The Probable Future

Jimmy Elliot had become a hero of sorts, heralded for ignoring his community service and failing to chop down the last branch of the oak on Lockhart Avenue. He’d been invited to come talk to the third-grade class, whose students had protested the felling of the oak, and had, for one entire afternoon, held hands and pranced around the trunk singing.

Sometimes, you’re smarter not to take orders, Jimmy told the rapt students when he visited their classroom, much to the dismay of Mrs. Cole, who’d been Jimmy’s third-grade teacher as well and remembered him climbing to the top shelf of the coat closet and refusing to come down.

Doesn’t anyone in this town see what’s right in front of them? They’re all terrible judges of character, Jimmy had said to Stella afterward. I guess they’ll figure out who I am soon enough. I might as well enjoy it while I can.

They know who you are, Stella had told him. So do I.

Will Avery had also been put to use on the afternoon of Elinor’s memorial service. He had helped Liza transport the large coffee urns, and was later sent off with a platter of tiny brioche to offer to the most elderly of the visitors, the ones who, once they were situated in a love seat or couch, only got up again for one thing: to leave. Jenny was the one who didn’t seem to know what to do with herself; she stood in the front hall, as though ready to leave. But where would she go? She couldn’t bring herself to abandon the hall closet, where Elinor’s ashes were stored in a metal canister. She tried to walk toward the kitchen to help Liza, and found she couldn’t take a single step.

“How are you holding up?” Matt Avery had brought over a strong cup of black tea.

“Absolutely fine.” But, in fact, Jenny felt as though she was glued to the floor. She, who had found it so very easy to run away, now found she couldn’t move an inch. “Terribly,” she amended.

“Him, too.”

There was the doctor, looking through one of the windows beside the front door. He could see into the garden, but it was a vision that was cloudy and green. What was he seeing? Elinor’s last breath, broken into a thousand molecules? Was that what he was breathing? Her essence, her self, the person he would miss every day, his worst patient, his nastiest neighbor, his most treasured friend.

“Stella’s out there,” he said when Jenny came to stand alongside him. When she looked, Jenny thought she saw her mother in the garden. She thought she saw Elinor crouched down, the way she’d been when she was grieving for everything she’d lost all those years ago. But it was Stella who was out there now, in the sweet, humid air. Stella who had seen snow, when instead there were only petals drifting down from the peach trees, who had seen time, when in fact there was none.

It was then Jenny found she could walk out the door. One minute she was standing there paralyzed, unable to go forward, the next she was on the porch. The wisteria was blooming, a twisted vine that scented the air. Bees droned, lazy, hypnotized by the wine-purple sugar. Argus was on the step, looking out toward the road, as though he expected his mistress to arrive any time. Jenny patted the old dog’s head, then went across the lawn. On her way, she could hear the dog padding after her. She could hear the chatter of their neighbors’ voices rising from within the house and the call of a cardinal in the woods. The bees had moved on from the wisteria to the laurel.

People used to believe that a spot of sugar placed in a baby’s mouth would bring about a sweet life, but some children couldn’t be force-fed; they had to make their own luck. These were the children who were forced to eat acorns and lily roots rather than sweets, they were fed by wild birds and had to be satisfied with liberty tea, made from loosestrife, or hyperion tea made from raspberry leaves. They had to make due with what they had.

Stella came over directly when she saw the metal canister that her mother carried. The garden gate shut behind her and she could hear the lock click shut. She had combed her hair back and a line of her natural color showed through. Star light, star bright. She had cried all night, so much so that her eyes hurt. Jimmy Elliot had sat beside her out by the monument. This is what loving someone does, Stella had told him. Run away, she’d advised. But the milk moon was above them, the one that made everything grow, like it or not, and Jimmy Elliot had remained where he was.

Later, when he walked Stella home, she had found a peach stone, left behind by a blackbird, right there on the road. She snatched it up, and once the stone was in her pocket, she felt some comfort. It was not every day you found something worth keeping, a token that could remind a person of what she had and what she’d lost and what was yet to come. Stella slept with the peach stone under her pillow. She dreamed it had fallen from a tree that was washed ashore when the old ship the Good Duck went down in the harbor, the day when the whole town smelled of peaches. She dreamed a girl in love had thrown it on the road after all her wishes had come true and a hundred trees had grown from that single stone. She dreamed her grandmother looked up and saw falling peach snow, so quiet it was nothing like a storm, so fragrant it could make a grown man cry.