Chapter 32 Charleston #2
I've seen my father shake hands a thousand times.
There is the welcome shake, which is warm and quick and Southern.
There is the regular customer shake, which is firm and brief.
There is the church friend shake, which is held a beat longer because Greg King has decided you are worth a beat.
And then there is the shake my father gives a man he is measuring for the second time in his life.
The kind he gave Colt on a Saturday afternoon in this same diner, the day Colt dropped me off after rugby practice and Daddy decided to find out whether the boy was going to break his daughter.
This is that shake.
Five seconds. Daddy's hand is the size of a catcher's mitt and he closes it around Colt's hand like he is testing what it can take. Colt doesn't flinch. He doesn't look away. He doesn't try to soften it with a smile. He stands very still and he lets my father feel his bones.
Daddy's eyes are measuring. Not anger. Diagnostic. He is deciding whether to rebuild or replace.
"You hurt my daughter, son."
"I did, Greg."
"You know that."
"I know that."
"You here to make it right or you here because she let you come?"
"Both."
The honesty stops Daddy for a half-second. Greg King has spent his life winnowing through men's bullshit and the truth is something he knows when he hears it. He nods. Once. Releases the hand.
"Welcome back."
That is the whole sentence. Welcome back. Coming from Greg King that is an aria.
Behind him, Mama is wiping her hands on a dish towel, her eyes wet. Jake is at the counter holding a beer with his lawyer face on. Autumn is in booth four with her boots on the rung, smug as a cat. She flew down on Sunday for this exact moment because she doesn't miss anything in this family.
Mama hugs Colt next. She is five-four, and she hugs him with the upper-body strength of a woman who has lifted a thousand industrial-sized trays of cornbread. She gets up on her tiptoes to put her mouth right next to his ear, and I see his eyes close because he knows what is coming.
"Colton Bennet. Listen to me."
"Yes, ma'am."
"You break my baby again and I will handle it myself. Are you hearing me."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'm not joking, son."
"I know you aren't."
"Look at me."
He looks at her.
"Welcome home."
She kisses his cheek. Releases him. Pats his chest twice, the all-clear pat, and turns to the kitchen yelling, "GREG, THE CORNbrEAD."
Jake comes off the counter. Sets his beer down.
Walks up to Colt and stares at him for a full three seconds before he offers his hand.
The Jake Holloway shake is shorter than Greg's and contains, in the squeeze, a paragraph of information about what will happen if Colt fails again.
Jake learned that grip from Greg. He has been carrying it on Summer's behalf since he was ten.
"Holloway."
"Bennet."
"You good?"
"Getting there."
"Don't make me regret being civil."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Jake claps him on the shoulder. Twice. The all-clear from a brother who isn't my brother by blood. Colt's shoulders come down a half-inch.
Then it's Autumn. She gets up from booth four and looks at me first, the long look that checks my actual face and not the one I put on. Whatever she sees, she nods.
"How was the drive."
"Long. Good. Both."
"You two talk?"
"We talked."
"Hmph." She looks at Colt. "She sleep okay?"
"Better than me," he says.
"Good answer." She slides back into the booth and pats the seat next to her. "Sit."
He sits next to Autumn.
Mama brings out fried green tomatoes, shrimp and grits, butter beans.
Daddy carries the wine glasses Colt brought and pours from the bottle.
We eat in booth four, the booth where I did my homework and fell in love with this man.
There is laughter. Jake tells a story about a fishing trip that ended with him waist-deep in the marsh.
Autumn tells one about a New York date she put in his place.
Mama tells one about a customer who ordered grits without butter and got sent home with both.
Colt sits next to Autumn and listens. He laughs at the right places. He answers Daddy's questions about the SEC filing in the clean, short sentences my father respects. He doesn't perform. He doesn't over-explain. He has, somewhere along the way, lost the Bennet habit of filling the room.
I watch him across the table. He is the man I married. And he isn't.
After dinner, Daddy hugs me at the door. He doesn't let go for a long time.
"You okay, baby."
"I'm okay, Daddy."
"You sure."
"I'm sure enough."
"Mama and I are here. If sure enough turns into not sure at all, you call us."
"I will."
"He doing the work?"
"He is."
Daddy nods. Looks across the diner at Colt, who is helping Mama load the leftovers into Tupperware because that is what you do at the end of a meal at King's Diner whether you want to or not.
"Long way to come back from."
"Long way."
"He has the road in him?"
"I think he does."
"Hmph."
Daddy kisses the top of my head.
"Booth four is open whenever you need it."
"I know, Daddy."
***
We drive past the Bennet estate on the way back to the B&B.
I didn't plan it. Or I did. I didn't tell him I planned it. He sees me take the turn onto East Bay Street and he goes very still in the passenger seat and he doesn't say anything. He lets me drive.
The house is lit up. Lamps in every window. Sonny hasn't been home for days, according to Dom, who has eyes everywhere. But Vivienne is in there. Somewhere. Pretending the world is still the size it was a week ago.
I don't slow down. I don't stop. I drive past the gate at exactly the speed limit and I don't turn my head, and Colt doesn't turn his head either. Two soldiers passing a building that used to be a country.
At the next light, I exhale.
"You okay."
"I'm okay."
"You want to go now."
"After you file."
"After I file."
"Alone."
He's quiet. Then: "Alone."
"I love you for what you're about to not say."
"I was about to say a lot of things."
"Don't."
"I'm not going to say any of them."
He doesn't. He just looks straight out the windshield at the dark and lets the not-saying be what he gives me.
I park in front of the B&B. We sit in the dark cab of the SUV with the engine ticking. Colt reaches across the console and takes my hand, brings it to his mouth, kisses the inside of my wrist.
"Two rooms," he says.
"Two rooms tonight."
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
He gets out. I get out. We walk up the porch steps together. Lorna is asleep at the desk with the radio low. We climb the stairs side by side. He unlocks his door. I unlock mine.
In the hallway, before I close my door, I turn back.
"Colt."
"Yeah."
"Thank you for tonight."
"For what."
"For letting them have you."
He looks at me across the narrow hall, with the haint-blue ceiling light buzzing softly above us, and he says, "It was the easiest hard thing I've done in a long time."
I close the door.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the city that almost killed me, and I feel, for the first time in too long, the warmth of being home.