Rhett was surprised to find, as it was borne out of the mists before him, that he had missed the house on Peachtree street—that he had missed it very much. Oh, it was a horror of architecture, and it was decorated like the inside of a whorehouse—and not a very nice one, at that, he thought, with an imagined doff of his hat to Belle Watling and her elegant establishment. But this house held some of his happiest memories. The night Bonnie was born. Each of her precious milestones: first step, word, laugh, smile. For a moment Rhett looked up at the mansard roof and the hideous shingled towers, the jigsaw work on the porch banisters, and he smiled.

But then he thought that his unhappiest moments had also been here—Bonnie's death, Scarlett's fall, and her long recovery, the hateful things they had said to one another—and his smile faded.

The house was decked out for Christmas. Rhett was not surprised by it. He had driven by the house on his way into town the day before, and had cringed when he saw it. Scarlett had always made a fuss over the season, but this year she had outdone even her own past efforts. There was a tall white candle in every window; a giant wreath of holly and garish tinsel covered the entire door. Pine garlands had been wound around the columns. Through the diamond paned bay window, he could see that a magnificent spruce had been set up in the parlor, twinkling with smaller candle lights.

Not another house on the street had been decorated; people were much too poor for that kind of foolery. Rhett balled his fists inside his coat pocket, half-pitying and half-angry at his wife, when only a short while ago he had been so sorry for her, so tender toward her struggles. How could she bring shame on herself, again, again? What would be people think, with Bonnie dead only a year? But then—Scarlett had always loved frippery like this. He remembered the sixteen-year-old widow at the bazaar, tapping her feet and nodding her veiled head in time with the music. And Bonnie would have loved this—all of this. Perhaps it was Scarlett's way of staying close to her.

Melanie's hand was a light feather touch on his arm, an airy whisper. "Let's go in," she said. "And see how they're celebrating Christmas this year."

Her hand hesitated at the rope for the brass bell, before she remembered. "I suppose we can just go in." Rhett smiled again, despite himself. Trust Melanie not to forget her manners, even from beyond the grave.

The table in the large formal dining room had been set with five places, and Rhett's heart beat hard in his chest to see them. A table meant to seat fourteen—with the leaves, twenty-four. He had been so afraid he would see the place filled with Scarlett's carpetbagger friends that he was relieved to see it was only Ashley and the children who were seated with her. But then his heart turned over with pity—had Scarlett so few friends left? And Ashley, so haggard and gray and downtrodden, hardly looked like a comforting presence. His hair was thinning—he was skeletal—there were deep grooves running from his nose to his mouth. His shoulders slumped, defeated. The poor fellow, he looked like a kicked dog—

No! Rhett ground his teeth. He wouldn't feel sorry for Ashley Wilkes, who was sitting at the head of the table, his table, in Rhett's own chair. Damn the man, couldn't he ever learn his place? Rhett would show him—Rhett would tell him—his place wasn't with his wife!

Melanie's hand went to his arm, more firmly this time, as though she had summoned all her ghostly will to hold him back.

"We watch," she said. "Look."

Servants, whom Rhett did not recognize, came in to serve the meal and disappeared, soundlessly. For a while the only noise to break the silence was the chink of forks and knives against the china plates. Scarlett looked beautiful in a claret silk, with a sprig of holly in her hair, but her face was white and wan. She kept looking at the door. Perhaps she had invited her trashy Yankee friends and they had snubbed her? But then Wade Hampton—grown incongruously broad-shouldered in the past year, and impossibly like Charles—spoke up, in a voice that was only just a baritone.

"He's not coming, Mother, so you can stop looking for him."

Scarlett seemed to come back to herself. She took a bite of ham, brought it to her mouth. "I wasn't expecting anybody," she said. "I was only wondering if it were a little cold in here. Davie, bring some more coal for the fire!"

Ella Lorena sat in her chair, her orangey hair tied back in an enormous bow. "I want Uncle Rhett," she said, in her small, wheedling tone. "Mother, you promised he would come."

"I didn't promise." Scarlett's voice was sharp. "I only said I'd ask him…and not to get your hopes up…"

Wade pushed his chair back with a scraping sound. "You made him go away," he said, harshly, blinking back boyish tears, though he must be—Rhett calculated—thirteen this year. "You sent him away—you could get him to come back."

Now it was Scarlett's turn to blink, and blink. "Wade Hampton, I can't," she said simply. "I can't. I asked, but he doesn't want to come."

"He doesn't want to—because you've been so horrible to him. Why did Uncle Rhett have to leave us? Uncle Rhett understood—Uncle Rhett cared about us. Why couldn't it have been—you?"

