Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Seven

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." ~Maya Angelou

Standing next to her treasured white swing, on the front porch of her white antebellum mansion, Bettina Beauregard McNeese looked up and sent God yet another prayer for her soul. Then she took a very deep breath and exhaled. She had to do all she could to calm herself down. She had sinned a lot, and even though it was unforgivable, she had to ask God's forgiveness. At age seventy-seven, she stood tall—a full five feet eight inches tall. Slender and always well dressed, her looks had not yet started to fade. Years of shielding her face from the sun, when she was outside on her seven-acre estate, had left her skin smooth. And, except for several visible strands of gray on each side of her head, her hair was the same dye-free chestnut-brown color it was the day her husband proposed.

It was early evening and wind was blowing off the lake that circled halfway around her property, and the light breeze she felt was filled with a potpourri of fragrances. Any other time, it would have made her feel better, no matter how sad she had allowed her to become. Only today the fragrances couldn't obscure the foul stench of guilt that had her feeling nauseated over what she had to do. Her flower gardens and the grounds of her estate were alive with the vibrant beauty of rose-colored azaleas and camellias, yellow jonquils and daffodils, snowy white magnolias and daylilies, and acres of blooming bulbs. A panoramic view of natural magnificence surrounded her, but no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn't enjoy it. Because she wasn't done with her deceptions. So how dare she ask God for forgiveness?

She took another deep breath trying to feel better about herself. God had given her a lot, and she was thankful for it. She didn't want him to ever see her as an ungrateful child. She was grateful. And she was well—strong and durable, just like the home she lived in that she loved so much. Thankful for her health, she felt blessed that her breast lump turned out to be benign. She looked up one more time and asked God to forgive her for all she had done, and for all she still had to do. She had no right.

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She sat down on the white swing, feeling like a spectator in her own life. She didn't like it one bit and didn't plan to stand for it much longer. Listening to cicadas hissing the songs they sang every evening as they searched for mates, she felt loneliness trying to creep into her soul. Then she saw a lone leaf fall from a nearby ancient oak tree. That leaf, released from a low-hanging branch of a sturdy tree—one with a ten-foot-diameter trunk, got caught up in a breeze and was  sailing and bumping its way down the cobblestone driveway toward the front gates of her estate. It had come of age, she thought. That leaf was no longer part of the thing that gave it life. Age, both a blessing and a curse, was a thing she'd never feared before. And even though she had reached the age of final maturity, like that leaf, after this week was over, she would do her very best to carry herself with honor, pride, and dignity as life took her through whatever years she had left. She decided to stay on the porch for while. 

Sitting on the front porch always took her back. Her dear husband placed the swing near two of six massive Doric order columns holding up her front porch, and the corner with the swing was her favorite part of the veranda. She insisted that McKinley leave the columns when he was renovating their home, and now she was glad he listened. Moving slowly back and forth in the swing, she thought again about the leaf. Taken away from its home by the wind, a force of nature, it had nothing left in its future but to return to dirt. She refused for to let that be all she had to look forward to, and wasn't about to let her grandson take away the only chance she had left to save her daughter's bloodline from ruin. Harvey was bringing his colored fiancée with him that weekend. They would be guests in her home for seven days, and that meant she had seven days to get it done. Seven days to save her daughter's lineage by saving her misguided grandson from himself.