“I love you, too.” For a moment she didn’t let go.

And even as I walked to the car and then drove toward Bayside, I didn’t let go of her, of that simple, complicated love.

Excerpt from Lillian Ashford’s Journal
New Year’s Eve 1961
Twenty-one Years Old

We found His best friend in the road, bleeding and unconscious. We took him to the emergency room, where the nurses and doctors were scared to take him because he was black. A Negro, they said. My rage was so intense that when it was all over, when the hospital took His best friend, when we left and began the drive home, I shook. He took me in His arms that night, our love-making was something I never knew it could be—it was all of me and yet I was empty of anything but my need for Him.

Yet His wounded pain followed us this entire summer—He blamed himself for not getting to Montgomery on time; I tried to soothe and heal this guilt in Him, and I thought I had. I believed I had.

On the night of the Jubilee—the night when all is forgiven, when new beginnings are offered, we made love at the edge of the bay, and I thought He had forgiven Himself.

But I was wrong.

Ten

Ten

Day slipped into night, covering me in comfort, loosening the knot that had been my gut for the past months. Sadie and I were on the guesthouse back porch. Her eyes were closed as she leaned back on the rocking chair. “The knot is gone,” I said.

She answered without opening her eyes. “What knot?”

“The one that had replaced my stomach.”

She sighed, this long sound of exhaled air and relief. “I hoped for just that. I just hoped.”

We’d arrived at Birdie Worthington’s Summer House in the evening. The bay houses of Bayside, Alabama, stood stalwart against time, hurricane, development, and too many visitors’ admiring eyes, and yet they stood with tradition, family, and beauty. The houses are scattered as pearls sewn along a wedding dress hemline down a thin, miles-long road born in Bayside and then extending parallel to the bay’s coastline. I had a nagging sadness when I thought about how I would never know all the beautiful stories in each summer home, about each life that lived on the water-blessed street. Gates and hedges hid most of the homes from sight, and as Sadie’s car slowed, I wondered what she was doing, as she seemed to be turning into a nest of shrubs and magnolia trees. And then I saw it—the hidden driveway. I slammed on my brakes, skidding in behind her, and I assumed she was laughing at me.