Scarlett leaned her head on her hand, covering her eyes. "Wade, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"I hate you, Mother! I wish it had been you!"

"Ashley," breathed Scarlett to the stone-faced man. Her voice was desperate. "Ashley, please—do something."

"Wade, do not speak to your mother that way." Ashley's voice was mechanical, devoid of any emotion. "It is not the way a gentleman speaks. Apologize to her, please."

"I won't—and I don't care if I'm not a gentleman." The boy threw his napkin onto his plate in disgust, and stood. "The other boys don't treat me like I am, so why should I pretend to be?" He turned on his heel and fled from the room. His cousin Beau Wilkes—a thin boy, and paler and more sickly than Rhett remembered—got up and followed him slowly upstairs.

Ella was snuffling into her plate, her eyes and nose pink.

"Ella," Scarlett said, "Ella, don't cry. Wade Hampton will come back down in time for gingerbread. Beau will talk some sense into him."

"I'm not crying because of the gingerbread," Ella sniffed. "I miss Uncle Rhett, too, Mother. It isn't Christmas without him. Bonnie and Aunt Melly are gone—but Uncle Rhett should be here. Uncle Rhett loved me."

"God's nightgown, Ella! I love you, too," Scarlett said, honestly, and Rhett wanted to turn away at the pain her face. "I haven't always been good at—at showing it. But I'm trying—darling. I am."

The girl's thin shoulders shook as she wept into her plate. Rhett felt guilt wash over him.

"Damn it, I didn't think the children cared," he said.

"Why wouldn't they?" asked Melanie. "You are the only father either of them has ever known. Of course they would miss you in their lives."

"I didn't think—when I told Scarlett that I was leaving—about what it would do to them," Rhett admitted. "What's going to happen to them, Melly?"

Melanie smiled, a little sadly. "That's not for me to tell you," she said softly. "You must wait to find it out. Come on, Captain Butler—let's go upstairs and visit the boys."

They moved away from the light of the dining room, through the cold house, up the stairs to the library, where Beau was seated on the sofa. He was pale and thinner than Rhett remembered. "What's wrong with your boy, Melanie?"

"His health has never been quite right," she said, watching her son with a tender smile. "He was born so early—and his lungs have never been strong. The doctor thinks it may be consumption—but it isn't likely that anything will be done to help him. When you cut Scarlett off, you cut Beau off, too. She was paying for his books, and school, and riding lessons—yes, but she was also paying for his food, and his medicine, and his doctor's visits."

Rhett felt another uneasy roil of guilt. "It isn't my job to do what Ashley should be doing for his own son," he said, a little sharply.

Melanie, if she was offended, did not let it show. And perhaps she wasn't. She knew of her husband's limitations. "Ashley will never get over the war. It is his job—you're right—but he'll never be able to do it. Scarlett was willing—she promised me she would. But I don't know what she'll be able to do, in this recession, with the mill going so badly. Beau will sicken over the next year, without her intervention—by Christmas he will be here, with me."

"Melanie!" Rhett turned to face her. "Melanie—is it so? Is that what will happen—or what may happen? Is there any hope of changing it?"

"No," Melanie said, with a sad smile. "Not when the only person who could help my son is so set against hurting those who would help him."

She turned back to the scene at hand. Wade was rummaging in Rhett's old desk. He came up with a pair of cigars, and an old silver lighter Rhett remembered putting there.

"Have one, General Lee?" he asked, cutting the top of one and lighting it, passing it to Beau, who coughed, his thin body wracked with the effort.

"No thank you, General Pickett," Beau said. "Wade—I wish you wouldn't smoke. Mother always promised she would get you a gold watch if you didn't drink, or use tobacco, until you were graduated from college."

"I'm not going to college," said Wade, sitting back in his chair and putting his feet up on the desk, as he had often seen Rhett do. "I'm going to go West—and make my fortune, like Uncle Rhett did."

"Oh, Wade! Don't say that! My mother wanted you to go, so badly, like your father did. And what will I do without you?"

Wade Hampton's face showed nakedly the bitterness he felt with the world. "Your mother is dead," he reminded his cousin. "And she was the only person who did care. I thought Uncle Rhett might. But he doesn't. And Beau, you'll be better off without me." Wade swallowed, hard. "I'm just the trashy son of a trashy speculator. I—I'd be better off—everyone would—if I were dead."

