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A beat. The Atlantic.

“I used to think equal was the same as fair,” he says. “With the girls. We treated them the same. Same rules, same expectations, same love. And Margo — Margo made it easy to do that, because she never asked for more. She never asked for anything.” He pauses. “I should have asked her why.”

“Yeah.”

“Her mother doesn’t see it the way I do. Caroline thinks Margo is fine because Margo says she’s fine, and Margo is very good at saying she’s fine.” He looks at me. “You know she’s not.”

“I know she’s not.”

“She’s extraordinary,” he says. Quiet. The word lands like he means it as a fact, not a compliment. “She’s always been extraordinary. She runs every room she walks into, and she does it so well nobody notices she’s doing it. And I’m proud of her for all of it.” He stops. “I just wish she’d learned that she didn’t have to.”

“She’s learning,” I admit. Because she is. Slowly. In my room, in study rooms, and in a shower on Sullivan’s Island at midnight.

“She deserves someone who sees her,” he says. “The real one. Not the one she hands the room.”

“I see her.” Just that.

He looks at me for a long moment. Whatever he’s reading, it seems to be enough.

“She’s lucky to have you,” he says.

“I think it’s the other way around.”

He nods once. He picks up his coffee. He looks back at the Atlantic, and I do too, and we sit in the quiet of two men who understand each other without needing to say more than they’ve said.

Then the door opens, and Michael comes out, and Richard excuses himself and goes in, and everything changes.

Michael has his coffee and his easy smile and absolutely no idea what room he just walked into.

He leans on the railing and looks at the dunes like he belongs to them. The tone of a man who is comfortable here, who has been comfortable here before, who knows where the good coffee is and which chair Richard favors and how the back door sticks. He’s been in this house. He has history in it.

“Good to have the place to ourselves for a bit.” Easy. Practiced. “Caroline sets a good table.”

“She does.”

He turns to look at me. The smile shifts — still running, but pointed now, the first direct thing he’s aimed at me all weekend.

“So.” A beat. “You and Margo, huh?”

I don’t answer.

“She’s a piece of work, isn’t she. High-maintenance. Always has been. Sweet girl but —” He does the thing with his hand, a small dismissive gesture. “A lot to manage, you know what I mean? Glad she’s found someone who can handle it.”

I look at him.

One full second, the way I look at a player across a line — reading, deciding. Then I put my coffee down.

“You don’t know a fucking thing about her.” Quiet. Even. The voice I use when I mean every word. “Don’t think you can talk about her that way with me. I know guys like you.”

Michael blinks. The smile slips. First time all weekend.

“I’m just saying —”

“I know what you’re saying.” I hold his eyes. “She’s not high-maintenance. She’s been carrying her family’s weight since she was eight years old, and she does it without complaining and without credit, and you sat across from her at a dinner table last night where your fiancée announced a pregnancy, and you couldn’t even manage to look at her once to see if she was okay.” I pick my coffee back up. “So don’t tell me what Margo is. You had her, and you threw her away. That tells me everything I need to know about your read on things.”

Michael says nothing. The easy charm has nowhere to go. He’s used to rooms that give back to him, and I’m not giving anything back.

I set the coffee down and I stand.