My Very Best Friend (55 page)

“I’ll miss the village.”

I thought of the village. The people. How they’d treated her at first, how many of them treated her at the end, with devoted friendship and love.

“I’ll miss Toran, Pherson, and you, Charlotte.”

I couldn’t talk, the tears soaking our pillow. The ray of white, the staircase, seemed brighter now. Ready. Waiting.

“I’ll miss writing letters to you.”

“I’ll miss getting them.” I pushed her blond hair out of her eyes.

“I’ll miss Silver Cat.” Her eyes drifted to the window, to the white staircase. “In some ways, I’ll be glad to go. I can’t live with the pain anymore. The painkillers aren’t working well. I can’t live feeling this ill. I’m surprised by how much I want to stay, but I have had enough of this life, too. I think of Legend every day. I know she’s alive, but I can’t be with her. I could have passed her on the street, at a café. I could have been sleeping on the street and her parents may have walked by with her.” She smiled, a smile so sad it was as if the grief of Scotland settled on her face. “She’ll come home one day. I won’t be here, but she’ll come. St. Ambrose is her home. It will call to her.”

Her daughter might not even know she was adopted. If she did, there was no paper trail to follow home. I stroked her hair.

“She’ll come,” she said again, then sighed, closing her eyes. “She’ll come.”

“I’ll be waiting for her. I’ll tell her you loved her.”

“I know.” She squeezed my hand. “From now until I see you again, my friend, I love you.”

“I love you, too, Bridget.” I wiped her tears, then mine.

I watched her sleep. The white staircase grew brighter. The unicorn with the gold reins was waiting.

The train’s whistle blew. It had never been louder.

Bridget died at home two days later. Clan TorBridgePherLotte was together, in her bed, Silver Cat beside her.

At her request, we had done nothing to slow the decline. She didn’t want to eat, and we didn’t push her. She didn’t want to drink, so we let it go. Some might see this as giving up. I saw it as reality. Why prolong the inevitable when it is so painful for the person dying?

Before she died, after hugging Toran and Pherson, who were both emotional wrecks but trying unsuccessfully to control themselves, she held my hand. “You were always my very best friend, Charlotte,” she whispered. “Always.”

“And you, mine, Scottish warrior queen.”

When the pain became too much, we called Kenna. Kenna had her swallow medicines from two vials.

She slipped into sleep. Silver Cat meowed so loud, a high-pitched shriek, that we jumped. She kept meowing like that, and I held her in my arms until she stopped, but her body kept shaking.

Bridget never opened her eyes again.

I wanted the train, rumbling on the tracks, to get delayed at another station. I wanted a U-turn. I wanted the engineer to change his mind. I wanted to beg, grovel, bargain.

The train came, it stopped, and Bridget climbed aboard. She smiled and waved good-bye, healthy again. The engineer was gentle but insistent. It was her time, not ours. He would take care of her now.

The whistle blew, the wheels lurched forward, the engine groaned, and the puff of steam rose in the sky, into heaven. Bridget blew kisses.

We were on our knees, hands outstretched.

Soon the train disappeared, along with the tracks and the station. There was no whistle, the steam evaporated, the earth stopped rumbling.

The train was gone.

Alone.

Alone.

So long. I will see you again.

Toran and I held each other tight. When morning came, neither one of us wanted to get up.

But we did.

You have to.

Silver Cat, after one final, loud screech after Bridget died, disappeared. We looked everywhere. We couldn’t find her.

My mother called and listened to me cry. She cried, too. She wanted to come for the funeral, but I told her not to. It was too long a trip from Africa.

She called five restaurants in town. They brought us dinner each night. We received many dinners from people and had to put an extra refrigerator in the garage. People kept coming by to pay their respects, and we fed them.

My mother sent flowers the next day, too. Irises. She knows those are my favorite.

19

Bridget’s memorial service would be held at the graveyard where generations of Mackintoshes and Ramsays were buried. Despite the feuds and fights, we all end up together.

It was by her request that there be no church service. Given her past, that was entirely understandable.

Toran, Pherson, and I dug Bridget’s grave. I did not go to my father’s gravesite. I couldn’t. Not yet.

