Ralph's brother Pete was sitting in the kitchen that morning. He is younger than Ralph by four years, smoother and skinnier. Yet, there is not a doubt they are kin. It is the shape and color of the eyes, the edgy smile, the same ears and the slump to their shoulders when trouble is festering inside.

Pete claims he is the smarter one; Maximus rolls his eyes whenever he hears this joke and says to me later that Pete is simply the more talkative one.

I looked at Pete as I sipped coffee and thought it would be hard to call this man talkative this morning. He stared out the window or into his cup. I tried to read the newspaper but I just read the same headline over and over.

"Isn't there something ...?" When I said it, Pete glanced up, the word 'no' forming already. "If you would just talk to him..."

"It's his decision. I think it's right."

"Max and I would do anything. You know that."

"So does he."

"She wouldn't want this for him."

"I'm hoping that no longer matters to him."

I don't know how I'll stand it. I truly don't. I just don't think he knows what he means to us. All of us. And, yet, at the same time, I think Ralph does know.

Perhaps I would have said something smart just then, something just right, except this is when Eva walked in the back door. And then Bennett started calling for the milk bar. And Maximus was stomping around upstairs. And Hando's car pulled up in the front parking area.

The morning had begun.

As I walked up the stairs, heading for Bennett, I looked up to find Maximus standing at the top, tugging a t-shirt over his head. I had to grip into the banister to keep from falling down. It was the worst sense of déjà vu - of another man finding me wandering around upstairs. But the other one hadn't wanted me there at all.

I don't know what triggered it. But I do know that in that moment, I was remembering quite vividly seeing Ralph the day I met him. So protective of this property, so unwilling to let anyone invade it.

"Here, I have you." Max's hands made me sit back down on the step. "You are ghostly pale, Anna. I do not like this ... not at all."

"Oh my god. I don't believe it!"

"What is it, Anna?"

"I finally did it - I finally swooned and you caught me. My fantasy come to life." I was laughing. He was not. He gave me his wonderful 'tsk' and I squirmed from his hold. Because his scowl was so sexy and got me right there, I had to plant a kiss on his temple before finishing my trip upstairs to where my son was setting up a racket.

In Bennett's room, when I settled in to nurse and comfort, I sat for a long time staring at Max's son. And felt all of 17 again. And cried.

Which is where Ralph found me long after Bennett settled into sleep. I still sat in the rocker and cried.

"I know you loved her." I told him this but would not look at him. "And I know you have to do what is right for you. I just never thought you'd leave here."

"It's right. I can feel it"

"This will always be your home. Tell me you know that no matter where you go, this is home now for you. Where we are. Where you helped us time and time again. Where we love you."

He walked to the window, gazed out.

"When I think of her, I like it to be here, in this room." His voice sounded so strong, so calm. "But I can't anymore. Now it has new life. Bennett. You. Max. Even Hando."

There's a lot I don't know about Ralph. A lot I never asked because he never wanted to tell me. But there are things I do know that he's never told anyone else. In return for that gift, there are things about me that he knows - things I never thought I'd share with anyone.

I don't have a brother anymore. Ralph knows why. And he knows now he filled the void in my life that once was carved into me by the loss of my brother when I was 17. Ralph knows I love him. And yet, he has to go from here.

I am trying to understand but I am also supremely selfish to have found this man, to have let him into my heart then to just see him walk away as if he doesn't know the things he thought he was doing here are not what, in fact, has been what it was all about in the end.

Maximus says I have to stop thinking I can find a reason for Ralph to stay. He says, and I know he's right, that Ralph must be allowed to do the one thing he feels may be the final leg of a promise he made once to someone he loved so dearly that his life has never had the chance to veer from her.

Ralph, I think, takes this step because he believes it will free him from the debt he has paid her. I think she cleared him long ago. I think she knew all along that not everyone is perfect and that if she was to have one person in her life who'd she want to forgive himself, it would be Ralph.

What I know of this started out of the conversation we had when we both thought our lives as we knew them were about to end, and then rewind back to the beginning. And while I sat dying inside because it would mean I'd never meet Maximus and I'd never be carrying his child as I had been then, for Ralph it was the closest he ever came to knowing a way to redeem himself for someone he loved.

That's why he told me.

I believe he thought putting it into words would make it happen if Lucius had succeeded in stealing Maximus from this time.

It was Ralph's only real regret.

I think, honestly, she'd want him to be happy and freely choosing to stay here with us. I don't think she foresaw this connection could happen after she was gone. Or maybe she did. Maybe she thought she'd be jealous if anyone else ever took her place here, on this land where Maximus feels an allegiance so strong he chases away the past that kept Ralph tethered to this land.

Now he goes off in search of something that maybe has never been anything but a ghost that has haunted Ralph only with his permission.

A few days ago was the end of Eva's first month with us. This was momentous enough, all things considered.

