Chapter 10 - Salt Air and Clean Slate
One year later.
The October light in Charleston is unlike the light anywhere else on earth. It loses the thick, yellow haze of the summer dog days, sharpening into a brilliant, crystalline gold that cuts across the salt marsh and turns the Ashley River into a sheet of hammered silver.
I stood on the second-story piazza of the Tradd Street house, holding a mug of steaming black coffee.
The house had changed. Over the past twelve months, I had stripped away every trace of Garrett Bellamy’s presence. The heavy, pretentious walnut bookshelves in the library had been removed, replaced by open, light-filled shelves of pickled cypress holding my architectural sketchbooks and my mother’s collection of Southern pottery. The dark, masculine leather furniture was gone, replaced by soft linens, historic Charleston sea-grass mats, and bright, botanical prints.
The house smelled of salt air, fresh paint, and the sweet olive blooming in the brick courtyard below.
Montgomery Design Studio had enjoyed the most profitable year in its history. Without the financial drain of Garrett’s firm and the constant, covert skimming of my accounts, our balance sheet was pristine. We had just been awarded the restoration contract for the historic Thomas Elfe House on Church Street—the most coveted historic preservation project in the city.
A soft knock sounded at the open French doors of the piazza.
Lacey stepped out, holding a manila envelope and two warm cinnamon biscuits from the bakery around the corner.
“Morning, boss,” she said, leaning against the railing and breathing in the cool morning breeze.
“Morning,” I smiled, taking a biscuit. “What’s that?”
“A postcard,” Lacey said, handing me the envelope. “Forwarded from the Queen Street studio. It’s postmarked from Denver.”
I pulled out the postcard. On the front was a photograph of the Rocky Mountains under a brilliant blue sky. On the back, written in a neat, delicate hand, was a short message:
*Dear Reese,*
*The new staging business is finally profitable. I paid off my grandfather’s loan last week. Every time I draft an elevation, I remember the way you held your ground in that lobby. Thank you for showing me what a backbone looks like. — Chloe.*
I smiled, running my thumb over the postmark before sliding the card into the pocket of my linen cardigan.
Chloe had left Savannah three weeks after the hearing, taking her recovered twenty thousand dollars and moving west to start over where nobody knew her name or the scandal that had nearly consumed her. She was twenty-seven now, building a life on her own terms, free of smooth-talking men who traded in borrowed glory.
“Have you heard anything about… him?” Lacey asked carefully, taking a sip from her own cup.
“Vivian called on Friday,” I said. “He’s working as an estimator for a commercial roofing contractor in Walterboro. Living in a rented mobile home off Highway 17. The bankruptcy court confirmed his reorganization plan—half his wages are being garnished by First National for the next seven years.”
Lacey looked at me closely, her surgeon’s eyes searching my face for any lingering shadow of pain or regret. “And?”
“And,” I said, looking out over the double piazza railing toward the harbor, where the white sails of the morning skiffs were catching the autumn wind, “I hope he has an umbrella when it rains.”
Lacey laughed—a loud, clear, joyful sound that echoed down into the courtyard.
We leaned against the railing together, the morning sun warming our faces, watching the city wake up beneath the salt-scented breeze.
Nine years of illusion had ended in a hotel lobby ninety miles away. But standing here, on the heart-pine floorboards my grandmother had walked, with the deed in my safe and the future stretched out before me as wide and clear as the Atlantic horizon, I knew the truth that Vivian Cross had promised me on that rainy afternoon:
May you like
I hadn't lost my life that day in Savannah.
I had simply taken the keys back, shifted into drive, and finally come home to myself.
