One Mountain Away (51 page)

Taylor smiled, and Charlotte could feel the beauty of it blooming inside her. “I think of that afternoon a lot,” Taylor said. “Even when I didn’t want to think about it, it was always right here.” She put her hand over her heart. “That and all the other good times. There were so many.”

“You and Maddie…have so many moments like that ahead of you.”

“And you and I missed so many these past years.”

Charlotte took her daughter’s hand and kissed it. “Let’s be done with regrets. We learned…bitter lessons, but we found each other again. Some people…never do. I am so grateful for you.” She paused, because talking was growing harder, and she was exhausted. “I am so grateful…for Maddie. She’s everything I knew she was…and more.”

“You’re tired. You’re wiped out by all this commotion, and you need to save your strength. I guess I’d better go, but Maddie and I will be back tomorrow morning. I’ll bring her scrapbook. And we can set up our digital picture frame so you can watch her growing up on your nightstand.”

“Technology
is
our…friend.”

Taylor laughed, then she bent and kissed Charlotte on the forehead, adding one more on each cheek before she gave her a final hug.

On the way out she stopped in the doorway. From somewhere in the house Charlotte could hear Maddie’s high-pitched laughter and the rumble of Ethan’s voice. One of the puppies was yapping excitedly. The sounds of a family.

Her family.

“Maddie loves that puppy,” Taylor said. “You really want her to have Vanilla?”

“For both of you. But only if you—”

Taylor smiled. “Is Vanilla
your
favorite?”

“By far.”

“Then I think we’ll need her with us.” She smiled, but her eyes gleamed with tears. “I love you, Mom. I always have, even when I didn’t want to. And I always will.”

When she was gone, Charlotte fell asleep with her own cheeks damp with tears.

Later, when she awoke, she discovered that Ethan had slipped into bed beside her and gathered her in his arms. Soothing classical music drifted around them, along with the herbal scent of Harmony’s minestrone soup.

He read her mind. “They’ll be back first thing tomorrow,” he said. “Nothing could keep them away.”

“They’re both…so beautiful.”

“Your granddaughter’s madly in love with Vanilla, and it’s mutual. The puppy will be perfect for her. If the surgery’s successful, Maddie may not need a seizure dog, but she’ll always need a pal.”

Charlotte knew what she’d told Taylor was true. It was time to put all her mistakes behind her. She no longer needed them to hold her on earth. She had Taylor, Maddie and Ethan to anchor her. As long as God allowed.

“It will be easier…to let go now,” she said.

“Did you and Taylor say everything you needed to?”

“Never, but we’ve forgiven…each other. And ourselves.”

“She always loved you.”

“She told me.”

“She’s not the only one.” He kissed her hair.

“I never quit…”

“Loving me? Loving us?” he finished for her.

“I always loved you.” Something else nibbled at her memory. She smiled again. “And I didn’t quit…five minutes before my miracle.”

“Do me a favor, Lulu. Don’t quit quite yet, even if you already got yours.”

“I’m going to take all the time…and all the miracles I can.”

She drifted off to sleep again, Ethan’s arms around her, the warm imprint of her granddaughter and daughter safe in her heart.

She dreamed of Gwen, who lifted her hand and slowly dissolved into the darkness. Here, there was no more sadness to heal, no suffering to end. Dying, she promised, would be the least of it.

Chapter Forty-Five

THERE HAD BEEN just enough time to say everything that mattered, but not nearly enough to say everything.

Twelve days after their reunion, Taylor watched as her father lowered her mother’s ashes into the ground beside Taylor’s great-grandmother’s grave.

Georgia and Samantha Ferguson stood side by side across from her, with Edna between them. Harmony, eyes red-rimmed, stood on Georgia’s left.

Reverend Analiese Wagner, in clerical garb, with a green stole with lotus blossoms embroidered on it, said the final prayer. Then, instead of dispersing the mourners, she added a personal note.

“Charlotte Hale was my friend, as well as my parishioner. I’ve never seen anyone face death more courageously or live the time they had left with more love in their hearts. She’s now at rest in the mountains that inspired her, beside the grandmother who nurtured her and the generations of family who helped make her the woman she came to be. At the end she wasn’t afraid to die, but she was sad to leave each of you. Let us rejoice in a life well lived, in a heart that overflowed with love and graced her community, family and friends, and in a spirit that is now at peace.”

