Page 116 of Wreckage and Rain

"You did a hard thing today, Bennet."

"Yeah."

"I'm proud of you."

I feel that. I close my eyes against the top of her head. I feel her say it, on this porch, in this city, with my father's name on every business channel in Charleston, my mother's calls stacking up in a silent phone, the harbor going copper behind her shoulder.

"I love you."

"I know."

"That's the part I never doubted."

"It's the only part I never had to earn."

"Even when I should have."

I don't answer that one. I just tighten my arm around her and let it stand.

She steps back. Looks up at me. Tilts her head.

"Lorna gave me a key to the kitchen so we could heat up the leftovers from Mama. You hungry?"

"Starving."

"Come on. There's grits."

"There's always grits."

"There's always grits."

We go inside. I put my arm across her shoulders. She lets me. The phone in my pocket has gone silent. The world outside goes on.

The diner Tupperware is on the counter. Two plates. Two forks. Two glasses. A kitchen that doesn't belong to either of us, in a house that doesn't belong to either of us, in a city that no longer belongs to either of us.

Chapter 34: Cream

Summer

I drive to the Bennet estate. Colt knows where I'm going. I told him on the porch last night, and he said he trusted me. This morning he doesn't ask when or why. He looks up from the yellow legal pad on his knee, gives me the small assessing look he's learned, and says, "Take the car. There's gas in it."

"I will."

"Anything you need to bring with you?"

I almost laugh. He knows there's nothing to bring.

"No. I have everything."

He nods. Goes back to his pad.

The Bennet estate is fifteen minutes from the B&B. East Bay Street to Murray Boulevard, the long curve along the seawall where the harbor unrolls on the right side of the car and the old houses sit on the left like a row of women who have been judging me since the day I married into the family. The light off the water is too bright to look at. I don't look at the harbor. I look at the road.

I don't rehearse what I'm going to say. I've rehearsed it a hundred times in my head, and the conclusion I've come to, finally, is that the speech isn't the point. The point is the chair. The point is sitting in a chair across from Vivienne Bennet, in her own house, in the place she has used as a stage for years, and refusing to leave until she has heard me.

I haven't brought anything. No flowers. No envelope. No piece of paper. I have a pair of jeans, a black turtleneck, and the boots Mama gave me for my twentieth birthday. I have my hair down because it occurs to me, walking up the brick path to the front door of this antebellum mausoleum, that wearing it up would bea concession to what Vivienne thinks a woman looks like when she's coming for a fight, and I'm not going to give her even that.

I don't knock.