She expected to find the girls sitting on the black wicker chairs, sipping drinks and chatting like magpies. They never seemed to have a shortage of things to talk about, she thought with a chuckle. Stepping out on the porch, she paused, hand on the door. Candles were glowing on the table but no one was there. Now where did they get off to?
The sound of high-pitched laughter caught her attention. Looking past the porch down to the dock, she spied the shadowy figures of three women clustered there. Laughing and talking, free as you please. Smiling, Mamaw moved to stand at the edge of the porch to watch them.
Her summer girls, she thought, her chest expanding.
Little did they know that she’d been watching them carefully all summer, as she had every summer since they were young girls. This summer especially. She watched as the women ventured out to the lower deck and slid their coltish legs into the water. Mamaw didn’t know what they talked about. She didn’t need to. It was enough for her to know that they shared their problems and struggles, their hopes and dreams, with each other, together under the southern stars.
Ah, girls, she thought, bringing her hand to her face. Could they ever possibly know how the sound of their laughter brought her such joy?
She used to think of her summer girls on the beach, holding hands together as they ran into the surf. Now when she thought of them together, she’d always think of them sitting on the dock, shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the Cove. As they were tonight.
Mamaw felt her heart expand to take in the panorama of another glorious sunset. Were there sunsets better anywhere else in the world? she wondered. She didn’t think so. A sunset in the lowcountry was moody and sultry. The reds tinged the sky like blood after the day’s battle. The golds were transcendent, settling over the horizon like hems of the angels. Some said the colors were surreal because of the gas from the detritus in the marshes. Mamaw didn’t believe that. Each time she saw one, she felt it was a gift from God to his favorite children. Those he blessed to live in this paradise. The sight had the power to fill her entire soul with shimmering light and fill her with hope.
As the sky deepened, the creek wound its way through the shadowy cordgrass like a translucent snake, sleek and seductive, and full of mystery. She sniffed the air, stirred by the pungent scent of salt, fish, and that mineral-tinged, soul-sucking pluff mud.
Lifting her face to the sunset, Mamaw said a prayer of thanks as the earth hushed around her at this twilight benediction.
“Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to live another day.” Then she smiled with introspection. “Another summer.”
For indeed, this summer had ended. But there was no sadness here. It was the beginning of a new era. Mamaw clasped her hands together before her. There would be joy in this house again. Weddings and baptisms. Birthdays and anniversaries. And, she knew, too, funerals. She took comfort in knowing that her memory would live long and as teeming with life as these winding creeks in the minds and hearts of Dora, Carson, and Harper. Her family, she knew, was the greatest treasure she could leave behind.
But today was for the living!
Loud laughter and squeals brought her attention back to the dock. She squinted in the dimming light. The three women were scuttling down to the lower dock, laughing. Eudora, Carson, and Harper. For all his capricious ideas, Parker had been wise to name his daughters after great literary figures. It gave them each something to live up to. And in her book, her granddaughters were her heroines. She’d never known women with more heart. Or who understood more fully where their home was.
She watched as they stood together at the edge of the dock, holding hands, a lowcountry sunset before them. Mamaw’s breath held, knowing she’d keep this image in her heart forever. Then, with a joyous shout, the girls leaped together into the Cove.
Mama’s laughter joined theirs to be carried off on a breeze and join the universe.
“We did it, Lucille. Our summer’s work is done.”
Suddenly she felt young again, free of her burdens. Like the young girl she once was who had run down this same slope to leap into the Cove. Kicking off her shoes, she hiked up her skirt and hurried down the slope to join her granddaughters.
“Wait for me, my dears! I’m coming!”