Digging her grave was one of the most depressing yet profound moments of my whole life. I stood in black farm boots, jeans, and a light jacket, which I soon took off, the clouds clearing.

We dug her grave right under a sprawling, ancient oak tree. It had seen one Ramsay or Mackintosh after another buried there.

I looked up into the branches, bare, tangled, intricate, and saw the protection, if only metaphorically, that the tree offered. The oak tree was the owner of the graveyard, not us.

Toran settled the question on the location of the grave. “She will not be buried by our parents.”

Pherson nodded. He seemed to have aged overnight. He had white hairs where no white hairs had been months ago.

It is an insidious, overwhelming kind of grief that wells up when you’re digging the grave of someone you love.

I shoveled the dirt out.

I remembered Bridget as a little girl, how we ran beside the meandering stream, chased butterflies, played hide-and-seek.

I remembered the imaginary games we played as Clan TorBridgePherLotte. We were fighters, saviors, mermaids and mermen, magical and invincible.

I remembered the Scottish sun tunneling down on our heads and the Scottish rain falling gently as we danced through it.

I shoveled the dirt out. I dug a hole to make way for my best friend.

I remembered how we wrote letters to each other as children and as teenagers before I left, back and forth, how I would write part of a story and she would draw a picture below it, how we wrote to each other for two decades as grown women.

There would be no more letters, ever. My best friend, gone, every breath gone, every thought gone, every dream, every laugh, every memory.

Gone.

I shoveled the dirt out. This was where Bridget’s body would be buried.

I remembered how we felt this graveyard was so spooky, how we read the names on the headstones, how she pointed out Carney’s parents and great-grandparents, and then I did the same. So many Ramsays and Mackintoshes. Some lived to be old, eighty years. One was ninety-four. Others were only babies, a day old, six months old, seven, fifteen.

Ramsays. Mackintoshes.

And now Bridget Ramsay was here, too.

I shoveled the dirt out. My tears fell, my shoulders ached.

We didn’t speak, the three of us, dirt flying, inches from each other. We stopped when a truck drove up. Baen and Gowan climbed out. Toran’s face tightened, and he let swear words stream out, thunder against lightning. Pherson muttered that he felt like smashing someone and those two would be the perfect victims. Pherson’s grip tightened on his shovel. I knew we were looking at a fight. Baen and Gowan would be beaten to shit.

Baen held up a hand. “Please tell me to leave if you wish, man, and I will. But my son and I, we would like to help dig the grave.” He ran a hand over his forehead. “For Bridget.”

“Aye. We’re sorry, Toran. Pherson. Charlotte. We’re ashamed of ourselves,” Gowan said. “You know us not to be too bright, and this time we were dumber than a rat’s arse.”

“Not honorable Scotsmen,” Baen said. “A disgrace. Please, man, let us do this one thing.”

Toran hesitated. I saw him fight with himself, not wanting them near his sister’s grave, but rejecting an offer of help, kindly given, while being asked for forgiveness, that wasn’t right, either. He bent his head, hand on the shovel. He was grieving too much for anger. It would come again, that anger, but not now.

He squared his shoulders. “Come on up.”

Baen and Gowan walked up the hillside, hats in their hands. They nodded at me. “Charlotte. Pherson.”

We nodded back.

“We’re sorry,” Gowan said. “Sorry for the insult to your clan and family. Sorry all the way down to the ground. This ground, right here, under our feet.” Gowan stomped the ground. “Sorry to your sister, your friend. Sorry, man.”

And that was it. There were no more words.

We all dug together, taking turns. I did not wipe my eyes as my tears fell into Bridget’s grave.

No one bothered to wipe their eyes, no, they didn’t, not even Baen and Gowan, but Gowan did give me his handkerchief. It wasn’t too dirty, either.

We dug Bridget’s grave, under the oak tree, away from the parents who failed her but closer to the sunsets she loved, closer to the stars spiraling and arcing across the horizon, closer to the blue skies of Scotland, so close you could scoop out the sky with your hand, like blue cotton candy.

Soon we had a grave for Bridget.

I had shoveled the dirt out, so my friend could be placed inside.

