Page 122 of Wreckage and Rain

I'm in my room at the B&B reading the same paragraph of the same book for the third time when the knock comes.

The book is a paperback Lorna keeps on the writing desk for guests. A history of Charleston. I've been pretending to read it. The lamp is on. The window is open. The Charleston night has come on warm over the cool, the marsh letting go of the day. I've eaten the leftovers from the diner Summer set out for me, washed both plates by hand, turned out the kitchen light, come back upstairs, and sat in this chair. I haven't slept.

She's been in her room across the hall all evening. I've been listening for her without meaning to. The give of the floorboards when she moved across the room. The water running in her bathroom. The small mechanical sounds of a woman alone in a yellow-painted room across a hallway from her husband.

The knock is soft. Three taps.

I set the book down.

"Yeah."

The door opens. She's in flannel pajama pants and my old Charleston Rugby shirt, the one she's worn since high school. Her hair is up in the claw clip. She's barefoot. She closes the door behind her with the same care I've been listening for all evening.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"You weren't asleep."

"Reading."

"You weren't reading."

"I was holding a book."

She crosses the room and sits at the foot of the bed, close, cross-legged. She looks worn all the way through. Whatever shewalked into at that house, she's still carrying it, and every part of me wants to take it off her and I don't know how. There's nothing I hate worse than that, wanting to fix something for her and not being able to.

"I need to talk."

"Then talk to me. I've been up all night listening for that door."

She presses both hands flat against her knees. Studies them. Her hands always tell me first.

"I called Patrick. I asked him to withdraw the petition."

I'm off the bed and on my knees on the floorboards in front of her, and I have her hands, and I press my forehead down onto them and I don't let go. She puts her hands in my hair.

"I'm not saying we're where we need to be. I've been so angry at you. I needed to be. It was the only thing keeping me standing up." She looks at the floor. "And today the anger just went, and what's under it is that I still love you. So much it scares me, Colt. Loving you is what almost killed me and I still can't stop."

I make myself look up at her.

"I don't want to be somebody who lost you."

I'm crying. My hands are shaking around hers.

"So fight for us. Fight for me." Her voice cracks all the way through. "Please. Just don't ever make me do it alone again."

"Say it again."

"I stopped the divorce."

I put my head back down. "Thank you. You won't regret it. I love you so much, Summer."

"I went to see your mother today."

"How did it go," I say.

"I spent five years letting that woman make me feel like something she scraped off her shoe. Five years of seating charts and that smile and brave, darling said like a blessing when it was a knife. And today I sat in her garden and I handed every bit of it back to her. It didn't feel good, but it's done."