.”

  We clinked our glasses, as the sun sank farther in the sky.

  “I honestly cannot believe it,” Jack said. “I wanted to trap you in a closet somewhere yesterday so that nothing could go wrong and make you change your mind again.” He paused. “Or, you know, something less creepy and kidnapper-ish.”

  I leaned over and kissed him. “I still can’t believe you sacrificed that hot young blonde for me.”

  Jack laughed. “You are way hotter,” he lied. “Plus, youth is overrated. I’ll take middle age any day—especially now.”

  “I will, too,” I agreed.

  “How do you think Emerson’s doing?” he asked.

  “I think she’s doing OK. She’s sad, but she knows she did the right thing.” And I said something that was so uncharacteristic his jaw dropped. “Today I’m going to focus on having the time of my life with you, and I’m going to worry about all our real-life problems tomorrow.”

  “Well, actually,” he said, “we won’t have much time to worry about them tomorrow.”

  I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  “I thought Connie was really onto something with that Greek isles thing, so you and I are going to take a three-week
break and see it all.”

  I opened my mouth to ask all the questions I needed to ask. Who would take care of my store? What about the client projects that needed to be finished? Who would feed Biscuit? Who would see Caroline back to New York and Emerson back to LA?

  But before I could ask them, Jack said, “Sloane has it all covered, Ansley. I know you forget sometimes, but they are grown-ups. She is going to take over all your responsibilities while you’re gone, so don’t worry about a thing.”

  I sighed and leaned into Jack, who put his arm around me.

  “You are the most amazing man ever,” I said.

  “I really am,” he agreed, kissing my temple.

  We both laughed. A few minutes later, I was holding up the very sandy bottom of my dress while Jack helped me onto the boat he had borrowed back from Vivi for the day. What better way for the bride and groom to arrive at their wedding reception than in the boat where they had kissed for the very first time?

  “I have dreamed about this day,” Jack said, “for forty-three years. And now, finally, you are all mine.”

  As we drove away toward Starlite Island, I realized that I, too, had been dreaming of this day for forty-three years. But as my mind skipped to Emerson and her heartache and Sloane and how she would manage while I was away and Caroline and how she would settle back into her life in Manhattan with James, I realized that once a woman became a mother, she was never really all of anyone’s again—not even her own.

  THIRTY-SIX

  emerson: a family of secrets

  I was sitting in one of the gold Chiavari chairs Caroline had rented for the reception, which were arranged around round tables adorned with white tablecloths and more of those astonishingly large peonies and hydrangeas in vases that were about half as tall as I was. Starlite Island at this time of night was beautiful no matter how you sliced it, but under a tent with twinkle lights, it was breathtaking.

  The sun had almost set when Mom and Jack pulled up to rousing applause from the now semi-tipsy guests, who had made the most of the open bar at cocktail hour. Mom had insisted on using Kimmy for the food, which consisted of fresh fish and vegetables. It was amazing, but it didn’t soak up the alcohol quite like a cheeseburger.