Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Fifty-One

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." ~Mahatma Gandhi

Rehearsal for the wedding went well out on the front lawn at the McNeese plantation. As it got to be time for the rehearsal dinner, no one could have everdreaded anything more than Bettina McNeese was dreading this evening. Her grandson had given her cooks the day off with pay and had hired several world-renowned "celebrity" chefs to prepare a feast of Southern barbeque and seafood dishes. Tyler and his black wife, Laura Wilson, were hosting the event in the newly restored dining area of her mansion's grand room.

The evening was a low-key affair; only close friends and family were invited. Seated to Bettina's right was her new "old friend," her grandson, Tyler. Next to him sat his wife, Laura, and their four biracial children. Although she hated to admit it, their great-grandmother saw the likeness of both McKinley and Susan in them. Her heart wanted to love them, but her mind refused to listen to her heart, because sitting to her left was R. T. Wilson and his black wife, Mary Jean. Harvey's and Tyler's stepmother. It made Bettina feel a special kind of sadness, just the thought of those two being happily married. Next to Mary Jean was her grandsons' two half-sisters, Reese Lynn and Emily Estelle Wilson. She hadn't seen the girls since they'd been grown, and she never would admit it to anyone, but she thought Mary and R. T.'s dark-haired, golden-skinned daughters were two of the most beautiful young women she had ever laid eyes on.

Drake and Dinah, Thurgood Williams and his wife and children, plus Zarah's mother and siblings—and all their spouses and children, rounded out family members among the group of forty-five guests. Although he wasn't there that night because he started his first year of study at Dallas Baptist Seminary in Texas, Clarence Edward Stringer and his sister, Betty Anne, were both invited to the wedding. Bettina's great-nephew called earlier in the day to assure his aunt he would be there on Saturday, the next day, sitting right where she asked him to sit.

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After dinner and a round of toasts to the bride and groom, Bettina saw her grandson blinking back tears as he stood up to speak. It was hard, and she couldn't help it when her heart filled to overflowing with love for him. Harvey smiled and looked at Hilda, his soon-to-be mother-in-law. He raised his glass to her, then he told that woman and everyone else how happy her youngest child had made him in the years he'd known her. She honored their love, he said, by saying yes both times he asked her to marry him. When the laughter died down, he told them all how happy he was that Dr. Zarah Brion, PhD, in just one day, would be his wife.

"After tomorrow," he said, "the woman I love; the woman I will always love, and I, will be staying together forever as husband and wife, and my dreams will finally become my reality."

Bettina was sure it was just exhaustion, but her grandson's words, and the sincerity she heard in his voice as he said them, made her heart flutter. She wiped away a few errant tears.

When Zarah spoke a few minutes later, one thing she told everyone was that besides being deeply and hopelessly in love with Harvey, she was sure she still had a secret "crush" on him too. Watching the young woman blush after glancing at her grandson, Bettina turned away before looking again at Harvey's fiancée. Maybe she is in love, Harvey's grandma thought, but that doesn't make this right. 

The next thing Zarah said was that she hadn't understood everything happiness could mean until she fell in love with Harvey. Then she said she intended to love him, and to keep on falling in love with him, every day, for the rest of her life. 

After hearing that, Bettina looked down and wiped away more tears she couldn't stop herself from shedding. Mostly because she remembered feeling the exact same way the night before she got married to a man she would always love—McKinley Charles Francis McNeese.