Note: Wishing one and all a joyous holiday week. I continue to be thankful for those who have read and reviewed my stories! Blessings, Eugenie

13. Ashley

I have difficulty thinking of myself as a widower. I remember hesitating the first time I had to answer the question, when Beau returned to school in Atlanta and his new teacher, a gentleman from New Jersey, inquired as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Wilkes. Oddly enough, I also had trouble thinking of myself as a husband. Given the value I have always placed upon the rituals of domesticity, the concept of "husband" should not have been a difficult one for me to grasp, and yet, it was. For a long time after Melly and I were married, for instance, there was always trouble with one or the other of our rings. Mine became too tight for my ring finger after the war, so for a long time, I wore it on my fifth finger. Immediately after Melly died, I put the ring in a small box of her personal effects.

This seemed to work.

It seems that others wear the rings in a similar way. For instance, I've yet to see Rhett wear his once.

I realized that I made a conscious effort to wear my wedding ring in public. When the Tarleton misses would come round for tea or when poor Dimity Munroe would ask of Beau, a thinly veiled attempt to inquire as to my availability, I heard myself urgently reply that I could not possibly consider seeing another woman socially. I was in no shape to court a woman. It was as if I had finally learned how to stand on my own, and I was fighting to maintain balance, avert the inevitable fall.

I realized for the time being I could not be trusted to present a coherent face to the world.

Some days later I was stacking some of the books I had brought with me from Atlanta that were just lying around the house. Stacking books seemed at that point the limit of what I could do by way of organizing my life. Careful not to push the limit too far, I opened one of the copies of Great Expectations. Melly's favorite. The story is told from the first-person view of the orphan, Pip. One of the several levels on which the story disturbed me was this: The novel's end comes replete with all but fireworks and orchestra music. Pip returns to Satis House to find that it has been torn down, but on the horizon he sees a figure that looks a lot like Estella, his long-lost love. Out of the rubble of the decayed mansion which at one point represented to Pip all that he could never, ever have, comes new love. It's a very phoenix-like moment. In the marsh mists that are rising around them, Pip says, "I saw no shadow of another parting from her", and the reader is led to believe that Pip and Estella live happily ever after. However, this final sentence is a bit strange in its emphasis of the word shadow, for even though Pip tells us that there were no more shadows, the word is weighty and I can't help but see a shadow in the back of my mind.

Melly disagreed with me on that point.

I suppose that I have never been able to wrap my mind around that which is clear-cut and easily understood by others. Scarlett and Rhett and even Melly were able to adapt to a wide range of good and bad life events in a very short amounts of time. For me, there are events to which I am slow or unable to adapt completely. Displacement was one such event. Death was another. Of the Old South, of Melly, whatever ultimate finality was being leveled in my direction.

I see Doctor Meade in October after we returned to the city, a routine follow-up. He asks how I am. This should not have been, in my physician and friend's clinic, an unforeseeable question. I find myself in sudden tears. He is my friend. He was Melly's friend. His son Darcy was killed before my eyes at Gettysburg. He was with Melanie when she took her last breath. In the first days after she had died, he had come by the house. When Rhett had gotten sick in Savannah, he had gone up with me on a Sunday afternoon and talked to the doctors at the hospital there and then explained it all to Scarlett and I. He had been very kind, helpful, and encouraging. A true friend.

"I just can't see the upside in this," I heard myself say by way of explanation.

"Melly would have found one," he said softly, scratching at his tuft of grey hair.

I agreed, despite not wanting to believe it.

But as I left, I realized that my impression of myself had never been of someone who could look for, and find, the upside in any situation. I found it difficult to locate the silver lining. It occurred to me that perhaps that was the way of my generation, the defeated Southerners who had lost everything in the war - but then I reverted to a different sort of logic altogether - my generation would be remembered for the Rhett's and Scarlett's amongst us, those who rose from the ashes rather than allowing themselves to be buried within them.

I had been remarkably lucky all of my life. The point, as I saw it, was that I had no right to think of myself as unlucky now.

I saw no shadow of another parting.

All was well.