“I don’t understand,” Luke said.
“Tiffany is threatening to leave me. She says you’re destroying the planet and contributing to sprawl, and I’m the one who talked you into it. Seems the picketers got to her, too.” His mouth twisted into a shape halfway between a grin and a grimace.
“Ah, well.” Luke knelt and pressed the dirt clod back into the ground so the buttercups would have a fighting chance. “As Uncle Bink used to say, what’s money for but to lose?”
Ver Planck laughed. “That, my friend, is what separates the Sedgwicks from the Ver Plancks. I don’t plan on you losing a penny.”
Peggy’s heart and mind were racing. She felt as though she’d just jumped from an airplane: terrified, breathless, energized.
Nothing underneath her but air. She realized she was still clutching her bouquet and set it gently on the black leather limousine seat, not sure why she’d brought it in the first place. Out the back window, eight blocks behind her, the crowd that had followed her out of the church—everyone, it looked like, except Bex, who’d be stuck in her chair—stood helplessly on the sidewalk. The worried, confused, angry faces shrank smaller and smaller as the limousine sped up Amsterdam. Peggy hoped they’d all at least go to the reception. They might as well—it had already been paid for, by Brock and his family. Oh, lord, Peggy thought. I’ll have to pay them back.
“Where to?” The driver stopped at a red light and caught Peggy’s eye in the rearview mirror. He seemed unsurprised by the abrupt change of plans. Perhaps brides pulled this sort of stunt all the time.
Peggy fidgeted with the edge of her veil. She’d been absolutely sure of her decision moments ago. Now, with limitless choices before her, she wondered if she’d been rash. If nothing else, she was being terribly cruel to Brock. Hadn’t he done all she’d asked of him? Was she being foolish, giving up on a life that, while perhaps not perfect, was perfectly acceptable?
She picked up her roses, feeling like crying, and buried her face in their soft petals.
The light turned green. Behind the limo, impatient drivers were leaning on their horns.
Peggy barely heard. She tested the roses once, twice, a third time. Nothing. They were beautiful but smelled like nothing.
The limousine driver said gently, “How about I drop you home?”
Peggy began to smile.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” She set down the bouquet and settled back into the soft, comfortable seat. “I’d like to go home.”
It took ten minutes in the apocalyptic traffic for Luke and Ver Planck to drive the mile from the Sedgwick land to the town green. It took five minutes for them to announce their decision to the assembled protesters. It took no time for the protesters to put down their signs with hugs and shouts and accompany Luke and Ver Planck in a triumphant march to the Sedgwick House, where Luke threw open the front door and invited everyone inside for an impromptu celebration. Debby Doff from the Cheese Shoppe supplied cheese and crackers, and Luigi brought beer, and Luke dug out his twenty-five-year-old boom box, the one from the Anne Marie Scoggs era, and the party grew and spilled out onto the front lawn under the shade of the Sedgwick maple and into the back garden, where bees engaged in their own festivities around the peony bushes. Luke admired a fragrant white bloom, then looked out across the garden toward Market Road and the Rigas’ home. Tourists flowed in and out of the former Sedgwick carriage house. Many of those leaving the property carried bouquets of peonies from Ernestine’s flower stand.
It was a pity. Were Luke not moving out at the end of the month, he might have reopened Abby’s stand. Keeping Ernestine on her toes was a Sedgwick tradition.
Well, he was a Sedgwick, no matter where he lived. He’d make new traditions.
He came back around to the front lawn in time to see a silver SUV swing into the driveway. Tiffany climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the back to hoist Milo from his car seat. The boy spotted his father and went running to him across the lawn, weaving through the former protesters. Tiffany, meanwhile, threw her arms around Luke. “My hero!”
“You’re welcome,” Luke said into her hair.
She pulled away, her face pink with excitement. “Did Tom tell you his plan for your twenty acres? We’ll grow pick-your-own mizuna and amaranth and kohlrabi—organic, of course.”
“I don’t know what any of those are.” Luke nodded to Mike and Norma Garrison as they passed, raising their beers.
