out here on Pierce Point, walking around on crushed shells and dead mangrove leaves in the sand spit at the end, picking up driftwood and bits of shell that might turn out to be pretty or useful which was hard to tell, because it was too dark. Sheltered by the mangroves they wandered, talking only about stuff they found in the sand, hanging out in that nice, nowhere place as if nothing strange had come down, wandering until it got light. When the first trawler rounded the point on its way to the Gulf, Carter bundled her back into the car.
They’ve been riding around ever since.
This is sad, Steffy thinks, looking at the boy she’s loved for so long. Now she’s not so sure. Wait. Didn’t she just get everything she ever wanted? Carter Bellinger all to herself, and for a whole, entire night? Here they were in his car. With the top pulled up over them like covers, they could be lying close in bed, and didn’t he just tell her again that he’s in love with her, which she’s been waiting to hear since fifth grade?
She and Carter are close now, closer than she’s ever been to anyone. They just went through so much. She ought to feel happy, but she doesn’t. She wants to feel excited and loving and totally bonded, like they are the same person under the skin, but she can’t.
She just feels bad. An entire night together and she doesn’t have enough from him, or he doesn’t have enough from her.
Steffy’s not sure what this means, only that where she ought to be feeling all the right things, all she has is a terrible, terrible sense of loss.
‘Oh,’ she murmurs accidentally. This is just so sad.
God forgive her, Carter takes it wrong.
‘Oh Steffy,’ he barks, so abruptly that it startles her. ‘Let’s drive to Valdosta and get married!’
This makes her feel so guilty that she can’t stand to look at him. She does not say the obvious. She doesn’t even say, why should we, we haven’t even had sex? What she does say, and it takes her a while to think of it, is, ‘I can’t, Carter. I’m babysitting Grammy Henderson today. I have to go home.’
36
Nenna
I woke up feeling awful. If I slept at all. I mean, by the time I fell down on the bed it was light outside.
How can you grow up along with all your friends, smart women who talk about everything all the time and still end up knowing the tune, but not all the words to your life? I tried to tell Dan how it happened, I mean, I opened up my soul but my nice new friend ran out of the house at dawn like his hair was on fire and it breaks my heart.
On top of Davis, it was just too much. At least that’s done. Kicking him out was like lopping off a foot to stop necrotizing fasciitis or gangrene; you have to amputate to save your life. You’re not dead but you hurt so much that you roll around on the bed, too messed up to sleep.
Oh, I know where he is. Davis, I mean. He’s out at the Pierce Point Marriott where every other man in God’s creation is having more sex than Davis ever had with Gale. Instead of screwing, he’s on the phone with that quasi-intellectual skank, do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘She may not have her doctorate but she’s the most intelligent woman I know,’ but he means she will go down on him in a broom closet if she has to, anything to get what she wants and what she wants is my husband.
Well she can have him, credit card debt and all, thank God Chape Bellinger’s office made me separate our finances before this thing blew up in my face. God, I’m depressed. It’s lonely in here without Davis, the rat, and Steffy’s off at my friend Cathy’s house for a sleepover with Jen, I’m one woman alone in here with no one to talk to, but at least Steffy has a best friend.
No Davis coughing or thumping around downstairs; it’s so quiet that I can’t sleep, I’m too tired to do anything, but it was almost time to start getting ready for church, so I shuffled downstairs and made coffee – instant, since it’s just me. I was half minded to call Cathy and ask her to wake my daughter, say I