For so long, I didn't want to even consider that I'd ever hire someone to do housework, especially with Max no longer bringing in the salary he had in his job. But upon returning from the hen night and then the wedding, I was in a remarkably open-minded sort of space in my life.

Not for the first time - in fact, it was about the thousandth time - Maximus said something along the lines of, "If you would simply consider my suggestion..."

"Look, you relegate the house to me and..."

"I am not seeking an argument, Anna."

"The day I cannot take care of this house is the day I admit I'm too dumb to be a housewife."

"That is not at issue."

"What isn't at issue? My stupidity?"

He gave me an exaggerated 'tsk' and closed his eyes.

"Max, what would I do all day? I can't have another woman in here, cleaning house, when I'm home all day. It would be different if I were working outside the house because then she won't think I'm lazy."

"In my culture, the lady of my home would not be on her knees, scrubbing. This was the work of ..."

"Yeah. I got it. Your wife was above all that."

The look he gave me was thunder cloud dark. I immediately put a contrite look on my own face. Saying something about his beloved dead wife with that snotty tone of mine? How incredibly mean of me. He sighed. His voice was soft but steely nonetheless. "I simply ask you to consider that it does make me uncomfortable to see you at work that a slave would have done in my time."

"Yet you're out there in the fields and..."

"That's different. You are using semantics yet again. It will not sway me. It rarely does."

I knew then, I always had, that I resisted not because of the expense but because it's not someone I wanted to be - the lady of the house, the lady of leisure.

Of course, as my mother snorted when I talked to her about it again, you can't be the mother of an infant and be a lady of leisure. And now that Max was deep into remaking this entire farm into a real working joint, lots of things were ramping up in our lives. Max seemed into an element that made me feel he'd found his footing again. There was such a sense of excitement just to sit with him on the back deck after we got Bennett off to sleep and Max would spread his hand out, explaining where everything would go. I would lean back into his shoulder and hear the future in his confidence. It felt like belonging to something bigger than ourselves.

So at some point after we got back from Jack and Angel's wedding, Maximus brought this up again about bringing in someone to take care of cleaning the house and doing the hardest part of the cooking. And helping me with Bennett. It happened when I was hip deep in laundry and grumbling about him and his inability to use a towel twice and how I was so tired of doing nothing but laundry, didn't he know I had a brain and maybe wanted to be something more than a maid?

I thought I was alone while I was doing this grumbling.

But I looked up and he was leaning against the doorway that leads from the laundry room to the kitchen. Just looking at me.

I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes at him.

He gave me a sound 'tsk."

"I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for help around here," I said.

"The Ann I first met would not have seen that as a barrier but as a challenge," he said. He looked and sounded quite smug.

"Oh yeah?" Rather than slugging him when he rolled his eyes, I thought instead what I must have looked like to him. And it did make me laugh, I admit. Standing there in front of Maximus, hands on my hips, trying to look so tough and annoyed. Knowing he always had a thing for me in this mode even if it was when I drove him most bonkers.

"And Ralph may have an idea."

As it turned out, Ralph did have an idea.

His idea was Eva.

Eva is in her 50s. She is fit and efficient. She had once wanted to be a nurse but when she was about to graduate, she got pregnant, left school, raised a family, and never looked back. Now in the wake of Katrina, she has to earn some money to help her husband replace what they had to take from their nest egg to pay for the repairs to their home that insurance didn't cover.

When Ralph told me that, about their hard times, I guess it was the thing that made me start to imagine having someone come in every day and help out. Plus I began to think about how I'd no longer be tired all the time. That I could maybe not have to look at this as if I was sentenced to hard labor. That if Maximus said we had the money and it made him feel better and I didn't have to clean toilets and I got to take Bennett out more for adventures so I didn't look so longingly down the lane as if I was forever banished to the country ... well, it was all for the better.

I am stubborn but not totally un-teachable. Just ask Max. Poor guy.

So when Eva had been here a week, I noticed I was unclenching around her. I no longer woke up early and picked up the house before she got here, then climbed back into bed with Max while he pretended to not notice that I was cleaning for the maid, which was a bit of insanity.

But it was as if I could feel everything changing.

In a good way, I mean. Like that first morning I didn't get up to pick up our bedroom before Eva came to work. I actually slept in. Max took first turn with Bennett diaper duty. I didn't wake until they crawled into bed with me and Max put Bennett at my breast. What a feeling to wake up to: Max curled around us both, Bennett touching me with both his mouth and his hands. What a sight to see when I first opened my eyes: Max cradling his son's dark head; Bennett smiling at me around my nipple when he saw me look down at him.

It was also the first day in so long that I noticed how I love this house. I love living here. I love the peace, the tranquility.

Bennett was napping. I was sitting at the kitchen table, dreaming up meals for the next week. I was looking forward to him waking up so he could come ride shotgun on the grocery shopping cart. He's an excellent advisor when it comes to baby food. He is fine with most anything but if I hold a jar up and he gives me a Max 'tsk' look, then I don't dare buy that or any jar that looks like it.

