Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

the dirt, I thought he looked gleeful. He worked with a youthful vigor that seemed to straighten his back and rejuvenate him as he dropped the soil into the grave and heard it rumble onto Emily Booth's coffin. I was sure a lifetime of pain and suffering was being buried along with Emily.
    I paid the minister something for his trouble, and then Jimmy and Charlotte and I did finally have that mint tea. Charlotte actually prepared it for us. As she moved about the kitchen I realized she was more capable than Emily had made her out to be. Free now of the chains and restrictions Emily had put on her, Charlotte seemed to take on more and more responsibility eagerly.
    "Where do you want to go now, Charlotte?" I asked her.
    "Go?" she said, looking up from her cup. She gazed around the kitchen. "No place. I gotta do some cleaning today," she said, "and work on my needlepoint."
    "She does beautiful work," I told Jimmy. We heard the front door open and close.
    "I put the marker up," Luther said, coming into the kitchen.
    "What about a gravestone?" Jimmy asked.
    "Almost got it done," Luther replied, sitting down at the table. "I've been working on it for years," he added. Jimmy flashed a smile at me.
    "What do you want to do now, Luther?" I asked him.
    "Do now?"
    "Are you going to stay here?" I inquired.
    "Until someone drags me off," he said. "Got no other place to go, and"—he turned toward Charlotte—"someone's got to look after Miss Charlotte."
    I nodded, smiling.
    "I think that would be very nice," I said. "When Jimmy and I return to Cutler's Cove I'll have our attorney see about the legal questions involving the property. No matter what happens, I don't see why you and Charlotte can't stay. That is, if you really think you can take care of her, Luther," I added.
    He fixed those dark brown eyes on me hard, his face as serious as I had ever seen it.
    "I've been taking care of her in one way or another ever since I can remember," he replied.
    "I guess you have," I said.
    "And here's your cup of mint tea," Charlotte said, placing it before him. Then she stepped back, her eyes glimmering with pride.
    "Thank you, Charlotte," he said. She smiled down at him happily. Then she looked at me and clapped her hands together.
    "I almost forgot," she said. "Tomorrow's my birthday." I started to laugh, remembering how she would say that every day, but Luther looked up smiling.
    "She's right," he said. "It really is!"

 

EPILOGUE
     
    AS JIMMY AND I DROVE AWAY FROM THE MEADOWS THAT DAY I thought how right it was that the two people who were made to suffer most there could now live there happily. I had no doubt in my mind that in time some of the more dreary and dismal aspects of that sad house would be buried along with the memory of Miss Emily. The shadows she had kept stored in the deepest corners—shadows she had protected and fed with her insane insistence that the light be rationed —would surely follow her to the grave.
    When we returned to Cutler's Cove I had a meeting with Mr. Updike concerning The Meadows, and he said he would see to it that Charlotte and Luther could live there for as long as they wanted. I told Philip about our trip, Emily's burial and what we had decided. He was glad not to have to have anything more to do with it.
    "The one or two times I was there," he said, "I was terrified. Aunt Emily made me feel I was the devil's own."
    In a way it was good for me to have attended Miss Emily's burial. Seeing Charlotte and Luther happy and knowing that the dour, evil woman was gone from their lives as well as my own put an end to my nightmares about The Meadows. Those days stopped haunting me.
    I had much too much to do with my life now anyway. There was Christie's musical education to continue; there were things to do in our home and, of course, there was the hotel. Jimmy and I made plans to take our first vacation together after the summer. We decided to return to Cape Cod to finish our honeymoon.
    It was the most romantic week of our marriage. We were able to pledge our love to each other again and again in dozens of little ways: Jimmy just touching my cheek and not saying anything, me resting my head against his shoulder as the sun went down, or the two of us waking up before dawn and rushing out to hold hands and walk on the beach as the sun rose.
    When we returned to Cutler's Cove we discovered Bronson had made arrangements for all of us to have Thanksgiving at Beulla Woods. He thought it would do Mother