Maddie, who had wept when she learned her grandmother was gone, had stood solemnly through the brief service, but now she and Edna joined hands and ran toward the house, where the table on the front porch was filled with food.

Taylor wiped her eyes; then she took her father’s hand, and they stood quietly at the graveside for a few minutes. The others followed Edna and Maddie and left them alone.

“Mom worked so hard to leave this place, and now we’ve brought her back and buried her here,” she said at last.

Ethan looked tired but composed. He, Taylor and Harmony had stayed with Charlotte until the end, well past the time when she had been aware of their presence. But Ethan had never stopped believing that some part of her had still known they were there, and only when her body had been removed by the funeral home had he been willing to leave Charlotte’s house.

A house that now belonged to him. That, too, Taylor thought, was an irony.

“In the end your mom came to terms with who she was and where she came from,” he said. “Reverend Ana’s right. She was at peace, and this is a peaceful place.”

They began the walk toward the house. “I do remember coming here with you,” she said. “There were chickens, and a goat.”

“Some of the prettiest land in this country is some of the poorest. If good memories were built from nothing but mountain vistas, your mom never would have left.”

“I hope she did something good with the farm.”

“I think Reverend Ana will tell us today.”

“Are you over the shock of inheriting the controlling shares in Falconview?”

Only two nights ago Ethan had learned that except for donations to charities she had supported and cash bequests to Harmony and her housekeeper—including a set of china to each of them—Charlotte’s entire estate, minus the farm, had been left to him.

He gave a brief smile. “Your mom was always full of surprises.”

“That was a pretty big one.”

“She knew Falconview would become something very different in my hands, and I think that’s what she wanted. Leaving it to me was her way of making sure the company becomes smaller and more concerned with keeping mountain vistas like these intact. I don’t know whether I’ll succeed, but maybe I’ll have fun trying.”

Taylor thought her mother had chosen wisely.

Ethan squeezed her hand before he dropped it. “You know, don’t you, that everything else she left me, including Falconview, is really for you and Maddie? Her attorney told me that when they put together her living trust, she was afraid if any assets went directly to you, you might refuse.”

“That was so Mom, wasn’t it? She wanted to protect Maddie and me, even if I refused to let her.”

“When I sell the house, that money will go directly into your account as a start. I know that’s what she wanted.”

“It’s a lot more than I deserve.”

Ethan squeezed her hand. “That’s not how she felt.”

“I wonder why everything we really have to know has such a steep learning curve?”

“Because once we finally get it right, it’s ours for life.”

Taylor would never forgive herself for waiting so long to reconcile with her mother, but she knew Charlotte had forgiven her. She also knew what a gift that forgiveness would be in years to come.

Taylor saw that Analiese was waiting for them to join her. Later her father would come back and fill in the grave, his way of saying his final goodbye to the woman he had loved.

Ana put her arm around Taylor for a brief squeeze. During Charlotte’s last days they had become close, and now Taylor, who had never expected to have anything to do with the Church of the Covenant, thought she might begin taking Maddie there for Sunday School.

“Taylor, I’d like to say something to the group after we’ve eaten. Do you mind?”

“I imagine Sam’s staying awhile. Maddie and Edna can entertain each other.”

Ethan and Taylor had scheduled a traditional memorial service for Charlotte in two weeks, when everyone who wanted to could come and pay their respects. Analiese had warned it would be a large gathering, since there was genuine sorrow for her passing at the church and beyond. Charlotte, she’d said, would have been pleasantly surprised. At the end of her life she’d been able to see her faults, but her strengths and their impact on the community had eluded her.

In addition, Charlotte had asked for this intimate interment service on the mountain with just a few people. And, being Charlotte, she had provided a list.

Out on the porch the guests were dishing up. Harmony and Taylor had collaborated on the food, two vegetarians who’d discovered as they cared for Charlotte that they had even more in common. Harmony would be moving out of Charlotte’s house next week, and not too many weeks afterward, Maddie and Taylor would visit her at Capable Canines to bring Vanilla home.