He's not so helpful on adult food, though. He never tries to talk me out of anything, which is okay, but he's not the sort of guy who'll suggest things, either. And up until that day, I hadn't had time to map out meals before we'd go to the store.

But that day, I realized I had a brain again. An imagination. Whoa be to Max, eh?

Eva entered the kitchen just as I was giggling to myself over the image I had of Max sitting down to dinner and blanching at the sight of something odd on his plate before recovering his wits.

"I'd forgotten what the date was," Eva said softly.

She was looking out the window. It gave me such a start.

"What do you mean? What date?" 

"Today. For Ralph, I mean." Eva looked at me over her shoulder. "You know about Kimmie, right?"

I nodded. I never knew her name for the longest time, only her grandmother's name. Her grandmother used to own this property; her name is the one just under the feathery signature that was on the final deed when we bought our land here. I could never forget the first time Ralph ever talked about this part of himself to me. It happened the long night we waited to learn if Maximus had found a way to return to us or if Lucius would succeed in taking him back to ancient Rome, destroying the life I was carrying in my womb then because it never would have been created.

"Who was she?" I asked Ralph as William looked between us. He had been silent in between the last two phone calls from Lucius. He felt safer with Ralph and me than if he'd been in the kitchen with Hando. Hando had convinced him of his ruthlessness. William thought I'd forgive him since he let Buck live. He thought he and Ralph bonded when he defied Luke's order to kill either the dog or Ralph to take away hope from me so Max would hear it in my voice.

"Who was who?" Ralph said. I remember the look on his face, the way he held his body, when I asked that. He did not want me to ask about this. But in this experience together, we had gone to this other place where I could ask something like this.

"The artist. The woman who painted. Was she your lover?"

"She was the owner's granddaughter."

"You loved her." It was not a question. "Is she alive?"

"No."

I looked at him. He was rising to his feet. He was Louisiana country, through and through. A good old boy from the bayou. Soft at the core and easy to believe he's simpler than he is.

"Is there anything you would do differently, Ralph? If this all starts over for us, I mean, it's like a second chance."

"I would have married the girl I cheated on in college," he said.

His candor shocked me. "What about the artist?"

"What makes you think that's not who I'm talking about?"

Somehow I knew, though, that they were two different women. But he loved them both, I figured. "Did you ever cheat on a woman again?"

He shook his head. Life is hard. Most times, you learn your lessons too late to do you any good. I had that sense about this for Ralph and this lesson.

"What about you, Ann? Would you change anything?"

I would have said no, but that seemed like cheating. So I said the first thing that came to mind. Even when I said it, I knew it wasn't the only thing I'd have changed. But I also knew that if I ever changed too much, I wouldn't recognize my life.

"I would have forgiven my father before he died," I said.

This was not what Ralph expected me to say. But I figured his revelation deserved mine.

Outside, I knew what I'd see, what would be the first image that commanded me.

It was the tree. The big oak. The one beneath which Neva and her unborn colt are buried along with the truth of something so brutal and of another world's reach to us that we can never speak about it.

But that day, leaning against the oak's broad trunk was Ralph. He stood looking down, at Neva's marked grave. We had decided to make it into a place we'd always memorialize - because to forget how a moment's whisper can change our lives was something that seemed more obscene to us than what we had to do to protect Bennett's right to be born.

Standing nearby, his toe nudging a wayward white rock back into place as an outline to Neva's grave, was my husband. Maximus was looking up, at the canopy and the sun that was blinking at him from beyond it.

He was saying something to Ralph. Ralph was nodding. He finally looked away from the grave and fixed a stare on a faraway point over by the Little Tchefuncte, the stream that runs behind our property. He said something to Maximus that made Max look down at Ralph for a long moment before answering him.

Then they looked at each other without speaking.

This was the day I found out Ralph had decided to leave us. I think in the beginning, I somehow knew he'd leave one day. But all that seemed to change in what we've been through. I began to believe Max had given him such a big stake in this place that Ralph was going to stay forever. And I also believed he had found peace here with us.

But now I think maybe we took his peace away at the very moment we made him feel happy with his life again.

I cannot conceive of living here without Ralph. For me, he is tied to every memory of this place, every speck of dirt, every stretch of fence, every expanse of vegetation.

Whatever secrets Ralph holds inside himself, I've always somehow known many were also tied to this place.

Perhaps I've known this since the first moment he challenged me as I stood inside the artist's room and looked with awe at evidence of her creations. Perhaps it was predestined by fate that Bennett would be gazing at me now, serious and yet serene, lying on the changing bed as I contemplate talking to Ralph and knowing everything must go back to the artist.

"She was always out of my league. Way out." Ralph leaned back, dipping his head into the pool's cool water. It was a precarious move, considering he was holding a beer can while he stood in the pool.

This was last August. I remember because we were avoiding talking about Katrina's impending first anniversary. It was only a few months since everything happened with Lucius and his men. I was pregnant enough to be well showing in my bathing suit.