“Trendy salad greens. Restaurants pay through the nose for them. It’s all about locally grown produce these days—the more obscure, the better.” Tiffany beamed. “What do you think of my new car? It’s a hybrid. We got rid of that gas-guzzling Escalade. We’re all stewards of the earth, Luke. Every one of us.”
Cars inched up Main Street. It was midday, peak time for the home tour. The drivers and passengers slowed in front of the Sedgwick House, pointing.
“They want to join the party,” Tiffany suggested.
“They want to see the house,” Luke corrected her, and as if to illustrate his point, a young couple turned into the driveway behind Tiffany’s car.
“Dude. Is this part of the tour?” The driver had a Vermont license plate and a hopeful expression on his goateed face.
“Sorry. It’s a private home.” Luke started to turn away, then changed his mind. “Go on in.”
The couple scrambled out of the car and disappeared into the house. Tiffany looked surprised. “It’s so cool you did that.” She walked with Luke toward the north corner of the house, away from the crowd. “I’m sorry about Peggy. I was positive you two were perfect for each other. But even if it didn’t work out, you’re better off for having known her—more sociable, more open to people. That has to be good for you.”
She was right. Luke was better off for having known Peggy. He was better off for knowing Tiffany, too. He didn’t know how to tell her so, so he asked, “What do you say I get you a drink?”
She smiled at him. “I say, it’s about time—” She cut herself off and stared.
An outlandishly long black limousine had driven into the gravel driveway.
As Luke watched, the driver got out, but before the man could walk around to the back door, it opened from the inside and a woman emerged.
Not any woman. A bride in a swirling white dress and a veil that cascaded over her bare shoulders and framed her sweet, familiar face.
“No way,” Tiffany breathed.
Peggy hesitated at the front gate, looking nearly as stunned as Luke was, no doubt wondering why half the town of New Nineveh was here at the Sedgwick House, laughing and celebrating to Luke’s old Rolling Stones tape.
But what was she doing here? Luke found he was squeezing his hands into fists, anticipating the imminent appearance of Peggy’s new husband. Luke might abhor scenes, but if that hulking lummox got out of that limousine, Luke was going to deck him—in front of the entire party, propriety be damned.
Nothing happened. There was no sign of Brock. The driver closed Peggy’s door and stood impassively, awaiting further instructions.
Silence swept over the party like a tide. Annette and Angelo, the downtown shopkeepers, the summer people from New York—one by one, they all stopped talking, until there was no sound but the Rolling Stones, and then somebody turned off the boom box and there was nothing left but a summer breeze whispering through the trees and stirring the bottom of Peggy’s bridal veil.
It was little Milo who broke the spell.
“Pretty!” He ran across the lawn and tugged at Peggy’s skirt hem, and Peggy relaxed and laughed weakly, and everyone else but Luke went running up to Peggy and crowded around her with cries of, “We missed you!” and, “Why did you go?” and, “Did you hear?” A picketer told Peggy of Luke’s change of heart, and the crowd broke out in yet another glorious whoop, and there was hugging and exclaiming all around.
“But why do you wear a wedding gown?” Luigi called out.
“It’s a long story.”
/>
It was the first thing Luke had heard Peggy say. From his position away from the group, he caught her eye.
She stepped out from the crowd around her and made her way over to Luke. She glanced up, above his head, and he realized he was standing directly underneath the placard on the house, the one with Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick’s name and the date the house was built, 1796.
He fought the desire to take Peggy in his arms. “What are you doing here?” He was exposed, awkward, in front of all of these spectators. “I thought you were supposed to be getting married.”
“I changed my mind,” she said quietly.
His heart crowded into his throat.
“Luke.” She sounded choked up. “I know you and I only got married because we were drunk. And I know we only stayed that way for the money, but—”
“Peggy—” He couldn’t let her continue.
“—but our marriage turned out to be the one I’d always dreamed about. For the first time, I felt part of something. I had a family who cared about me, and a home, and a husband who was the kindest man in the world.” The breeze blew her veil against her face. She swatted at it. “And I know you hate scenes, and you’re probably wishing I had even a fraction of your WASP restraint and decorum, and I’m sorry to show up in my stupid wedding dress and interrupt your party, but I had to come here and tell you myself, because it turns out…” Tears were spilling down her cheeks. She wiped them away with her fingers. “It turns out,” she said, sniffling, “I love you, too.”
