Chapter 5
NATALIE
By early afternoon, back at the office, the place felt too clean for the way my stomach kept turning.
We worked Saturdays more often than we admitted—field in the morning, data in the afternoon—so the lights were on, the coffee burned, and the city hummed outside like usual. Sun poured through the tall Meeting Street windows, sharp enough to make the acetate overlays gleam like church glass.
On my monitors, though, the colors told a different kind of gospel. The tropical low that had been loafing offshore all week was finally flirting with commitment—model runs lining up, rainfall totals creeping from maybe to likely.
Late Sunday through midweek. On top of king tides.
“We should get ahead of this,” I said, half to myself, dragging a fingertip along the blue-and-red edge where the peninsula pinched skinny around the Market.
The Lockwood corridor glared at me like a dare.
Eastside sat in that familiar shallow bowl, a heartbreak I could trace in my sleep.
“If we wait for the first puddles, it’s already too late. ”
Owen leaned against the doorjamb with a cup of coffee he’d charmed from the bakery downstairs, watching me the way you watch a dog who’s picked up a scent.
“With what? A bullhorn on the steps of City Hall? It’s a sunny Saturday, Nat.
You tell people to prep sandbags right now, they’ll roast you alive in the comments before the pralines set. ”
“It isn’t about optics,” I said. “It’s about tires and oil pans and kids who have to be at school Monday morning.”
“Sure,” he said mildly, coming closer, eyes on the second monitor where the Weather Prediction Center discussion scrolled like a second language only we bothered to learn.
“But credibility matters if you want them to listen the next time. Let Huck push the first bulletin. We’ll amplify.
Don’t be the girl crying flood on a sunny day. ”
I looked out the window. He wasn’t wrong about the day.
The sky had plenty of clouds, but it was postcard blue.
The carriage horses clopped past with tails braided, tourists mooned over balconies, bridesmaids in matching sashes clinked plastic flutes under a palm.
Charleston put on its best face in good light.
She did it better than any woman I knew.
But I carried the other face in my head—the one that lurked whenever a storm bent wrong: water stacking in the drains, lapping at tires, the slow stubborn creep up front steps. That face didn’t care how blue the sky had been.
My phone buzzed against the desk. An email from Huck Kiser at Public Works: You two seeing the same rain window? Not ready to go public yet—send clean bullets and I’ll run it up.
“‘Not ready to go public yet,’” I read aloud. “Translation: if we hand him words, he’ll slap a logo on them and we get the warning without being the warning.”
“Now you’re speaking my language,” Owen said, easing onto the edge of my desk like it was his by squatter’s rights. “Make it plain. No apocalypse. Drains, cars, timing. Leave the politics out. Please, for once.”
“I always leave the politics out,” I said.
He made a noncommittal sound that translated to you leave it out of your mouth and put it in your eyes. He wasn’t wrong.
I pulled up our template and started typing.
Tropical moisture offshore could bring periods of steady rain Sunday through Wednesday.
Daily high tides will overlap with heavier bands, increasing street flooding risk in low-lying areas: Eastside, Rosemont, Lockwood corridor, South of Broad, Market area.
Park on higher ground where possible. Clear storm drains today while weather is dry.
Do not drive through standing water (12” can disable most vehicles). Avoid low garages. Check neighbors.
I added a link to our map and a promise of pop-ups with sandbag info if the forecast held.
Owen read over my shoulder. “Good.”
“Good-good or …?”
“Good-good,” he said, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “move the ‘do not drive’ line up. People skim.”
I moved it. My jaw unclenched. It always did a little when the solution slid into the space all the worry had been rattling around in.
I hit save and sent it to Huck with a polite for your consideration instead of a please post this before the sun goes down or God, help me, I will.
Kimmy answered my text two seconds later despite it being her day off: Send me the flyer text and a photo—no, not your face—of a storm drain we can make look dramatic.
“Adderley’s cross street is always clogged with oak fluff,” Owen said, already pulling up Street View for a still. “We can fix it for real next month. Today, they get a pretty picture and guilt.”
“Manipulation is an ugly word,” I said. “I prefer ‘effective persuasion.’”
“Uh huh,” he said, and grinned.
