Dani.
Rose.
Victoria.
Daisy.
She closed her eyes and could see each of them in their ridiculous blue velvet that she’d made them wear. “It’s such a beautiful dress; you can wear it again,” she’d told them. They never did. No one ever did. It was, in the end, a common bride mantra that was another sham. So much of what they’d been fed about romance and love, about proposals and marriage, had been a sham. Harry and Sally didn’t help. Neither did Cinderella or My Fair Lady. They’d all believed, though. And waited for Harry or Prince Charming or Henry Higgins.
She laughed and opened her eyes. The patrons were now openly staring at her. The crazy woman drinking straight out of the bottle with a man who had just walked away with a sparkling, most likely custom designed, diamond ring. A great Savannah story for the tourists, she thought, as she took back her credit card, signed the bill, drank the last of the champagne, and headed for the door. She stopped, a bit wobbly, at the piano and smiled at the man with the obvious black toupee playing, and dropped a twenty in his tip jar before she walked out the door and into the hot July evening air.
Gas lanterns flickered above the cobblestone streets, and a cloudy sky muted the moon’s soft crescent glow into a smudge of a yellow smile. Beatrice ambled across the street to Reynolds Square, taking a seat on a wooden bench next to a homeless woman eating something greasy from a paper bag, her feet propped on a grocery cart full of coats, bags, and hidden treasures.
Beatrice sat quietly for a while, and when she stood to leave, she felt the champagne moving too quickly through her blood. In a few steps, she realized she was absolutely drunk, and she would pay for it in the morning. But for now, the bubbles dulled the pain of seeing Lachlan walk away. She lifted her cell from her purse and texted him.
Please don’t be mad. I love you so.
. . . .
The dots of his return typing . . . and then nothing. Beatrice paced the square and then teetered the few blocks up Drayton Street and left on East Broughton toward home, as the ground of her life shifted beneath her. The best thing to do was go home, go to bed, and face it all in the morning. No good came of drunk texting. That was for damn sure.
Unless of course . . . it was to her flock.
She stopped in her tracks, realizing she’d passed her home. Had she been headed to Lachlan’s? Probably, but with an unsteady quick turn that almost sent her to the brick sidewalk, she took the few steps back to her home. She reached her address and lifted her gaze to the front door, a blue door set against gray brick in a much loved one-hundred-fifty-year-old house: a classical Georgian with a hip roof and square façade; four stairs leading to the covered entryway stoop.
The old and warm house was the only thing she’d wanted from Tom when he’d left her. Fumbling for her key, she climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, and entered the foyer where she’d dropped bags of art supplies that morning, and not yet carried them to her studio at the back of the house. She stepped over the mess and down the limestone-floored hallway to the kitchen, where her laptop sat on the white marble countertop.
She flipped it open and then grabbed a coconut water from the refrigerator, guzzled it before sitting down. Only four of the flock remained: Victoria, Rose, Daisy, and Beatrice. Dani had succumbed to a horrible and quick leukemia that took her life and stole light from their little group. They all missed her, and in an odd habit, her email remained on the group list. Who knows who ever saw it, if anyone. Although it’d been twelve years, not one of them could delete it.
She opened the group list called “The Flock” and wrote.
My birds, I need you. Lachlan asked me for the second time, and again I was as speechless as the time Victoria took that bet and streaked across the quad. I must give him an answer and I need you. You were there the first time I married and . . . Here’s my proposal:
Beatrice looked up to the glass-fronted cabinets of her kitchen and then out the window to the dark backyard where an oak tree’s uplighting cast shadows on the Spanish moss. The sharp tang of oil paint lingered in the air where she’d left open a tube of paint. She looked back down at the flickering cursor.
A proposal to her from Lachlan.
What was her proposal to the Flock?
It was right there on the front of her fizzing mind.
Could they take a trip together? The others might help Beatrice figure this out. Like in the old days.
She started typing again.
I will rent us a beach house for three days next weekend in South Carolina. My treat. I will buy your plane tickets, rent a house, and provide all the food and wine. Please abandon all responsibilities and commitments and say yes or lose me forever. Pegasus.
If they agreed, Victoria would come from Atlanta, Daisy from Charleston, and Rose from North Carolina. No one lived so far away they couldn’t get to Savannah. There were no good excuses, as far as buzzed Beatrice was concerned.
2
The Other Proposal
Morning sun burst through the window like swords of light. Beatrice squeezed her eyes against its glare as the memory of last night rushed in with nausea.
Oh, dear God, the champagne. The walk home. The text to Lachlan that he hadn’t answered. She rolled over for a glass of water on her bedside table and found only a pile of books. Guzzling down almost an entire champagne bottle had been a terrible mistake. She cursed her choices as she shuffled to the kitchen and made the coffee, gulped water, and downed two Advils.
Surely Lachlan had answered her by now. He’d never ignored her completely. Not once. Their disagreements came with quiet words and long talks; their hurt feelings dealt with head-on and kindly. Sure, there had been times when they’d both needed a breather: when her girls met him and acted rude; when his son inferred that she would never add up to his dead mother; when the art show took her on the road and she stayed longer than she’d said because Tucson was so beautiful. And more. But nothing that ever had him ignoring her; nothing that felt like this, like her heart was twisted in knots.
The first proposal had been casual, not even a proposal at all if you wanted to diminish it, which she did. Two years before, while they cooked Sunday brunch at his place, he’d said, “I think it’s time to get married, combine our lives. Your daughters are off and my son is happy and . . .”
She’d looked at him with a confused expression. Yes, she loved him. Yes, she’d thought about marriage—who doesn’t? But, no, she didn’t want a logical ask. This kind of proposal that assumed that life circumstances and not the heart determined marriage? That’s not what she wanted. Not at all. And that’s what she’d told him.
“Okay. That’s fair,” he’d said. And then he’d dropped to one knee, using a kitchen chair to help him as his battered knees from an old marathon-running habit kept him from being limber. “I love you with all my heart and soul, Beatrice McLain. Let’s get married. Please.” He’d grinned up at her.
She’d held out her hand. “Lachlan, get up.”
He stood. “Well?”
“We aren’t ready,” she’d told him, her heart pounding against her ribs like a ten-pound hammer.
“You aren’t ready,” he’d said and turned back to the eggs he’d been casually whisking only moments before.