Sarah Ferguson Needs to Come Home and Stop Renting

The long way around is still a way, but it isn't free

I don't know what's taking Sarah Ferguson so long to get her life together.

Back in Harrow Corners, we had a woman who disappeared for a year and came back with a hat made of feathers and a story about dancing with a man who had one foot in the river. We didn't ask questions. Some things are best left to the telling. She was back before we could salt the porch, and nobody thought twice about it.

Sarah Ferguson, on the other hand, seems to be taking the long way home. I don't blame her for wanting to lay low after all that business with her ex and that Epstein fellow, but there comes a time when you have to stand by what you did, for better or for worse. She's renting a place in the Home Counties, they say, and moving in "imminently," though with these folks, "imminently" might mean next Christmas or never. You can't make new ground by running from the old. My advice would've been to keep her head down, keep her mouth shut, and tend her garden. That way, at least, there's something to show for the time you spend in the dirt.

I'm not one to point fingers, and nobody's life is a spectacle for the neighbors, but I think about old Earl Thompson. He used to stand on the front stoop and shout at the sky about his debts and his wife's sister and buying a one-way ticket to the coast. Well, he went and bought it, too, and his wife was left with nothing but a sinkhole and a lot of questions. Talk is cheap, and running away doesn't pay the bills.

I don't know how much of that Epstein business is true. Some say it's all a big fuss over nothing, and others say it's the tip of a very dirty iceberg. Either way, the damage is done, and the only one who can fix it is the one who made the mess. Sarah Ferguson had her chance to set things right, and instead, she took her daughters to see a man known for his unsavory habits. Now, I'm not saying she did anything wrong. But if you're going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk. You can't pay lip service to the hard things and expect the world to forget.

Remember when the whole town decided to stare at the moon for a night and a day back in '98? We were all tired as henhouse dust by the time it started to wane. That's what happens when you fix your eye on the wrong thing, when you let a fad or a fancy do the steering instead of your judgment. Sarah Ferguson's got a choice to make. She can come home and face the music, or she can keep moving and hope nobody notices the trail she leaves behind.

Nobody forgets. You can't undraw the line once it's on the paper, and you can't unsay the words once they leave your lips. Sarah Ferguson's got a lot to answer for, and I hope, for her sake, she's ready to do it. Because the world isn't a stage, and the people watching aren't an audience waiting to be entertained. They're real, with real lives and real consequences, and when the performance is over, they're the ones still standing in the yard.

Since the lake gave the Hendersons' boy back, we've had our fair share of strange occurrences in Harrow Corners. But we don't make a fuss about it. We deal with it, like you would any other chore. The year the county fair ran nine days longer than it was scheduled and nobody could leave was a real test of patience. But we made do. We waited it out, and when it was over, we went back to our lives like nothing had happened. That's the way of it here. You don't dwell. You just live.

Sarah Ferguson needs to learn that the world doesn't care about your excuses. It cares about what you do next. You can't fight what's already happened, but you can make sure it doesn't happen again. So I'll leave her with this: when you're done making mistakes, you'd best get to making amends. That's the only currency that spends.

Keep your chin level and your yard in order. -- Aunt Dot
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