Work steadied me. It always had. I was building the outlines of a thing we couldn’t stop but could manage. The city listened better when you gave it tasks: clear, small, doable. Move your car. Clean your drain. Check your neighbor. Don’t pretend the ocean loves you more than it loves itself.
Movement in the glass of the doorway caught my eye. A familiar shape squared the frame, then banged the jamb like it owed him money.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” a voice boomed, huge and pleased. “If it isn’t my girl saving Charleston on a Saturday.”
“Granddaddy,” I said, standing so fast my chair clipped the credenza.
Butch Kennedy filled rooms. He couldn’t help it. Linen suit, pocket square like a flag, hair white as sugar and just as unruly, a smile he’d been feeding this city with since before I was born. He smelled like bay rum and smoke and a thousand hands shaken in summer heat.
“Boy,” he said, snagging Owen’s hand and squeezing like he intended to win that, too. “You still letting her drag you into storms?”
“When she’s right about the storms,” Owen said smoothly.
Butch laughed, the big laugh, the one that made people on Meeting glance inside as if someone had just told a secret they wanted in on. He clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to jolt my teeth. “Look at you,” he crowed. “Maps and machines and that Kennedy brain.”
I smoothed my ponytail even though I knew it was a lost cause since I’d been at the beach all morning.
He tilted his head, taking me in. “Hungry?”
“I—” I started.
“She’s starving,” Owen said, traitor, eyes dancing. “She’s been mainlining coffee since ten.”
Butch grinned triumphantly. “Lunch. My treat.” He didn’t wait for me to argue because he knew I wouldn’t. “Boy, you coming?”
Owen lifted both palms. “Kimmy will murder me if I don’t get home to mow the yard. You two go.”
“Noted,” Butch declared, and seized my elbow like I was six again and in need of shepherding through a fairground.
We hit Meeting, then East Bay, and Butch did what he did: walked like sidewalks were built to carry him and pulled a parade in his wake.
People called out like they’d been waiting all day to perform the ritual.
Mayor Kennedy! Someone’s grandmother grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles; a bachelorette in a pink sash asked for a selfie and ended up with a lecture about marrying a man with a good truck.
He asked a tourist baby its name and then told the parents it was a good one.
He hugged a woman at the bus stop like he’d known her his whole life.
He hadn’t. He made it feel that way, anyway.
Inside the restaurant, the hostess looked at me and said forty minutes. Then she looked at my granddaddy and said, “There’s a table by the window, Mayor, if you don’t mind the draft.”
He did not mind the draft.
Juneberry wasn’t big—half café, half bakery, the kind of place that smelled like roasted tomatoes and yeast the second you walked in.
They did pressed sandwiches on house bread, delicate salads piled with herbs, soups that tasted like someone’s grandmother had been stirring them all morning.
The walls were a soft green that made the light feel clean, and little jars of wildflowers dotted the tables.
It was the sort of spot young couples lingered over lattes, students tapped on laptops, and city staffers ducked in for something quick but good.
When my granddaddy walked through the door, though, the café transformed into his stage. Heads turned. A barista with a nose ring lit up like Christmas. A councilman’s assistant waved shyly from the back corner. Even the couple sharing a plate of avocado toast by the window broke into grins.
We slid into the best seat in the house.
Butch ordered hushpuppies before his backside hit the leather, charmed the waitress into promising extra butter for his she-crab soup, and then watched her walk away with the nostalgia of a man who had never, in fact, learned the difference between affection and ownership.
“You can’t slap waitresses on the ass anymore,” he stage-whispered to me, eyes bright with mischief.
“You never should have in the first place,” I said, softly enough the waitress wouldn’t hear and sharp enough that he would.
He grinned because he loved fighting with me and because he loved me. “World got soft.”
“World got decent,” I said.
He spread his hands, and the room tilted toward him like sunflowers to light. “So. Huckleberry says you’re spooking folks with talk of rain.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Huck told you I’m spooking folks?”
He winked, caught. “Or you will be. Says you’re … enthusiastic.”
“I’m telling the truth,” I said, leaning in.
“There’s a low offshore that might dump rain for days.
Add king tides and some of these streets are going to become creeks.
People need to move their cars off Lockwood and out of low garages today while it’s dry.
Clear drains. We can help them. We’ll set up pop-ups. If we wait for Monday, it’s vanity.”