Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
We’d barely finished breakfast when Nash got a call to go into the office because a guide called out sick.
He left and I spent the day practicing my Bennie speech, reviewing information Reese sent about surgery expectations for Mom, and repracticing my Bennie speech.
With a little luck, we’ll find something that resembles a useful clue, I’ll tell Nash about Bennie, and this day will end as perfectly as it started.
Cap and I arrive at the historic church fifteen minutes early and find Nash already leaning against a column like a sight for sore eyes. Even now in the harsh afternoon heat and blindingly bright daylight, my body physically reacts like I’ve been shocked by an old violet ray machine.
“Nash,” I say cordially and like he didn’t spend the majority of the last twelve hours inside me. I eye today’s shirt of choice, which is sea green and covered in canoes. “People listen to a word you say dressed like that?”
“Rue Conway,” he says with the tone of someone who’s licked every square inch of my body, fun written on every feature of his face as he slides his sunglasses to the top of his head. “You should see the things I make people believe when I’m wearing less.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Cap snaps, thwacking me and then Nash with his cane. “Will you two stop salivating over each other so we can get on with it?”
The bells from the tower chime loudly from above us, making me jump at the same time Cap coughs mid-drag of Penny.
“Weed at church?” I shoot him a disapproving look. “Really?”
He blows a weed cloud my way and smiles defiantly.
Nash opens the large red door of the church, and we file in.
The door closes behind us, and the noise and traffic of the outside world disappear as the church’s serene quiet envelops us.
“The first church of the city, St. Philip’s, was built where we are now in the 1680s,” Nash explains in a quiet voice.
“When they needed a bigger space for parishioners in the early 1700s, they moved to what is now Church Street. By the mid-1700s, St. Michael’s was built and has remained here ever since. Mostly unchanged.”
While we walk slowly down the center aisle, tourists move solemnly along the perimeter to read plaques, admire artwork, and sit in pews.
We stop in the aisle.
“Pew forty-three,” Nash says with an impressed drawl. He points to the scuffed brass plaque with the same number at the end of the pew box. “Where George Washington and, later, Robert E. Lee sat. Dubbed the ‘President’s Pew.’”
Cap grunts, says, “Good enough for them, good enough for us,” and drops heavily onto the old wooden bench. He removes the captain’s hat from his head then hooks it on his knee.
Nash and I exchange an amused look but follow suit.
Shoulder to shoulder, our collective attention falls silently on the altar where the crown jewel is a large stained-glass window portraying St. Michael slaying a dragon.
My mother, the half-hearted Catholic she is, always said when we had to say his prayer in church that we were putting too much pressure on him.
“One man being asked to defend everyone in battle?” She’d bat her hand. “Give him a break, already.”
I always thought she was being ridiculous, but now, seeing the image glowing in the sun’s light, it flips a switch in my heart and dampens my anger toward her.
She infuriates me, but I love her.
She infuriates me, but she’s having brain surgery.
In weeks.
I know it’s the right thing to do, but at the core of it all, I’m terrified. This isn’t her having her tonsils removed, this is cracking her skull open and having something cut off her brain. I wish she were sitting right here instead of showing up as glimmers through cuts of colorful glass.
The hallowed air carries hints of incense, history, and a million unspoken prayers. I wonder how many of them were answered. I wonder how many my mom has prayed in the last ten years.
Nash’s fingers interlace with mine and squeeze.
“You okay?” he whispers.
I clear my throat and squeeze back, yes. Even if not really.
“Sorry.” I blow out a shaky breath. “I’m fine. What would Anson have done in here?”
Nash waits to answer, eyes searching mine as if looking for a believable go-ahead.
He must see what he’s looking for, because he says, “Well, it’s a church.
” He lets out a quick sigh as he glances around.
“What you see is kind of what you get. Built in the 1700s, it’s survived wars, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes.
Altar came later than Anson would have—late 1800s, early 1900s.
Last major renovation of the interior was in the ’90s.
Everything would have been stripped down and looked at with a magnifying glass. ”
Of course. Everything’s after Anson and has been examined to death.
“Dad?” I turn to Cap. He’s conditioned me enough over the last eight days that the name rolls easily off my tongue. He notices, because he almost smiles. “What do you think?”
He taps his cane on the planks of the old wooden floor.
“Don’t think anything’s in here. I searched this pew because he mentioned Washington specifically.
” As he talks, I pull the folded-up copy of the letter from my purse.