The crowd—half the town of New Nineveh—sighed in unison.
Luke knew the next move was his.
He ran into the foyer. He sprinted up the front staircase, the squeak of the third step like a child’s hysterical giggle, turned the corner at the second floor, and continued running up to the third floor. He ran past his study and into his room, where he collected something from the top drawer of his bureau and then flew down the new staircase, past Charity’s Porch, around through the grand parlor and past the library, where the Vermont couple stood in front of the portrait of his great-great-great-grandfather, back through the foyer, and out onto the front lawn again, where the party guests were conferring in fretful whispers and Peggy stood where he’d left her, dry-eyed but dazed.
He stopped before her, out of breath. “Sorry.”
Her hands were shaking. “It’s okay,” she said in a small voice.
“I needed this.” He held out the thing he’d retrieved from his bureau drawer—the black box from Star Jewelers—opened the lid, and took out Abigail’s engagement ring. “I love you, Peggy.” He took her hand in his. “Will you marry me?”
She was crying again. Crying and smiling. So was every woman watching. The men turned away and rubbed imaginary sand from their eyes.
“Yes,” Peggy said through a sob and laughed. “When?”
“Tonight.” Luke wrapped her in his arms. “I know a great little chapel in Las Vegas.”
TWENTY-SIX
Luke’s cell phone woke them up.
Woke Luke up, Peggy corrected herself. She’d been awake forever. The hotel pillow was spongy and the mattress too soft. It seemed some of her eccentricities were here to stay, happily married or not.
Luke groaned and turned his back to the sound. “If it’s important, they’ll call back.” The phone stopped ringing. He reached for her and kissed her neck. “Good morning, Mrs. Sedgwick.”
“Good morning, Mr. Sedgwick.” She turned to face him and kissed him back. They’d been married six hours, and she planned to start the honeymoon right up where they’d left off last night.
The phone rang again. Luke groaned for a second time, got up in defeat, and took the phone from the glass cocktail table, where he’d abandoned it next to a cardboard-framed photo stamped “The Little White Wedding Chapel.” “Hello?” he answered politely. “Yes, this is Luke.”
Peggy couldn’t love him more. Even standing in his boxer shorts, rudely awakened on the first morning of his honeymoon, he was a gentleman. And gorgeous. She didn’t ever want to stop looking at him.
“What?” Luke was saying. “Where?” His eyes grew wide.
Peggy’s breath caught in her chest. Anxiety, the nemesis she’d thought she might be leaving behind permanently, crept back into her body.
“No, no.” Luke’s voice shook. “It’s all right. I would have done the same thing.”
Peggy could hardly breathe.
Luke clapped the phone shut and came to sit shakily on the edge of the bed. “That was Angelo.”
“Tell me,” she pleaded.
He retrieved his glasses from the nightstand and put them on. “I never wanted to live in the Sedgwick House. You knew that, right? I used to fantasize about it collapsing.”
Oh, no. Angelo and Annette had agreed to close up the house after the party. Someone accidentally burned it down. “Right.” She strove to keep her tone light. “You made that pretty clear.”
“I always thought I would move to Key West or somewhere if given the chance, but lately I’d been thinking about challenging Abby’s will. Fighting to stay there. It seems I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I suppose that makes me exactly the kind of stuck-in-a-rut Yankee I desperately didn’t want to be.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to respond.
“Well, it’s a good rut.” Did this mean the house hadn’t gone up in flames last night? She felt slightly better. “There’s nothing wrong with staying in a place that makes you happy.”
He seemed heartened. “So you wouldn’t miss New York, then?”
The anxiety was fading quickly. She laughed. “I love New Nineveh, and I love the Sedgwick House. Is that what the call was about? Challenging Miss Abigail’s will?”