"Why do we always feel that way about ourselves?" I was dog paddling, just trying to stay as far inside the water as I could without having to hold my breath. I looked over the lip of our pool, watching out for Maximus to be coming home from work.

"Do we?" Ralph chuckled and gave me a hard look when I glanced back. "You wouldn't have a clue what that feels like, being out of your league. Look what you come from."

"Mmm. Well. You'd be so wrong. Maximus has always been way out of my league."

"He doesn't seem to think so."

"I sometimes still wonder if he realizes how much better he could have done. But at least I do know he'll never find another woman who'd love him anywhere as much as I do."

"She said something like that to me."

This was when I stopped swimming around. It was the moment I knew for what it was - a crystal view into Ralph. So we looked at each other until he sipped from his beer, as if preparing himself. "I'm glad you're able to talk about her to me."

"She loved camellias. The grove behind the stable was her grandfather's. Old growth camellias. When she came back, she told me once, seeing how bad the grove had gotten made her cry. She took that on - clearing it out, nurturing them back."

"When did you first meet her?"

"Not long after I first saw her."

"You remember it all?"

"She was 17 years old. It was the summer she came to live here. I first saw her at church with her grandparents."

"And then she went to school with her and you got to know her?"

"Nope. She kept going to Ursuline."

"Really? That's a long way from Folsom."

"They wanted her to have her senior year there. After her parents died, they wanted ... well, they wanted, y'know?"

"How did you get to know her then?"

"I worked here for her grandpa. All through high school, worked weekends and summers. The year she came, I was working here full time to earn money for college. Her grandpa was letting me live here. I didn't have anyplace else to go."

I almost asked when he first fell in love with her. But just then Max walked out of the house, heading toward where he knew he'd find us. He was loosening his tie, looking wilted in the summer's cracker heat. When I said, join us, he started stripping and this was when Ralph hopped out of the pool. He made a snide remark to Max on his way out about Max and his show off ways. And I remember Max grinning in response.

It was before we knew about the threat of William's brother looming on the cusp of the coming days.

A year has come and gone. Another one. I have learned about the artist in snips and pieces along the way. They are the gifts Ralph has given me that have sealed the way I love him.

When I think back on that August evening, I usually only think about that conversation with Ralph and how we eventually almost finished it. But just now, I picture Maximus that evening and I realize that grin on Max's face has been a lot more common lately. Actually, it's not the grin so much as it is the relaxed and fresh spirit that I notice so much more now in evidence. Maybe that's it then. Some empirical proof I forget is right in front of me every day lately.

During those times I worry about what Maximus has sacrificed in his career, when I think maybe he had to give up too much to keep us safe, I have missed a deeper truth.

He is not a man who expects fate to not interfere. He accepts and then moves on. For once, when fate has changed his life forever, it has actually been in a way he enjoys more for what it has brought him than he'd ever mourn what it took from him.

This is a golden time for Maximus.

He is home from the wars.

At long last.

The idea relaxes me.

Maximus sips lemonade that Eva made that afternoon. I stand stirring together a dinner that I know has snow peas but for the life of me I cannot remember de-veining the shrimp that are even now turning a glorious pink against the bright green of the snow peas. The chunked pineapple and papaya stand read to be tossed in. I glance up to find Max trying to pretend he's not watching me.

"I forgot to start the rice."

He leans to the side and looks beyond me, along the counter. Then raises his eyebrows as he sips again. I take the hint, look behind me, see the rice cooker chugging along as it should.

"Maybe he's just lonely. It must be hard being here, with us, sometimes. Maybe we remind him of what he doesn't have in his life."

"Do not even think it, Anna."

"Think what?"

"Romance is not what every man seeks as the answer to every quest."

"I am not thinking of setting him up! I'm just ..."

"Just? Interfering?"

"No. Just trying to figure out why it's now he feels it's the right time to leave. And what it is he's seeking."

"He will know when he finds it."

"And then he'll come home?"

"He must live his own life."

"Won't you miss him?"

"I believe we will see him again. In this life or the next. Whatever happens, Ralph is a man who decides without any interference - from either of us."

"But don't you think he should stay?"

"No. I believe he must do what he is called to do."

The long hard days after Maximus died were filled with grieving that even today can haunt me for their solidity and for the absolute void of my life. I told Ralph one night that the only thing that kept me from taking my own life so I could join Max was that I could never kill the child I carried inside me.

I will never forget the way he took care of me. He let me say anything. Or nothing. Nights I'd wander lost and frightened, he'd lead me back inside then sit with me while I stared into an empty space I saw but could not touch.

When I went to live with Andy and Uma, it was Ralph who came to check on me so often.

We had death in common then.

I missed Max so completely; even today, just a touch of that memory can send me searching for his arms just so I can chase the nightmare away.

