“Not a bit of it,” said Maureen. She raised her voice. “You have a visitor, Uncle James. Come special to see you. Jamie left the store with Daniel so he could bring her to you. Come by the fire, tea’s ready. And see Scarlett.”

Scarlett stood up and smiled. “Hello, Uncle James, do you remember me?”

The old man stared at her. “Last time I saw you, you were mourning your husband. Have you found another one yet?”

Scarlett’s mind raced backwards. Good heavens, Uncle James was right. She’d come to Savannah after Wade was born, when she was wearing black for Charles Hamilton. “Yes, I have,” she said. And what would you say if I told you I found two husbands since then, nosy old man?

“Good,” pronounced her uncle. “There are too many unmarried women in this house already.”

The girl beside him let out a tiny cry, then turned and ran out of the room.

“Uncle James, you shouldn’t be tormenting her so,” said Jamie severely.

The old man walked to the fire and rubbed his hands before its warmth. “She shouldn’t be such a weeper,” he said. “The O’Haras don’t weep over their troubles. Maureen, I’ll have my tea now while I talk to Gerald’s girl.” He sat in the chair next to Scarlett’s. “Tell me about the funeral. Did you bury your father in fine style? My brother Andrew had the finest burial this city has seen in many a year.”

In her mind’s eye Scarlett saw the pitiful band of mourners around Gerald’s grave at Tara. So few of them. So many who should have been there were dead before her father, dead before their time.

Scarlett fixed her green eyes on the old man’s faded blue ones. “He had a glass-sided hearse with four black horses and black plumes on their heads, a blanket of flowers on his coffin and more on the roof, and two hundred mourners following the hearse in their rigs. He’s in a marble tomb, not a grave, and the tomb has a carved angel on top, seven feet high.” Her voice was cold and harsh. Take that, old man, she thought, and leave Pa alone.

James rubbed his dry hands together. “God rest his soul,” he said happily. “I always said Gerald had the most style of any of us; didn’t I tell you that, Jamie? The runt of the litter, and the quickest to fly off at an insult. He was a fine small man, was Gerald. Do you know how he came by that plantation of his? Playing poker with my money, that’s how. And not a penny of the profit did he offer to me.” James’ laughter was full and strong, the laughter of a young man. It was warm with life and rich amusement.

“Tell about how he came to leave Ireland, Uncle James,” said Maureen, refilling the old man’s cup. “Perhaps Scarlett never heard the tale.”

Great balls of fire! Are we going to have a wake? Scarlett stirred angrily in her chair. “I heard it a hundred times,” she said. Gerald O’Hara loved to boast about fleeing Ireland with a price on his head after he killed an English landlord’s rent agent with one blow of his fist. Everyone in Clayton County had heard it a hundred times, and no one believed it. Gerald was noisy in his rages, but the whole world could see the gentleness underneath.

Maureen smiled. “A mighty man, for all his small size, so I’ve always been told. A father to make a woman proud.”

Scarlett felt her throat clog with tears.

“He was that,” said James. “When do we have the birthday cake, Maureen? And where is Patricia?”

Scarlett looked around the circle of crimson-topped faces. No, she was sure she hadn’t heard the name Patricia. Maybe it was the dark-haired girl who had run away.

“She’s fixing her own feast, Uncle James,” said Maureen. “You know how particular she is. We’re to go next door as soon as Stephen comes to tell us she’s ready.”

Stephen? Patricia? Next door?

Maureen saw the questions on Scarlett’s face. “Did Jamie not tell you, Scarlett? There are three households of O’Haras here now. You’ve only just begun to meet your people.”


I’ll never get them all straight, thought Scarlett desperately. If only they’d stay in one place!

But there was no hope of that. Patricia was holding her birthday party in the double parlors of her house, with the sliding doors between them open as wide as they would go. The children—and there were many of them—were playing games that required a great deal of running and hiding and popping out from behind chairs and draperies. The adults darted from time to time after a child who was getting too boisterous, or swooped to pick up one of the small ones who had fallen and needed comforting. It didn’t seem to matter whose child it was. All the adults played parent to all the children.

Scarlett was grateful for Maureen’s red hair. All her children—the ones Scarlett had met next door, plus Patricia, plus Daniel, the son at the store, plus another grown boy whose name she couldn’t remember—were at least recognizable. The others were a hopeless muddle.

