Page 108 of Wreckage and Rain

The sentence has too many true parts to hold at once.

I go take a shower.

***

King's Diner. Closed sign in the window. Lights on inside. The G on the neon sign is still threatening to die. Mama is in the doorway in her Sunday dress before I even cut the engine.

I get out. She is on me in three steps.

"Baby girl."

"Hi, Mama."

She holds my face in both her hands and just looks. She has done that since I was four and I've never been able to look back at her without crying. She doesn't wipe the tears, she doesn't say don't cry, and she doesn't move. She just holds my face, and behind her I can see Daddy through the diner window, his hand on the counter, giving us our minute.

"He out of the car yet?"

"He is getting the wine."

"Wine."

"He insisted. Said he wasn't showing up empty-handed."

"He's right. Walk him in, baby. We are all in there."

I walk back to the car. Colt is standing on the sidewalk with two bottles of wine and a face I've never seen on him. He has done a lot of hard things lately. This is the hardest. He hasn't seen Greg King since the morning Greg told him not to bother calling.

"Ready?"

"As I'm going to be."

I take his hand.

The bell over the door does its thing. Daddy is behind the register. He puts down the receipt book. Comes around the counter. He is in jeans and a flannel, his hair combed, and he has shaved for this. When he stops three feet from Colt, the diner gets very quiet.

Daddy puts out his hand.

Colt sets the wine on the counter and takes it.

I've seen my father shake hands a thousand times. There is the welcome shake, which is warm and quick and Southern. There is the regular customer shake, which is firm and brief. There is the church friend shake, which is held a beat longer because Greg King has decided you are worth a beat. And then there is the shake my father gives a man he is measuring for the second time in his life. The kind he gave Colt on a Saturday afternoon in this same diner, the day Colt dropped me off after rugby practice and Daddy decided to find out whether the boy was going to break his daughter.

This is that shake.

Five seconds. Daddy's hand is the size of a catcher's mitt and he closes it around Colt's hand like he is testing what it can take. Colt doesn't flinch. He doesn't look away. He doesn't try to soften it with a smile. He stands very still and he lets my father feel his bones.

Daddy's eyes are measuring. Not anger. Diagnostic. He is deciding whether to rebuild or replace.

"You hurt my daughter, son."

"I did, Greg."

"You know that."

"I know that."

"You here to make it right or you here because she let you come?"

"Both."