Ralph told me the only way he felt lucky was that at least he got to make peace with Kimmie before she died. But he hesitated when he said that. Is there ever peace for him if she never really knew how much he loved her? That he only stayed to watch over the last place she lived because of those conversations they had as she neared her own death and she would talk to him about all the parts of it she'd miss? How he promised her when she slipped into a coma at the end that he'd make sure the camellias bloomed every fall and the azaleas would still blaze into glory every spring? How he thought if she had that to cling to as she faded away from him that somehow he could capture her spirit and keep her there with him forever?

It was Kimmie's grandmother who brought Ralph back to the property years after he'd left it. And he finds it ironic that she outlasted Kimmie and was the one person who always told him if he stayed there forever, he'd never find what life really held for him.

One late night after Max died, Ralph was sitting up with me on my mother's porch. The next day, I was going to stay with Andy and Uma. "I don't see how you can stay there. In Folsom."

"Memories."

"Exactly."

"Some day, maybe you'll feel what I do. Maybe you'll be there and remember him better just to be where he loved to live."

"Maybe you and me should sell the place. Find a new life somewhere far away from anyplace that would take people we love."

This is the night he told me the story of his promise to her. But it's also the night he told me what led up to that moment.

That first summer he met her, he was two years older than her and a world of experience was between them. She was Uptown New Orleans girl who'd never once doubted the world wouldn't make way for her. He was a country boy who'd never once thought Uptown girls were worth so much as a glance. But then one day, he watched her in between his chores as she painted Mercury's sire's picture. This was back when Mercury wasn't even a glint in his daddy stud's eyes. It was just before her grandfather died of a heart attack. Ralph still has the picture of the horse, somewhere safe.

Somewhere in that day, he began to see her gift. The way she saw not with plain eyes but with a vision only a true artist could have. He might not have had much knowledge of art, but he knew soul when he saw it.

That's when they somehow broke out of their roles. And became friends. Ralph held her at arm's length, never once letting it become more than friendship. For one thing, Kimmie's grandfather kept a tight watch on them. For another, he had his eyes set on the real prize: college and the ticket out of Folsom that came with it. And, true to his nature, he also saw quite clearly the gulf of both age and upbringing that stood between any chance that romance between them would end any way that could be good and permanent.

But I suppose when the heart learns about love, it's not always easy to command.

It wasn't until he'd gone off to college that anything actually happened between them. I like to think of Ralph at the university in New Orleans at the lakefront. I can imagine him, holding onto his books nonchalantly and walking that slow, significant walk of his between the buildings, the sun bouncing off the lake. And I picture all the coeds who wondered who he was and smiled whenever he glanced their way.

He claims he never thought about Kimmie when he left the farm in Folsom. But don't you always think about the first one who made you become the person you look in the mirror and are happy to see?

There was a girl he fell for, hard, in college. She lived in the same dorm. One thing led to another. He asked her to marry him. He just knew she was the one. They fit, he told me. So simple. So understandable. So complete.

Sometime that spring of his first year at college, Kimmie's grandfather died. He went to the funeral; he stood there solid and Ralph for Kimmie and her grandmother. I can picture that. Even at that age, I know for sure Ralph was the kind of man you leaned on in bad times. The kind who did what it took to see you through.

And I don't blame Kimmie though I suppose I should in some way. How was she to know what would come? She had lost her parents and her grandfather in the course of only a few years. And looking around her, she must have felt way over her head and drowning with no one there to help her but her grandmother.

Ralph was right there to reach for in her dark times.

I sure don't blame Ralph. I never will. He'd loved her from that moment she'd given him the picture of the stallion. And even though he loved this other woman at college, she wasn't the one who needed him just then. I believe him when he told me that they were together only a short while. But it was enough.

His fiancée found out. I would guess, knowing Ralph, that he told her. But I never asked how she found out. I just know she walked away from him and he never stopped her.

And I know he wonders what might have been different if he'd not accepted that from her. But he didn't stick around either. He walked out of New Orleans, took a plane to Fort Dix and the Army. He thought he'd found a one-way ticket out of Folsom.

When Dino first met Ralph, he told me he knew Ralph had been more than just an Army grunt. I suspect Maximus pegged him the same way, only never told me at the time. I remember wondering why on earth Max would ask this surly country bumpkin to work for him keeping the property going. It never dawned on me that Ralph possessed all these special skills. Not until everything came down on us that time with William.

Max only told me after that was all over that he'd offered Ralph to stay on as caretaker of the property precisely because he knew he was a man who'd be able to help in rough situations. It wasn't that Max had a precise premonition we might need some of Ralph's skills from the military so much as it was that Max recognized how valuable it would be to him to have a man of Ralph's caliber and skills on site.

But I found out about Ralph's time in the military only later. Now I think about how obvious it always was - the way he was one of the men Max always asked to stand in when the family was threatened.

When I met Ralph, I knew we would never get along. I couldn't imagine keeping him there at the farm after we bought the property. To me, he was this sullen presence who wanted to keep everyone away from the farm and would make life miserable. But it was what Maximus wanted and I trusted him. I just figured Ralph and I would have little to do with each other. He was running the farm, while Max and I were going to be working our jobs in the city and commuting into the house on the weekends.