“Not exactly.” Luke slid all the way into bed and folded his arms around her again. “You know that squeaky step in the front staircase?”
She was thoroughly bewildered but nodded anyway.
“Angelo decided this morning to fix it. He thought maybe the top board was warped, so he pried it off to get a better look. You won’t believe what he found in the hollow space underneath.” Luke was talking faster now, not waiting for an answer. “He found the amended will. The one giving the house to you and me.”
“That’s wonderful! Now we don’t have to contest it!”
“That’s not all. Angelo also found a box. A wooden box with a star carved on the lid. Charles made it for Abigail long ago. It was something Abby had always wanted me to have. I didn’t think it existed.”
Peggy’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of Miss Abigail. “She hid that box for you. It must have been very important to her.”
“I don’t think it was the box she thought was so important,” Luke said quietly. “It was what was inside.”
Time seemed to stand still.
“A bankbook. A stock certificate. And a note. It seems Abby pinched pennies and sold autumn leaves for a reason. She’d been squirreling away every last cent, first under her mattress, later at the Bank of New Nineveh, for more than eighty years. Angelo was just apologizing for opening the bankbook and seeing the balance.”
Luke repeated the sum. Five figures. Peggy was impressed. “I’ll never throw away a teabag again,” she said. Still, she couldn’t quite understand what had Luke so agitated.
“Actually,” Luke continued, his voice still shaking, “what’s really added up are the hundred shares of Berkshire Hathaway it seems my uncle Bink persuaded her to buy in 1965. I don’t suppose you know how much more those hundred shares of Berkshire Hathaway are worth today, do you?” His face looked drained of blood. As if someone were listening, he whispered the staggering sum in Peggy’s ear.
Had Peggy been ordered to move at this moment, she would have been physically incapable of doing so.
Even without knowing the specifics of home repair, she understood it was enough—much, much more than enough—to maintain the Silas Sedgwick House for another hundred years.
They cou
ld keep the house.
Luke kissed her. It was a kiss infused with all the passion and love and hope and happiness in the world.
“Come on, my love,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
EPILOGUE
Fifteen Months Later, September
I can’t believe you have this many extra chairs, Peggy,” Josh called up from the basement stairs. “Seriously, Bex. There’s a whole room down there the size of my old apartment, just for chairs.” He emerged from the basement with a folding chair under each arm—the last of a dozen he’d brought up. He handed them off to Peggy, who was alternating between wiping dust from the other chairs and helping Bex keep an eye on two toddlers.
“I can’t believe we have this many children.” Bex dropped her dust rag and scooped up a twin, who was trying to pull Quibble’s tail—“No, no, Ben”—and kissed the boy’s soft, curly-haired head. A wail rose up from his sister, Alexandra, Embryo A, who marched across the worn kitchen floor from where she’d been banging pot and pan lids.
She grabbed Benjamin’s sleeve, trying to drag him from Bex’s lap.
“Gentle, sweetie. You’ll get a turn next.” Bex kissed Alexandra’s head, too.
“She’s exactly like you,” Peggy said, laughing. She got to her feet and went to the library. Luke was arranging the already cleaned chairs into two semicircular rows facing the fireplace.
“Guess what Alex just did?” Peggy put her arms around her husband and relayed the scene she’d just witnessed in the kitchen. Now that the Sabes-Cohen family had moved permanently into the east addition—Josh was helping Luke and Angelo add on a bathroom—Peggy and Luke had come to regard the twins almost as their own. The two would have babies someday, but for now, watching Ben and Alex grow was joyous in itself.
Besides, Peggy and Bex had their hands full at the new store. Home Grown was a showcase for products made locally—fine art by area painters, bread from a nearby baking company, vegetables from the Sedgwick/Ver Planck Cooperative Farm, dahlias from the back garden—and Sweet Fire, Luke’s first book of poems. The store had been open six months, and business, though nowhere as steady as it might be in New York, was promising. Meanwhile, Josh had recently passed the Connecticut bar and had hung out his shingle downtown—he’d taken the second office at the Law Offices of Lowell C. Mayhew. He was currently representing a group of environmentalists in Bethlehem.
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