Chapter 3 #2
I remain seated for a moment longer, my gaze fixed on the portrait at the front of the tent while voices blend into a low current around me.
No one can probably see that my jacket is snug across my shoulders.
My black tie sits perfectly centered at my collar.
From a distance, I look exactly where I belong.
Up close, perhaps not.
Ridge approaches once the last of the officials drift away. “We need to talk later,” he says, not asking.
“Better get with my assistant," I joke. Ridge is the one with an assistant, or maybe three. "I’m leaving in two weeks,” I answer evenly.
Thirteen days now, but who's counting?
“That’s more than we’ve had in years.”
I follow him to the veranda, where staff circulate with trays of whiskey. The memorial shifts gears, like a machine changing function while maintaining the same hum of efficiency.
My ears pick up fragments as I move through the clusters.
"...compliance review scheduled for Q3..."
"...restructuring the Gulf shipping routes..."
"...security protocols need updating since the container incident..."
A silver-haired executive nods toward me. "The prodigal son returns."
"Just for the memorial," I answer, my voice remaining flat. I don't even try to hide my disdain for this city.
"Shame. Robert always said you would come back to work for the company one day. I know he would have liked to have seen that."
I ignore his passive-aggressive remark.
Ridge appears back at my elbow, guiding me toward the veranda railing. The breeze carries the river's smell of mud.
"How about now? I want to run something by you," he says.
"About?"
"The company needs a real head of security. Not ceremonial. Someone who understands threat assessment." He meets my eyes directly. "You."
My muscles lock into place. "I have limited leave. I've got pending evaluations that leave no room for commitments outside of my active duty. Sorry, Bro."
"Think about it." Ridge's voice remains neutral, but the pressure behind the words is unmistakable. "The position makes sense. Your background. Your name. The connections you have."
"I don't need to come back to New Orleans for that." The excuse sounds hollow even to me.
"Are you committed to the Navy? Or just to staying gone?"
I look at him but don't answer.
The question hits close to center mass. I focus on the whiskey in my glass, ice melting into amber.
Cain slides between us, his energy disrupting the tension. He arches a brow. “Uh oh. That’s Ridge’s boardroom voice.”
"Cain, please," Ridge says, annoyed at Cain's interruption.
“Please tell me you’re not trying to chain him to a conference table. He’ll chew through the restraints.” Cain grins.
Vin, my father's right-hand man since I was a kid, joins our circle. He's silent but watchful. His eyes track between Ridge and me, reading the undercurrents.
“No one’s making decisions today,” Ridge says. “Just think about it.”
Fuck that shit. I don’t even qualify that with an answer or a nod. I’m not here to be reassigned.
I’ve been back in this house for less than twenty-four hours and already the conversation is shifting from burial to business. From father to succession.
"I've got to take a leak. I'll be back," I lie. I scan the crowd, looking for Gabe, but I don't see him.
I move toward the back of the property before Ridge can follow up. The tent is half dismantled, and the staff works with quiet efficiency. Beyond the treeline, the Mississippi pushes south, brown and steady, the same river that built everything my father left behind.
I walk until the voices fade. My dress shoes sink slightly into the softened ground near the iron fence that marks the edge of the property. I wrap my hand around the cool metal and lean into it, grounding myself.
Head of security.
The title sits wrong in my head. It isn’t temptation. It’s an assumption. As if it’s inevitable that I’ll circle the wagons.
I pull my phone from my pocket without thinking and unlock it, scrolling for nothing in particular.
My thumb stills over a name I never deleted.
Charli.
I stare at it longer than I should. Six years of silence, of distance that I created.
The photograph in my father’s study flashes through my mind before I can stop it. The gold dress, her hand at my shoulder. I think about the way she used to look at me like she believed I could be steadier than I ever was.
I lock the screen and shove the phone back into my pocket.
This house is too still now that the crowd is gone. I don’t belong inside it longer than I have to.
I head back, bypassing my brothers on the patio. The decision forms before I consciously make it. By the time I reach the back steps, I’m already undoing my cufflinks.
The suit lands in a chair in my old room. I grab my jeans, a black T-shirt, and step into my boots.
When I take the stairs down, Ms. Landry watches from the foyer.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Stone?”
“Yes, ma’am. I'll be gone for a while.”
The five-bay garage sits detached from the house, climate-controlled like everything else. My Hummer is parked along the far wall, detailed and maintained despite the fact that I left it here three years ago. That’s how this house works. Nothing is allowed to sit untended.
The keys are in the lockbox beside the interior door.
The engine turns over on the first try. The sound alone calms me.
I back down the drive and don’t look at the house in the rearview mirror.
I take I-10 east because it’s open and because I don’t want to circle back into the city. The lanes stretch out ahead, the traffic thinning as the skyline fades behind me.
I keep my speed steady, hands loose on the wheel. I’ve always loved the hum of this engine.
The state line passes overhead before I register the sign. Mississippi. I’ve already crossed it by the time I realize what I’m doing.
Bay St. Louis isn’t far from New Orleans. Close enough to pass as aimless without admitting I’m headed anywhere specific.
I roll the window down, and the air changes as the road angles south. The smell shifts from river and asphalt to salt and open water. The sky is dimming now, the last light flattening against the horizon.
I check the fuel gauge and calculate the distance. I note the exits behind me. My brain does it automatically, even when there’s no threat to assess.
The sign appears a few miles later.
Bay St. Louis.
My grip on the wheel tightens, just slightly.
I could keep driving. Cross the coast and head east until the tank runs low. That would turn this into a pointless loop.
Instead, I ease into the exit lane to Bay St. Louis, the small coastal town where Charli grew up. I'm guessing her parents still live in the same house.
The town hasn’t changed much. Raised cottages line the streets, with warmly lit porches as the evening closes in. The pace here has always been slower, more deliberate.
I know these streets without needing directions.
I pass Magnolia Street and recognize it immediately. The same blue shutters with white trim. My pulse shifts before I consciously acknowledge why.
I slow as I reach the corner and stop at the stop sign.
And then I see her.
Charli stands in the middle of the street wearing worn jeans and a loose white T-shirt, her hair pulled back the same careless way she used to when she studied late into the night. She jogs beside a small boy wobbling forward on a bike with training wheels.
Her back is to me. My heart drops to my stomach.
“You’ve got it,” she calls, her hand hovering near the seat without touching.
The kid’s face tightens in concentration, his chin set with stubborn determination.
The sight sits somewhere deep in my core and holds there.
He pedals toward a seafoam cottage three doors down from her parents’ house. Charli claps when he makes it to the driveway, and runs toward him. She kneels to adjust the strap beneath his helmet, her fingers gentle under his chin.
For a moment I sit there with my hands wrapped around the steering wheel, watching a life unfold that has nothing to do with me.
Of course she built it. Charli always knew what she wanted: a family, a house in a small town and a quiet street where neighbors know each other.
She always wanted a family that stays.
I was the one who told her that future would never include me. She believed me, and it looks like she found someone who could give it to her.
Then I ease my foot onto the gas and let the truck roll forward, never turning down Magnolia.
In the rearview mirror, I catch one last glimpse of Charli jogging beside the boy as he tries again, her hand hovering just behind the seat, ready to steady him if he falls.
The image stays with me long after the street disappears behind the next corner.