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family knew who started the quarrels.
    Pecking order. There was no denying that the Langleys had landed in a very young America and therefore considered themselves to be aristocrats of a sort. Their property was a direct land grant from King Charles II during the seventeenth century. Slothful things that we were, we got here late, making landfall right before the American Revolution. First, our French forebears and later our Irish. God save us from our money-handling selves; we were merchants. Maybe you would have to be a Charlestonian to understand the subtle difference, but landowners were gentry. They considered merchants—even successful ones—common ruffians.
    Their attitude and all the looking down their long noses they did, sniffing at my family, was ridiculous, of course, but each familyclaimed to have legitimate reasons to dislike and mistrust the other. Frankly, they were legitimate. My ancestors had given money to their slaves to escape to the North and we were deeply involved in supporting the Underground Railroad. J.D.’s ancestors raised the cost of land to astronomical levels in order to discourage its sale to French/Irish businessmen, and at one point they opened competing businesses. Nonetheless, their slaves departed and my great-great-great-grandparents’ chain of small groceries, bakeries, and apothecaries prevailed over theirs and became wildly successful. But the alleged royalty in J.D.’s family still despised the alleged commoner in us.
    Just to make it more interesting, in the eight years J.D. and I had been together, the fact that my mother’s DNA contained some thin strand of Italian nuclei provoked many absurd references to the Mafia. It was all so stupid. That’s just how it was. Except that J.D. and I, young and optimistic, were deeply in love and hoped to somehow bring our families together.
    That evening late in July, J.D. and I were on the terrace, waiting for my parents to arrive, when he shocked me with an engagement ring. We were just out of college and twenty-one years old. The whole expanse of the Langley terrace was blooming with a profusion of pink and white roses, in beds bordered with thick deep green Mondo grass. Roses climbed the walls along with ivy and the entire area smelled divine. It was almost seven, and there was still plenty of daylight, humidity, and mosquitoes. Needless to say, despite the hour, the heat was still unrelenting.
    We were drinking a pitcher of strong lemonade, made with fresh lemons and lots of sugar, exactly the way we loved it. J.D. was wearing khaki trousers and a pale blue oxford-cloth shirt, which was pretty much what he wore all the time. I was wearing a white eyelet sundress and my shoulder-length hair was pulled back with a tortoiseshell clamp. We were sitting in the shade of the awning thatcovered the glider, moving back and forth to keep the air circulating around us.
    “I want you to be my wife,” J.D. said. He said it in such a serious voice that it startled me and actually made me laugh a little.
    “I know, J.D., and I want you to be my husband.” I smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “Who else would I marry? And who else would marry you?”
    “But, Betts, I mean now. Soon. This year.”
    “What?”
    That’s when he stood up, reached in his pocket, and pulled out the ring. My jaw dropped and he did as well—to one knee, that is.
    “Well? Will you?” J.D. was smiling and he looked so handsome. And fervent. My heart lurched with all the love I felt for him and I choked up.
    “Of course I will!” Up until that moment, no single event in my life had ever been more powerfully emotional or profound. We could hardly see through our tears of excitement, wiping our eyes with the backs of our hands, as he slipped the ring on my finger, sort of bumbling around, getting it over my knuckle. I threw my arms around him. He picked me up off the ground and swung me around.
    “Oh my God! I’m going to be Mrs. James David Langley the