Page 51 of Wreckage and Rain

"Then go home early."

***

Saturday is back to back.

Coffee at eight with my agent, who flew in from New York for the signing and is staying long enough to argue with me in person about the second book in the contract. She wants me to commit to a duology. I tell her I will think about it. She tells me to think faster. We eat eggs. I love her in spite of everything.

Eleven, Patricia. The launch tour for the new book is being mapped. Eight cities. She wants Charleston and Savannah. I tell her to add Atlanta. We go through the schedule line by line and I drink three coffees because my brain has been operating on three hours of sleep for far too long now.

Two o'clock, lunch with Patricia and a buyer from Books-a-Million who flew down to pitch a regional event. Patricia eats half my sandwich without asking. I let her.

Six o'clock, a private dinner at the bookstore owner's house. A thank-you she insisted on after the signing, also a soft pitch for next year's event slot. Eight women around a long table. Wine that costs more than my hotel room. They ask me the questions every reader asks. I answer them like the questions are new. The dinner is supposed to run two hours.

The dinner doesn't run two hours.

Our host is a widow in her fifties who has decided this is the most fun she has had in months and is going to extract every minute ofit. The plates come out slow. A second bottle. A third. Someone has a book they want me to read for a blurb. Someone else wants to know whether I outline. Our host is on her feet refilling glasses I didn't ask to be refilled.

I can't leave. Not gracefully. Not without burning a relationship I will need for the next launch.

It is just past ten when she finally walks me to my car. She presses a bottle of the wine into my hand and says, "Drive safe, honey. Get home to your husband."

I check out of the hotel at ten thirty. My phone has a folder full of new contractual fires to put out, and the only thing I want is to be in my own kitchen with Colt's bare feet under the table and the last of the bolognese reheating on the stove.

I get on I-95 at quarter to eleven.

The drive is two hours. I spend them arguing with myself.

You're overreacting. Maybe.

He's probably at home. On the couch. Rugby highlights. You'll walk in and he'll look up and smile and you'll feel ridiculous.

Or maybe.

I don't finish the thought. I'm not ready for where it goes. So I drive and I don't think and I sing along with the playlist and I tell myself I'm doing this because I want to surprise my husband. Because I love him. Because I want to walk through the door and find him and remember why we work.

The Charleston exit is thirty minutes ahead. The marsh is dark on both sides. The jasmine is in the vents.

I keep driving.

Chapter 11: Fragments

Colt

My father suggests the celebration.

He calls me into his office at three on Saturday with the closing-day grin he wears maybe twice a year, and he says, "We're going out tonight. The whole team. You, me, Calloway, the seniors. Cheyenne booked the place. Eight o'clock. Bring the navy suit."

"Dad, I was going to lay low tonight. I have things to think about."

"Things can wait." He has already turned back to his computer. "You closed Tidewater three days early, son. That doesn't happen. We celebrate when it happens. Eight o'clock."

I stand in the doorway. He doesn't look up again.

I think about Summer. I think about the suitcase on the bed the morning she left. I think about her face at the bedroom door. Some days you don't even know you're losing me.

I think about driving to Savannah right now. Tonight. Skipping the celebration. Showing up at the bookstore. Showing up at the hotel. Whatever it costs me with my father.

I think about it for a long time.