Of course, Katrina changed all that.

She brought me and Ralph close enough to get beyond our initial bad impressions of each other because we had to depend on each other. And then there was my mom, who took to Ralph and Pete immediately while we were all there trying to figure out what to do after the storm. I should have seen it coming - but it still surprised me that one day I realized I'd seen the part of Ralph that Max had always seen. The part that would be my friend.

"Why did you ever come back?"

"I was home on leave. Pete told me about Kimmie not coming home after college. Living out in Santa Fe. So I went to see her grandma. They'd always been good to me. Gave me a place to live when my dad kicked me out. Always treated me like more than what anyone else ever thought I was."

"Bet she was glad to see you. Must have wondered why you'd left so suddenly."

"She probably figured it out. When I first saw her again, and this was a few years later, first thing she did was bust my chops for leaving college."

"You were doing well, though, by then."

"Yeah. But she wasn't. She'd hired some guy who was letting the place go to total crap. Taking advantage of her."

"What did you do?"

"I fired him. Someone had to. So I did it."

"But she needed help, right?"

"I called Kimmie, told her to get back and help her grandma put things at the farm back in order. It was the first time I'd talked to her in a lot of years."

"She came home?"

"That's Kimmie. She'd been staying away all that time thinking I needed the place more than her. Guess she realized it was her who needed to come home more. Especially then."

That long night, sitting on my mother's porch brought many words from Ralph. But there were so many I didn't think to ask because I was in such a bad place. All of this was more a way to keep me interested in staying there on the porch rather than wandering away to god knows where. I know that now. It didn't dawn on me then; I was way too absorbed in my own claustrophobic grief.

It was later, much later, that I asked Ralph about this again. And what I asked was how he'd felt when he'd seen her again.

Nothing, he said. But I knew that wasn't the truth.

"So she came back. You saw her. Talked to her. Then walked away, feeling nothing?"

"She looked good. That's what I felt."

"But somehow you stayed for her?"

"Not then. Not for a while."

No, once she'd returned and he'd been able to hand over to her the care of seeing to her grandmother's welfare, then Ralph was free to go back to his job with the Army. Good thing, too, because three days before his leave was scheduled to be over, his unit was mobilized for Afghanistan.

It was over there, so far from Folsom, that Ralph began to be seduced into returning. It was Kimmie who did it. She would send him sketches of the land, of Folsom, of Pete, of her grandmother, of the old growth camellias and even the azaleas that blazed fiery red and orange every spring.

She never asked him to come back.

But when he decided not to reenlist after that stint, she'd already given him the reminder of home that led him back to Folsom. She'd seen with her artist's soul what Ralph needed to remember and she'd shown him what it was he really wanted to reclaim from bad memories of what had happened between them.

And what he'd done to the one and only woman he'd ever cheated on.

Once, not long ago, I mentioned to Maximus that it still surprised me that when Ralph did move back permanently, he never married Kimmie. Max said something that is only now beginning to make sense to me - that Ralph knew his heart better than most men. Something about that statement holds a key I seek.

"When did you find out she had cancer?"

"Her grandmother told me. It's why she asked me to come back and take over. She just needed someone she trusted."

"She knew you loved her."

"But not the way she thought. All that time later, all I could do was watch who Kimmie'd become. She taught me more about being true than anything in my life ever had."

Ralph told me, and I believe him, that no matter how many times he might have touched Kimmie after he came back, it was never sexual between them again except in his dreams. Kimmie was trying to meet death in her own way - chin high, eyes open, clean slate, soul engaged.

His life revolved around three things: the property he cared for, the grandmother who'd brought him into her family, the girl he'd loved once who was now a woman facing death. These were also the three places he left huge parts of himself. Even now, I think, he hasn't lost them so much as he hasn't taken them back.

As she grew weaker, Ralph would find ways to keep her involved in the land. She used to talk to him about the way it'd saved her, being there with her grandparents after her parents died in a car wreck. Meeting him. That it had been a refuge then and it was going to be the final refuge of her life. He'd take her riding in a golf cart when he'd be out inspecting fences and keeping track of stretches needing work. He'd make her hold his tools while he worked on chores around the house and stable. He'd bring her down at least every other day to help him feed and tend to the horses.

To the day before she went into a coma, he looked for ways to give her the one thing he believed kept the fire of life burning most brightly inside her: her ability to produce art. Her favorite place to paint was under the spreading branches of what I have come to call Neva's oak. He built a platform and ramp for Kimmie so that even in a wheelchair, she could escape the house and enjoy the feel of the wind in her hair.

Every evening, he carried her up the stairs to her studio, where Bennett now lives. They would talk for as long as she had the energy about her paintings - what she longed to finish, what some hidden symbol meant, the stories she wanted Ralph to remember about what she was trying so hard to say she saw as she looked at the world around her, about what her eyes told her about Ralph, about what she wished she could somehow express in her paintings about how she'd always believed he'd been destined to be the love of her life except instead it had only become an affair that robbed him of the future he'd seen for himself.

