CHAPTER 4
Claire chose to pick Nina up first because Nina was simply a flight risk.
Not literally.
Nina had said she was coming to karaoke. She had texted the group chat that morning, “I’m in, I’m coming, so please stop asking me if I’m coming.”
But Claire knew Nina the way you know weather patterns after thirty years, and she could feel the hesitation under those words, the part of Nina that was already building a case for why she should just stay home.
A headache or Lucia needing her, a vague sense of not feeling up to it, which had been Nina’s default setting for eighteen months now.
It was convincing enough to fool anyone who did not love her.
Nina preferred to stay home lately, but she wasn’t getting out of this. That was part of the pact.
So Claire drove straight to Edisto first.
She pulled into Nina’s crushed shell driveway at 5:15 and found her sitting on the front porch, wearing jeans and a black top. Her hair was down for the first time in months.
She looked like a woman who got dressed with some purpose, rather than just grabbing whatever was in her closet or something David used to wear.
It was such a small thing, hair down instead of pulled back.
Claire noticed it the way she noticed the napkins and the flower arrangements and all the details other people walked past.
Nina got in the car. “Don’t you say a word about my hair.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“I was thinking that you looked nice. I didn’t know that was a crime.”
“I know it’s been a year and a half since I’ve gone anywhere that isn’t the grocery store or Elena’s house, so I figured I should make an effort.”
“Well, you look beautiful.”
“Stop it.”
“Okay.”
They drove toward Beaufort to pick up the road to Walterboro.
The late afternoon light was doing what it did in the Lowcountry, with gold pouring through the live oaks that lined the two-lane road. Spanish moss swayed in that lazy rhythm that made everything feel like it was happening at half speed.
Claire loved this drive.
She loved every part of this world, the way the landscape shifted from an island to a marsh to a mainland, yet it never lost its character. It was wild and green and warm.
Nina was quiet, just looking out the window, so Claire let her be.
One of the things she had learned about grief, or about Nina’s grief specifically, was that silence was not always an emptiness. Sometimes it was just Nina being in the world without needing words.
“Lucia made me promise to take a video,” Nina finally said.
“You mean of us singing?”
“Yeah. She said, and I’m quoting, ‘I need proof that you actually did something fun for once.’”
