"He did," she agreed. "But he gave you his bread first."
"Which is a very strange thing to do."
"Or a very telling one."
I looked at her. She looked back at me with the mild expression of a woman who had made her point and was content to let it sit there.
We emerged from the last of the market tents onto the open sidewalk. The morning had warmed while we were inside—the sun was higher, the air carrying more heat now, the salt in it thicker and more insistent. A carriage horse clopped past on the cross street, the driver's voice carrying on the air in the practiced cadence of a tour guide who'd told the same stories a thousand times and still made them sound like the first.
I shifted the bread under my arm and tried to return my pulse to its normal operating parameters.
It was slow about it.
"Was he like the others?" I asked. "The ones you mentioned—the private sector people. The—Dominion Defense people."
Something moved across Izzy's face. Brief, careful, the flicker of a woman choosing her words with more precision than the question technically required. It was there and gone in half a second, and I might have missed it if I hadn't spent nine years in rooms where things were communicated in the space between what was said and what wasn't.
"I didn't get a close look," she said. "But Charleston is—it draws a certain kind of person. Men who've done serious work and come here to do more of it, or to rest from it, or to figure out what comes next." She paused. "The type is recognizable, once you know what to look for."
I filed that away next to the other things I was filing—the feeling in my sternum, the way he'd looked at me, the bread still warm through the paper.
"Do you bake?" Izzy asked, which was a pivot so clean I almost missed the intention behind it.
I glanced at her. "Occasionally. Why?"
"I have a sourdough starter at home that I've been maintaining for a while. She's—" Izzy smiled, and the smile was genuine and slightly embarrassed in the way people got when they admitted they'd named something that didn't have a face. "Her name is Marguerite. Ryker acts like she's a member of the household, which she basically is."
"You named your starter."
"I was in a very particular emotional state the week I started her and the name arrived before I could apply judgment. The point is—" she gestured at the bread under my arm, "—if you want to try your hand at it, I can bring you a portion. She's active and well-fed and produces a reliable loaf. It's actually not as complicated as people make it sound once you understand the science."
The science. Of fermentation. Of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria and the slow, patient chemistry of letting living things do their work over time.
I felt a smile arrive that I hadn't planned on. "I know a little about fermentation."
Izzy's eyes lit. "Right. I forgot who I was talking to." She pulled her phone from her tote. "Give me your number. I'll text you so you have mine. We can set something up this week—I can bring you Marguerite, show you the process, and you can tell me things about lactic acid bacteria that I've never thought to wonder about."
I gave her my number. My phone buzzed a moment later with a text that said Izzy D—sourdough and intel and I saved it under that exactly because it felt accurate.
We turned south, falling into a loose, unhurried walk that had no particular destination. The streets here were quieter than King—residential, older, the gardens visible through iron gates doing the extravagant spring thing that Southern gardens did when nobody was restraining them. Wisteria on one wall.Something white and climbing on another. The smell of it all mixing with the salt air into something so lush it was almost ridiculous.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You can ask me anything," Izzy said. "I reserve the right not to answer, but you can always ask."
"How long did it take to feel like you belonged here?"
She considered it. We walked half a block before she answered.
"I'm not sure I felt like I belonged," she said slowly. "I mean, I grew up nearby, but I felt like I was wanted here. Which turned out to be better." She glanced at me sideways. "Belonging implies the place accepts you. Being wanted means someone in it chose you. Charleston itself is—neutral. It doesn't care who you are or where you're from. But the people in it—" She let that trail off, which was its own kind of answer. "Give it time. The city does something to you, if you let it."
"Something good?"
"Something real," she said. "Which is usually better."
I thought about that. About the apartment with the heart pine floors and the courtyard gardenia. About the notebook open on the floor and the two words at the top of the fresh page. About a man who'd given me his bread without explanation and walked away without looking back.
Something real.