“Maybe they were religious and that’s why he mentioned it—never found any records either way. ”
I hate this answer.
At the letter, I find the section mentioning the church.
and at last, dearest Maggie, we will go into the city.
I will show you the park where rivers come together and pirates hanged.
I will show you the church where George Washington worshipped and signers of the great constitution of these United States are buried.
there is also a house Washington stayed in.
can you imagine us living some where good enough for a president?
We came here before the mentioned garden and house because of Nash’s tour and the fact the church has limited hours to visit.
“What about these signers of the Constitution buried here?” I ask, looking at Nash. “Do they mean anything to you?”
“Charles Pinckney and John Rutledge,” Nash explains. “Both Charlestonians and signers. And in the cemetery.”
Nash and I stand to go, but Cap doesn’t budge.
“You go,” he says, tapping his cane. “I’ve seen it.” His gaze goes from the altar to Nash—they exchange a look I can’t read before his eyes settle on me. “Might like a few more minutes in here.”
“Okay . . .” This man does not seem religious, yet he wants to sit alone in a church. I look from him to the altar. “What’s going on?”
“Some days you want the reminder that there’s more when it’s over is all.”
Like an old pocket watch in the digital world, his words don’t fit.
“Go!” he barks, making people from nearby pews turn. He pulls the flask out of his pocket and takes a slug. “Too damn hot out there.”
When he starts to smile, I do too. This man is an absolute pain in my ass.
Outside, Nash and I wander the paths of cracked pavers around the old cemetery. Some are in a dozen pieces, some are overtaken by foliage, and some are flat-out gone.
“Cap tell you what’s going on?” Nash asks as we pass barely legible gravestones. “With the oxygen and the pills?”
“He takes medicine for his liver with rum and uses a vape pen while on oxygen.” I squint at a stone nearly hidden with vines then glance at him. “Can’t be too serious for him to be so flippant about it.”
His face doesn’t change but there’s an air of worry to it.
My brows pinch. “He say something?”
“You think he’d say something?”
I snort at the notion. I haven’t known my dad long, but I know enough to know he’s as far from an open book as it gets and not the type to share the details of a minor ache or pain.
“Here we are,” I say at John Rutledge’s headstone. There’s a sign explaining his significance to the founding of our nation, and where I’d expect the coffin to be buried, a large slab of a memorial stone lies, engraved with his accolades. Donated in 2010, it says.
“Damn,” I whisper when I see it’s almost the same situation at Charles Pinckney’s grave. Headstone, sign, memorial slab on the ground.
Nash chuckles next to me. “They make it look so easy on TV, don’t they?”
I answer with a frustrated sigh, dragging my hands down my face. Think, Rue. Think.
My phone rings from my pocket: the bank. Anxiety vacuum seals my skin around my bones. This phone call could be my saving grace as much as a nail in my coffin.
I answer.
“Ms. Conway. Barry here. From Fontain Bank.”
I glance at Nash. “Hey, Barry. What’s going on?”
“Well—” I picture him blinking like a maniac. “I just wanted to let you know that—” He clears his throat. “Our internal investigation led nowhere.”
“Oh.” It’s a nail in the coffin kind of call. “Now what?”
He tells me about a few more things we can try—divisions to contact and 1-800 numbers to call—but I know it’s hopeless. Our money is gone.
When the call ends, I don’t have to tell Nash what it was about for him to know what it was about.
“Even without the gold,” Nash says, “you know we’ll figure all this out, right?”
At some point, he put sunglasses back on because all I see when I look at him is my own despair-filled face staring back at me.
“I do.” And I really do. With him, I believe it, even if it doesn’t end with the outcome I want.
“You know I was serious about Fontain. I can’t leave, Nash.
Not with my mom. With—” I’ll save that for my dinner speech.
“If you really want us together—whatever that looks like—I have to be there. I want to be.”
He interlaces his fingers with mine. “And I was serious when I said I wanted to be wherever you are.” He takes a long pause. “We’ll figure it out. All of it. We couldn’t before”—he lifts one shoulder along with his lips—“but we’re older now.”
He kisses me on the cheek as I stare at the Charles Pinckney memorial plaque; it’s new. Really new. Less than twenty years old, according to the date on it. Barry’s phone call delivered a dose of renewed resolve, because I can picture Anson in this cemetery. Right here. With the gold.
“I have an idea,” I say, not looking at Nash.
He chuckles.
“Do I want to know?”
“No,” I tell him. “But I need a shovel.”