Epilogue

You’ll be happy to know, we did conduct the last pants ritual that Tibby had assembled for us in Greece but that we never got to have. I, Carmen, the last to arrive, was the one to suggest it. It seemed like the right thing to do, and I have always been a sucker for a ceremony.

On a much bleaker day in early November, Lena had carried the suitcase from Santorini to her parents’ house in Bethesda. Just a couple of days earlier, she’d asked her mom to ship it up to the farm.

We snuck away from the group, which had now grown to include Tibby’s parents and Nicky and Katherine staying in the farmhouse with Brian and Bailey. We decided to hold our ceremony in the loft of the barn, because with its shiny wooden floors and tall open space, it reminded us the most of Gilda’s, the aerobics studio where our mothers met and where the old ritual had always taken place. The absence of the pants, the incorporeal presence of Tibby, didn’t make it any less effective.

We stinted on no part of it. Not the candles nor the Pop-Tarts nor the Cheetos nor the tears. Bridget sang her lungs out along with Gloria Estefan. Tibby would have laughed over that. We held hands. Teenage Tibby tended to balk at that, but I knew she would want it now.

Looking around at the hopefulness in my friends’ faces, I couldn’t help staring behind me into the cave where we’d dwelt for the last five months, really the last two years. In my mind’s eye, I tried to see these faces as they had been the first time we opened this suitcase. But then, why do that to yourself?

How did Tibby achieve these transformations? I don’t know. There have always been mysteries in our friendship.

Where will we go from here? I don’t know that either. Tibby’s parents and sister and brother are supposed to leave on Sunday, but I’m not sure about the rest of us. I’ve got a little house to furnish. I’ve got a small girl to love. New York is close enough to drop in for an audition once or twice a week if I need to. I’ve got a heart that appears to have broken open. I feel hopeful where I am.

Eric is talking about switching to a New York firm, commuting three days a week so Bee can raise animals, make a vegetable garden, and grow her baby alongside Bailey in a place where she’s happy.

Bridget looks older and obviously a bit rounder, but I’ve never seen her lovelier. Lena bought a pair of scissors and expertly cut off the matted ends of Bee’s hair. Bee let me wash her hair in the sink with my most outrageously expensive shampoo and sat cross-legged and talking on my bed for hours while I combed it out.

Kostos is on leave from work. Though they won’t stay here forever, I don’t see him and Lena going anywhere anytime soon. “Already we’re living together,” Kostos said with a knowing laugh to Lena over breakfast this morning. “What would our grandparents say?”

Two days ago he disappeared in the afternoon and returned with a full-size easel for Lena, which he proudly set up for her by the northern windows in a wash of artist’s light.

And in the middle of us is Bailey, joy of our hearts. It seems to me we all arrived here lost and lonely, needing something we couldn’t name, pent up with love. Tibby named it. She must have known how much we had to give.

A long time ago Tibby had a friend named Bailey, for whom little Bailey is named. The first Bailey died tragically young, and her death struck Tibby hard. But I once heard Tibby say that before Bailey died she’d left Tibby everything she needed to live a happy life, if only Tibby was wise enough to take it.

And now we are the ones wisely taking what Tibby left for us. I guess you could say Tibby’s magic is deep and lasting. I don’t know when any of us will go.

But I know this. We’re ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.