So were their parents. Scarlett knew that one of the men was named Gerald, but which one? They were all big men, with curly dark hair and blue eyes and winning smiles.

“Isn’t it confusing?” said a voice beside her. It was Maureen. “Don’t let it bother you, Scarlett, you’ll puzzle them out in time.”

Scarlett smiled and nodded politely. But she had no intention of “puzzling them out.” She was going to ask Jamie to walk her home just as soon as she could. It was too noisy here with all those brats running around. The silent pink house on the square seemed like a refuge. At least there she had her aunts to talk to. Here she couldn’t say a word to a soul. They were all too busy chasing children or hugging and kissing Patricia. Asking her about her baby, for heaven’s sake! As if they didn’t know that the only decent thing to do was pretend that you didn’t notice when a woman was pregnant. She felt like a stranger. Left out. Unimportant. Just like Atlanta. Just like Charleston. And these were her own kin! It made things a hundred times worse.

“We’ll be cutting the cake now,” Maureen said. She slipped her arm through Scarlett’s. “Then we’ll have a bit of music.”

Scarlett clenched her teeth. My grief, I’ve sat through one musicale already in Savannah. Can’t these people do anything else? She walked with Maureen to a settee covered in red plush and settled herself stiffly on the edge of the seat.

A knife clattering against a glass demanded everyone’s attention. Something that was almost silence came into the crowd. “I thank you for as long as it lasts,” Jamie said. He waved his knife menacingly at the laughter. “We’ve come to celebrate Patricia’s birthday, even though it will not arrive until next week. Today is Shrove Tuesday, a better time for feasting than the middle of Lent.” He threatened the laughter again. “And we have a further cause for celebration. A beautiful long lost O’Hara has been found again. I lift this glass for all the O’Haras in a toast to Cousin Scarlett and bid her welcome to our hearts and our homes.” Jamie threw back his head and poured the dark contents of his glass down his throat. “Bring on the feast!” He commanded with a sweeping gesture. “And the fiddle!”

There was an outburst of giggles from the doorway and the sound of his sing calls for silence. Patricia came over and seated herself next to Scarlett. Then, from a corner, a fiddle began to play. Jamie’s beautiful daughter Helen walked in carrying a platter of steaming small meat pies. She bent over to show them to Patricia and Scarlett, then carefully carried them to the heavy round parlor table in the center of the room and set the platter on the velvet cloth that covered it. Helen was followed by Mary Kate, then the pretty girl who had been with Uncle James, then the youngest of the O’Hara wives. All of them presented the platters they were carrying to Scarlett and Patricia before adding them to the food on the table. A roast of beef, a clove-studded ham, a bulging turkey. Then Helen appeared again with a huge bowl of steaming potatoes, followed more quickly now by the others with creamed carrots, roast onions, whipped sweet potatoes. Again and again the procession came until the table was covered with food and relishes of every kind. The fiddle—Scarlett saw that Daniel from the store was playing—played a flourishing arpeggio, and Maureen entered carrying a tower of a cake liberally trimmed with huge, vividly pink icing roses.

“Bakery cake!” screamed Timothy.

Jamie was immediately behind his wife. He held his two arms over his head. He was carrying three bottles of whiskey in each hand. The fiddle began to play an exuberant rapid tune, and everyone laughed and clapped. Even Scarlett. The drama of the procession was irresistible.

“Now Brian,” said Jamie. “You and Billy. The queens on their throne to the hearth.” Before Scarlett knew what was happening the settee was lifted and she was holding on to Patricia while they were swung back and forth and moved to a place near the glowing coals in the fireplace.

“Uncle James,” Jamie ordered, and the old man was carried, laughing, in his shy-backed chair to the other side of the mantel.

The girl who had been with James began to shoo the children, as if they were chickens, into the other parlor, where Mary Kate laid a tablecloth on the floor for them to sit on in front of the second fireplace.

In a surprisingly short time there was calm where there had been chaos. And while they ate and talked, Scarlett tried to “puzzle out” the adults.

Jamie’s two sons were so much alike that she could hardly believe that Daniel, at twenty-one, was almost three years older than Brian. When she smiled at Brian and said as much, he blushed as only a redhead can. The only other young man began to tease him unmercifully, but he stopped when the pink-cheeked girl next to him put her hand on his and said, “Stop it, Gerald.”