As the sun set, I climbed the hill again to the cemetery, by myself, and stood by the open grave. Bridget would be in my soul, my life, forever. Her essence, her laughter, sharp wit, humor, forgiveness, and her unending love for a baby she had hardly held, those things, they lived on.

They lived in the rocky cliffs of Scotland, the ocean waves that crashed into the shore, the fields filled with bluebells and daffodils, the sunsets that lit the sky on fire and the sunrises that covered the land in a gold and pink glow.

They never leave our hearts, the ones we love.

Where we go, they go. When we cry, they comfort. When we laugh, they laugh, too. When we grieve, when we’re lonely, it’s their hand we reach for, if only in our minds. We hear their voices, their advice, sometimes their reprimands. We hear their words of love and encouragement, of warning. Their love lives on, breathes on, carries on, and eventually gives us peace, the memories holding us in a hug.

“So long, Bridget,” I said to her, crumbling to my knees. “I love you, I miss you. I will see you again.”

“Sweetheart, Bridget asked me to give this to you.”

I took the letter from Toran’s hand late that night, then hugged him. We sat on the couch together, the fire roaring, as I opened it up.

Charlotte,

I wanted to write you one last letter. A short one, you’ll understand. But this one is all true.

You are, and always have been, my very best friend. I love you.

Bridget

I clutched the letter to my chest, the sobs making my whole body ache.

I felt a hole, large and gaping, lonely and lost. True friends are so hard to find. It’s so hard to trust someone completely, to find that personality that blends with yours, and now Bridget was dead.

Toran wrapped his arms around me. “There now . . . there now . . . luv . . . I love you, Charlotte. We’ll get through this. Together we will.”

I wondered if my whole body would ever stop aching.

That night Toran and I had wildly awesome sex. On fire. I was up against a wall. He held my legs around him as I clung to his shoulders. Afterward, we fell right to sleep, me on top of him. In the morning, I woke up cradled in his arms.

“I love you, Char,” he murmured to me.

“I love you, too, Toran.”

Then the tears started again.

Silver Cat did not return. It was one more ache. She was Bridget’s cat, I knew that, and I missed her.

The hearse was late bringing up Bridget’s coffin, so Pherson, Toran, and I were late. When we arrived, stepping over the last rise of the hill, we stopped, shocked at what we saw.

“Damn near looks like the entire town is here,” Toran said.

It did. They probably were.

From the ladies in Gabble and Gobble Garden Gang, to Chief Constable Ben Harris holding Gitanjali’s hand, to teachers and students we’d gone to school with, to friends and neighbors, old and young, to Baen, Gowan, Carston Chit, Stanley I and II, and Lorna Lester, and her sister, Laddy, who looked chagrined and embarrassed, outcasts now in town, Laddy’s business closed for lack of customers, their eyes tired.

They were all there.

Toran bent his head, overcome. I wrapped an arm around him.

We had the vicar, Harold Mosher, who had known Bridget her whole life, a decent and compassionate man, who had seen Bridget many times during her illness, come to lead the service. He would give the prayers, and the blessings, but Bridget’s instructions were for Toran, Pherson, and I to speak.

That’s what we did. I went first. I talked about our childhood, and my mother’s garden, which had been the start of Bridget’s love of gardening. I talked about the letters we wrote as children and as women, how funny she was, witty and smart. I talked about her artistic talents, her garden plans, her love of Pherson and Toran. I told them how beautiful Bridget’s heart was and how she handled having a terminal disease with grace and courage.

Pherson talked of how Bridget was the love of his life. He could not say much more, too emotional.

Toran talked about his sister’s thoughtfulness and sensitivity, her humbleness, how deep she loved, and how she saw the best in people. He talked about her enduring love for her daughter. She designed the park with her daughter in her mind and heart, for her and the people of St. Ambrose, particularly the children.

Toran played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. Rowena and Kenna sang the haunting “Flowers of the Forest.” Olive played her violin, a piece she composed, the notes climbing up the trunk of the oak tree, through the branches, to the blue skies, over the stream and Toran’s farm, across the waves of the ocean, where they swirled up to heaven. It was sad, joyful, mournful, hopeful. I had not even known that she played the violin.