“Promise.”
He caught my hand briefly, his thumb tracing that familiar circle on my palm. Then I was out of the vehicle and walking toward Dottie and Hank, feeling his eyes on me until I reached them.
“You ready?” Dottie asked, her expression suggesting she’d noticed that little moment and would be asking questions about it later.
“Absolutely.”
The afternoon had turned sultry, the kind of low-country heat that made the air feel thick enough to drink. As we pulled away from The Perfect Steep, I caught a glimpse of Chowder in the window, still wearing his blazer and bow tie, watching us leave with the solemn expression of a journalist whose story was just getting interesting.
CHAPTER
NINE
Hank Hardeman’s 1987 Buick LeSabre—powder blue and pristine despite its age—hummed along Highway 17 with the steady confidence of a car that had been maintained with religious devotion. The interior smelled faintly of Armor All and the peppermints Hank kept in a crystal dish mounted to the dashboard, a detail so quintessentially him that I’d smiled when I first noticed it.
“My daughter thinks I’ve lost my mind,” Dottie announced from the passenger seat, adjusting her cat-eye glasses as she gazed out at the passing landscape of pine trees and marsh grass. “Veronica called last night—at 11 p.m., mind you, knowing full well I go to bed at 10—to lecture me about ‘age-appropriate behavior.’”
“What does that even mean?” I asked from the back seat, where I’d spread out my notes on Frank Holloway across my lap.
“It means she found out about Hank and me, and she’s scandalized.”
My head snapped up from my notes. So I’d been right about them. The casual touches, the way they gravitated toward each other—it hadn’t been my imagination. Something warm bloomed in my chest at the confirmation, though whether it was happiness for them or envy for what they’d found, I couldn’t quite say.
Dottie’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she continued. “Apparently, seventy-eight-year-old women aren’t supposed to have romantic relationships. We’re supposed to sit quietly in our houses doing needlepoint and waiting for death like proper old ladies.”
Hank chuckled from behind the wheel, his hands positioned at ten and two. “She actually said that?”
“Not in so many words. But she kept saying things like ‘Mother, at your age’ and ‘what would people think’ and ‘have you no sense of propriety?’” Dottie pulled out a compact mirror, checking her lipstick with the critical eye of someone who refused to let age dictate her presentation. Today’s shade was crimson—bold, unapologetic, perfectly Dottie. “I told her that I had plenty of propriety, I just chose not to let it dictate my personal life.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t help,” I said.
“Made it worse, actually. She started crying, said I was being reckless and irresponsible, then hung up on me.” Dottie snapped her compact shut with satisfying finality. “The next day she called my son Gerald to stage an intervention. Gerald—bless him—told her to mind her own business and that I deserved to be happy.”
“At least one of them has sense,” Hank observed.
“Gerald’s always been the practical one. Takes after me. Veronica takes after her father—all emotion and propriety and worrying about what strangers think.” Dottie twisted in her seat to look at me fully, and the afternoon light caught the purple frames of her glasses, making them gleam. “The real issue is that she’s jealous. Forty-five years old, divorced, working eighty-hour weeks at a job that’s eating her alive, and her mother is having more fun than she is. That’s what’s really bothering her.”
The landscape rolled past us—spartina grass waving in the breeze, egrets picking their way through shallow water, the occasional house on stilts rising from the marsh like a ship anchored in green seas. The low country had a way of making even difficult conversations feel softer somehow, as if the land itself absorbed the sharp edges of human drama and gentled them into something more bearable.
“My kids aren’t thrilled either,” Hank admitted, taking the exit toward Beaufort. “My daughter Patricia keeps making pointed comments about ‘moving too fast’ and ‘being disrespectful.’”
“That’s complicated,” I said carefully, knowing from the island gossip network that Eleanor had raised Hank’s children after their mother died young. “What does your son think?” I asked.
“Michael doesn’t care one way or the other. He’s got his own life in Charleston—three kids, demanding job as a marine biologist, no time to worry about his old man’s love life. He called last week and said as long as I was happy, that’s what mattered.” Hank’s voice held fondness despite the complicated emotions. “But Patricia keeps saying Eleanor deserves more respect than this, that I should wait longer before moving on. She actually suggested I wait until the five-year mark, as if grief operates on some kind of official timeline.”
“Five years,” Dottie scoffed. “What’s magical about five years? Does grief expire like milk?”
“According to Patricia, yes.” Hank took a turn a bit wide and earned an annoyed honk from a truck. He waved dismissively. “Eleanor knew what she was doing though. She told me six months before she died that I wasn’t allowed to mope around after she was gone. Said she’d haunt me if I turned into one of those widowers who let themselves go to seed.”
I remembered Eleanor—sharp-tongued, elegant, the kind of woman who’d order Earl Grey and then tell you exactly what you’d done wrong with the steeping. She’d been a regular at The Perfect Steep, always sitting by the window with her crossword puzzle, making acerbic comments about the tourists who thought iced tea was the same as proper tea.
“She came into my shop every Thursday,” I said. “Always complained that I made the tea too hot, then drank three cups.”
“That was Eleanor,” Hank said. “Complained about everything but kept coming back for more. Drove me crazy for forty-two years, and I loved every minute of it.”
I found myself smiling despite the heaviness of our mission. There was something deeply comforting about watching two people who’d lived full lives—who’d buried spouses and raised children and survived decades of joy and grief—find each other in the messy middle of it all. It made the future feel less frightening somehow, as if happiness wasn’t just for the young and uncomplicated.
“Speaking of romantic entanglements,” Dottie said, turning in her seat with predatory interest, “are we going to discuss Sheriff Beckett, or are you going to keep pretending that little goodbye wasn’t dripping with sexual tension?”