During all this time, Ralph also watched over Kimmie's grandmother who was about to lose the last of her family save a distant niece in Colorado. 

Kimmie lasted long enough for one more bloom of the camellias. Ralph told me the day they brought her home from the hospital for the last time, he went strolling out to the old growth camellias while the people from hospice were with Kimmie and her grandmother, setting everything up for the final weeks. He saw the first of the fragile buds on one of the japonicas. For the next few days, he devoted himself to that one bush - using all the technique's Kimmie's grandfather had once taught him about bringing a camellia bud into full bloom just when you want it. Bringing that blossom into Kimmie when it was finally ready was the moment in time Ralph recognized she'd was about to slip into another world.

Maybe she'd waited to say good bye to him as he pressed the bloom into her fingers and listened to her describe what she believed the flower looked like.

"To the end, see, she'd always been out of my league. If not for her, I wouldn't have looked at flowers and bushes like they were worth having around just because they make this place prettier to look at."

"She wasn't out of your league. I think maybe you gave her more than you realize."

"I'm no longer the man I was. She did that."

"No, you did it, Ralph. Something deep inside you is so giving and so willing to let others in when they shove hard enough."

"I didn't like you. When you went in her room, I wanted to hit you. That's how much I hated having you there."

God, I remember him saying that to me. I remember sitting on my mom's porch, the sun coming up, us talking all night. I remember crying when he said it. I remember I'd needed to cry. I remember telling him then how little I'd wanted to move to Folsom. That I'd only done it for Max. That I had nothing in my life that meant anything to me if Max was not alive. I remember Ralph knelt before me, there on the porch, put his arms around me and held me while I cried and cried over everything I thought I'd ever done wrong in my life, starting first with not wanting to live in Folsom.

I remember Ralph saying the farm was the one place I'd find Max again if I just looked.

Most of all, I remember Ralph making me promise him that I'd never sell the place. That I'd let him stay there so he could keep his promises to Kimmie and the ones he should have made to Max. The ones he knew Maximus would have exacted from him if he'd known he was going to die.

So I promised Ralph. And I've always believed it was one we'd keep together.

The only change I've made in the house that I felt I needed permission for was when I wanted to put Bennett's room in the artist's studio. Even though Ralph was okay with it, I think maybe it was the beginning of his journey to leave.

As he watches our child grow, new life is impossible to ignore. There are new rhythms at the farm now. Maximus is transforming large parts of it into the place he wishes it to be for his family.

Ralph helped me paint Bennett's room. I chose a lush, creamy yellow. It was Kimmie's favorite color and Ralph felt she'd approve. I wonder if she'd approve of the burden he carries, the one she gave him, even if she gave it to him thinking it showed he really had been the love of her life.

I don't think she'd want him to leave. I really don't. I think she wanted to gift him with the knowledge that his roots were safe here on this land. But it's the grandmother who intrigues me - she could have left the land to Ralph, given him the place she knew he didn't want to leave after Kimmie died. I suppose she felt she was doing better by him if she didn't tie him to the land - maybe she knew he'd want to go someday and she wanted him to be free when he did.

Maximus has always involved Ralph in every aspect of the property except that it is clear the transformation is being directed by Max's decisions and desires. It's not to say he does not fully understand what the place means to Ralph. It is just that he is a practical man about such things - and if it turns out Ralph leaves for a lesser life, then I think it will prick at Max. But he has such respect for Ralph that he believes Ralph is searching for something he was never going to find here. And he thinks whether it's good or bad for Ralph is not the point. The point is that it is up to Ralph. And that we have to trust that Ralph is doing what he feels is right for him at this time.

It's taken about a week for me to come to better grips with Ralph leaving. I watch Ralph and know he is already somewhere else.

He has agreed to stay for another few weeks, until we can find a replacement. Until Maximus returns from the visit he leaves on today to the Monterey Peninsula in California. Maximus is hunting there for barrels of California varietals that he will blend, ferment and bottle - the start to his winery production until his own grapes are ready for the process. It is the route he has chosen to go: start with participating in a custom-crush session at a respected winery in Big Sur, then ship the resulting barrel juice home so he can load it in to the stainless-steel fermenting vats he and Ralph have set up in the small building they've constructed out of the remains of the old granary. It's the building Maximus plans as the founding of all the buildings he will eventually need to construct for the winery he envisions someday on this property. Once our own vines start producing grapes that can be made into wine, Max will begin introducing them into the blends he will be mixing by then. It still sounds so exotic to me; Max is making it come true.

So Max is in Big Sur for about a week. Ralph will stay around until he returns and the vatting is finished.

Bennett and I are swimming in the pool. Ralph sits on the edge, sipping a beer. We are idly talking about the present but we must both be wondering over what the future will hold for us.