He put his hand on the knob of another desk drawer—the thin one, where Rhett had always kept his dueling pistols, and the bullets for them. He did not open the drawer but Rhett saw plainly what he was thinking: that the pistols would always be there, if he needed them, to hurt another—or himself.

"Wade!" he cried, a rush of panic filling him. "Wade Hampton Hamilton! Don't even think of such a thing, you little fool."

Wade paused, the smoking cigar held halfway to his mouth. "Beau—did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Wade!" Rhett tried again. "WADE! Go downstairs to your mother—go now!"

Wade tamped the cigar out in the ashtray, looking spooked—as though he were listening to voices only he could hear. "Let's go downstairs," he said to Beau, quickly, as though he were afraid, "And see what Teena's got in the kitchen. My, I'm hungry—I didn't get enough to eat before."

When the boys had gone, Rhett sat down on the desk chair and mopped his brow with the silk handkerchief in his pocket. "Thank God," he muttered. "He's just being stupid, isn't he, Melly? He doesn't mean what he just said?"

"I don't know," said Melanie, tracing a pattern in the shiny marquetry of the desktop. "All I do know is that Wade feels that everyone who loved him has left him. If a boy is learning about himself, every day, a lesson like that can't teach him much."

"Dear God," Rhett spit, from between his clenched teeth, picking up the cigar Wade had left and lighting it, again. "I'll do something before I let that happen. I'll—"

He was interrupted as Scarlett and Ashley came into the room.

"Here it is!" Scarlett cried gaily, as she retrieved a small packet from the desktop. "Your present. Merry Christmas, Ashley dear."

Ashley smiled, a small smile, as he unwrapped the package in his hands. He pulled out a gold silk necktie, and held it up, to peer at it. Scarlett clapped her hands in delight.

"Do you remember, Ashley? The silk sash I gave to you, for Christmas, during the war?"

"Yes," he said. "This is very much like that one. Thank you, Scarlett. How do you think of these things?"

She lowered her eyes, a little embarrassed. "It was—the last Christmas—that I remember you being happy," she said, looking up to meet his gaze. "Oh, Ashley, you aren't happy now, and I'm trying so hard to make it so you can be. When you smiled just then, it was like the sun coming out for me. I'd give you a hundred—a thousand—neckties, if you would only smile more."

She loves him, Rhett thought, a flame of jealousy running through him. She'll kiss him now—but Scarlett only picked up Ashley's thin hand in both of hers, and squeezed it, companionably.

The thought came to Rhett, then, that perhaps Ashley Wilkes and his wife were lovers—were, or had been, already, for some time. They lived so close—they spent all day together—and she had loved him, and he had wanted her, for so long. None of this was new knowledge—and yet the raw feeling of betrayal that went through him was so new. To think of Wilkes's silvering head bent over his wife's body, with his lips traveling the line of her collarbone, her neck—he made his hands into fists. Of course it was so. Scarlett's gesture—her pressing his hand—it was the kind of gesture that was born of a long intimacy.

Or maybe, said a voice in Rhett's head, a long friendship.

He waved the voice away. Scarlett was tying the gold silk around Ashley's neck.

"There," she said. "It suits you—it's perfect and I'm glad I got it. And don't go on this year about how you haven't anything for me. The pleasure is in the giving, Mother used to say to me, and I'm learning that it's true."

Rhett turned his attention to Ashley. There was something struggling in the man's face—duty, with revulsion? Gratitude with sorrow? In any event, it was obvious he was torn. But then, all at once, he seemed to make his mind up. Rhett saw it in his face. His shoulders went down in defeat even as his chin went up in determination.

"Scarlett," Ashley said softly, and he reached into his pocket. "Scarlett—I do have something for you." He drew out a little velvet box, which he opened, to reveal a small diamond ring, in a delicate gold setting.

"Why, that's Melanie's ring! The one she inherited from her mother. Ashley, you shouldn't give it to me. It belongs by rights to Beau—he'll give it to his wife, one day."

"I want to give it you," said Ashley, hurriedly, stubbornly—and a little wearily, defeatedly. "You do—so—much for me and Beau, Scarlett. We would both lack so many things if you did not find a way to get them for us. I must be a very poor sort of man, Scarlett—but I am grateful—and I know that there is something you want from me, have always wanted, and I would like to give it."

"Ashley, what are you saying?" cried Scarlett, her eyes locked on his pale face.

Rhett watched Ashley closely. His face was pained. He looked like a man attending his own execution and yet he plowed on. He held out the little ring, and he knelt down before Rhett's wife.

"Scarlett," said Ashley Wilkes flatly—oh, so flatly! "My dear, I love you. Would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?"