Harmony had made three different salads, and Taylor had baked the same chocolate cake her mother had always made for her childhood birthdays. They had purchased a platter of cheeses and breads for sandwiches, as well as vegetables and dips.

Everyone filled plates and found places to sit where they could face one another. Ethan started a playlist of Charlotte’s favorite songs, and they listened to Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch as they ate and chatted. The midsummer afternoon was warm, and butterflies flitted from day lilies to black-eyed Susans.

Taylor cut the cake and gave everyone a slice. Harmony poured coffee from a pot she had made in the kitchen. Samantha gathered up dishes and dirty silverware. Georgia entertained Maddie and Edna by showing them how to gather “broom straw” from the yard and closest field to make their own brooms, Appalachian-style.

Ethan excused himself and went back up the hill to finish filling in the grave, and to be alone with his thoughts and memories.

Taylor sat with her cake and coffee on the steps, her back to a pillar, and watched the girls giggling and chasing each other as they hunted broom straw. “I think there must have been some good times on this porch through the years. Sitting here, looking over mountains, listening to birds. It’s so peaceful. I wish we could bottle it.”

Analiese, who was leaning against the wall, cup and saucer in hands, agreed. “It’s a healing place.”

“I think that’s why Mom wanted us to come here.”

“That’s exactly why,” Analiese said. “And I think this is the right moment to tell you the rest of it, too.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Dad?”

“He knows most of it already. We’ll fill him in on the rest, but this is about us.”

Taylor thought that was interesting. They were suddenly “us,” and she liked the feel of that. She had been close to Samantha, and even Samantha’s mother, for a long time, but because of Charlotte she had quickly grown close to Harmony and Analiese. Life had a way of separating people, of barging in on relationships and insisting there was no time for friendship. She’d wondered if now that her mother was no longer alive, Harmony and Analiese would drift out of her life again. She hoped not.

Analiese set her coffee cup on the table. “At the end of her life Charlotte was able to see what a special place this farm is, too. It took time and distance, but she held on to it despite everything. For years after she left, when she hardly had enough to live on, somehow she scraped up the money to pay the taxes. I think she must have known, deep down, that keeping the farm for future generations was important.”

Taylor knew she and Maddie were those future generations, the living links to the Sawyers, yet as beautiful as the land and house were, she also knew they would never live here. The house was an oasis in a complicated world, but the world was where they needed to be.

“Charlotte thought hard about what to do,” Analiese said. “She brought me here to see the farm, and in the end, we came up with an idea. The thing is, it involves each of you. It can’t happen without you.”

“What can
we
do?” Georgia asked.

“To see that, you have to understand what Charlotte told me she’d learned. She said she discovered the only way to help anybody was to walk beside them, not to judge, not to advise, but simply to be there. She said women have always understood that offering consolation or a listening ear is what really matters, not how much money you throw at a problem—although that can help—but simply being there.”

Taylor wasn’t sure where this was going. She could see Georgia didn’t understand, either, although she looked interested. Analiese went on.

“Charlotte didn’t want to start another charity, and she didn’t want a memorial. She didn’t want to give this property to a charity already in existence. She wants this idea to grow organically, and for us to fashion it together our way. She wants this house and land to be a place where women come together. She and I used to talk about anonymous goddesses, those women who are always with us, behind us, in front of us, but rarely ever seen. At the end, she thought maybe this could be a place where goddesses flourish.”

“How?” Harmony asked.

“She left the farm in a trust, and each of us has been named a trustee. If we want to be part of it—and the choice is up to each of us—we’ll have a say in what happens, how we reach out, how we use this land and this house to help those who need it. Any one of us who doesn’t want to be part of it doesn’t have to be. We can add women or subtract those who need to back away. Charlotte endowed the farm, so we don’t need to worry about repairs or taxes. She only asked that we each take part when we can, use our unique talents to find ways to help, then use the resources here, if we need to, to make a difference. We could use the house for retreats. We could house women who are in danger or in trouble. We could start a cooperative, grow flowers or herbs to help provide women who need it with income.”