I tell him that the next afternoon, my mom wants to come get Bennett and take him to watch the big construction project on the other side of the parish. She has this idea that someday Bennett will be an old man who'll say to his grandson how his grandmother took him to see the big new bridge when it was still just a bunch of concrete piers. And that he'll brag about seeing the huge yellow cranes and armies of construction workers working out over the big lake on barges on the largest such construction project this area's ever seen.

It's an idea that makes me smile. I like that my mother wants to be that kind of cool grandmother for Bennett.

"Want to come have lunch with me and Uma tomorrow? It's been forever since I've been to their restaurant. Thought it would be the perfect chance since Mom will have Bennett. Why don't you come with me? We can drink gin and tonics while we gossip about everyone." I am holding a struggling Bennett, who has recently discovered the joys of dunking himself full bore into the pool. His father taught him this. I am not sure I approve.

Ralph grimaces. "Too much work here."

"But now that you've given notice, you can slack off." I grin at him. It's how he can see, I think, that I am coming to peace with him leaving.

"Nah. You and Uma can drink one for me. And you'll have to sit there listening to her explaining about Big Bad Ben Wade and him sending her messages about how he was coming at 3:10 for Uma."

I laugh because he's right. It had become a huge theme for Uma - but I know she's having fun with it because it bugs the guys. And besides, it's not like he's even come over yet even though the film's been out for a little while. "Maybe we'll just gossip about you if you're not there to defend yourself, Ralph."

"Will you do something for me, Ann?"

"Sure."

"Take care of the camellias. Promise me?"

I look up at Ralph. He is staring at me so hard. I feel like he has just given me the highest compliment I've ever received. He trusts me to watch over the old growth camellias that hold the spirit of Kimmie for him. He's taught me so much about them. I know I can do this. And I would do about anything for him. But now I know I will even do something that will make him feel he can walk away from here with no regrets.

"I'll teach Bennett. Someone will always be here to take care of them."

"Some day, I'm coming back and taking some cuttings."

"When will that day come?"

"There's a woman I need to find. A life I need to get back to if it was ever there in the first place. Maybe then."

It is only in this moment that I realize I've missed so much. It wasn't ever Kimmie who was the love of Ralph's life. It was the woman he asked to marry him. The one he let walk away because he believed it was better for her.

The one he now must realize deserves to know the man he has become in the wake of a changed life that led him away from her but that never diluted the way he loved her.

"Do you know where she is?"

"Dino tracked her down for me. I just need to see what it brings me to see her."

"Is she still single?"

"Divorced."

"You've been right all along."

"Have I?"

"You need to do this. It's the right time."

"Isn't that what we learned from Katrina, Ann? To stop planning for 'someday' as if it's some magic time that announces itself to us? I've known for two years I needed to do this. But it took all of that to make me ask why I kept waiting for 'someday.'"

"I just never knew you felt that way."

"You'll be okay without me."

"No I won't but I know you'll never really leave us."

Ralph slips into the pool then, sliding his body over the edge and gasping as the cool water meets his hot skin. When he recovers from the shock, he glides over to where I am, smoothly taking Bennett away from me. I watch as my son giggles and splashes - and as the man who has become my brother laughs at the child who made it into this world in large part because of the way Ralph protected us both.

For a long time, they play together. When Ralph finally relinquishes Bennett back to me, he looks years younger.

He puts a hand on my face and then leans in to kiss my cheek as I cuddle Bennett into me. I'm looking in Ralph's eyes as he's about to float away. He stops and his face loses its softness. "You never owed your dad forgiveness."

I say nothing but I look down at my son. I feel my shoulders shake.

"Some things, you have to tell yourself, are too bad to be expected you have to forgive. He's the reason your brother's dead. What he did? He's burning in hell. But the thing is, Ann, you had a shitty father. And look at you now. Right?"

"I keep thinking I've got to move beyond it. And that forgiving him is how."

"No. 'How' is what you're doing now. Living the way you are. Loving like you do. It's what Max has always seen in you. You think you're not in his league but he knows what he has in you is the future he wants."

"Ralph?" He looks away as I hesitate. "Please don't mourn her forever. I promise we'll keep this place safe for her memory. You don't owe her anything else but all you've already done for her. You've kept every promise, paid every debt."

"I'm about to find out."

"Whatever you find out there, when you return here, you will always find the people who love you unconditionally."

"Family."

He looks up and smiles at me as he says this. What is left to say?

When I talk to Maximus late that night, he fills me in on the day of testing and tasting he's been working at in Big Sur. Listening to his voice, no matter how far he is from me, it connects me to him. And if there's one thing I've learned as my own lesson of Katrina it is this: he is the foundation of my life now and forever. The family we are building will always be both the proof of and the source of our love.

Across the miles that separate us, we both sip from the glasses of Pinot Noir we poured when he first called me. We toast his success in California. We toast Ralph's trip into his own future. We toast the camellias.

We toast our future where we've sunk our roots, here in Folsom, along the Little Tchefuncte River.