Chương 10 - Salt and Dawn
The third week of July brought the trade winds from the south, clearing the marsh of the yellow flies and drying the oyster shells on the Bluff house drive until they were white as bone once more.
The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist did not host a Holloway wedding that summer.
The society pages of the *Morning News* had been very discreet; they had simply announced that the proposed merger of the Holloway logistics interests and the Langford agricultural holdings had been "dissolved by mutual consent of the principals," and that Miss Monica Langford was spending the summer season with relatives in Newport, Rhode Island.
Julian Langford was awaiting trial in the federal courthouse in Atlanta on fourteen counts of wire fraud and maritime smuggling.
On the back terrace of the Bluff house, the afternoon sun was filtered through the dark, waxy leaves of the magnolia trees. The smell was clean—salt water, sweet bay, and the sharp, hot iron smell of the sun on the limestone riprap.
Jolene sat in a wide wicker chair with her legs propped on a low stool.
She was still thin; her collarbones showed clearly above the neck of her white cotton dress, and her hair was shorter now, cut neat to her shoulders by Ramos two weeks after the hospital stay. But the color had come back to her face. Her skin had that warm, honey-colored light that came from three weeks of salt air, and her eyes were clear, steady, the gray of an iron bar that had been cleaned with emery cloth.
On her chest, wrapped in a thin linen swaddle, lay the boy.
He weighed five pounds now. His head was covered in a thick, dark fuzz of black hair that curled slightly at the crown, exactly like his father's. His mouth was open against her collarbone, his little chest rising and falling in rhythm with hers: *one, two... one, two...*
The terrace screen door clicked open.
Grant came out carrying a heavy iron tray. On it were two glasses of cold well water, a plate of sliced peaches from the orchards in Screven County, and a single brown envelope with the county clerk’s red wax seal on the corner.
He wore no coat. His white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, his sleeves rolled to his forearms, showing the dark, criss-cross scars from the old dock winches.
He set the tray on the low stone table beside her chair.
He didn't look at the river. He looked at the child’s ear—the tiny, perfect curl of gristle, translucent as a shell in the afternoon light.
"He's asleep?" Grant asked.
"He's been asleep since twelve," Jolene said, her voice soft, full of the deep, languid peace that comes to women who have survived a winter in the dark and are now sitting in the sun. "Ramos says he can go down to the wharf next week. If the wind stays from the south."
Grant sat on the stone wall beside her stool. He reached out with one finger—his large, scarred index finger—and touched the child’s small, curled hand.
The baby’s fingers moved automatically, closing around Grant’s knuckle with surprising, stubborn strength.
Grant looked down at the grip.
"He has your chin," Grant said.
"He has your bad temper," she replied, a faint, sweet smile touching her mouth. "He cried for twenty minutes because Mrs. Gable wouldn't let him chew on her apron strings."
Grant pulled the brown envelope from the tray and laid it in her lap, beside the baby’s feet.
Jolene looked down at it. She didn't open it immediately. She knew the shape of the paper inside; she had handled three hundred of them during her years in the dock office.
"The deed?" she asked.
"The whole point," Grant said. "The Bluff house, the three deep-water berths at the south turn, and the sixty acres of marsh between here and the lightship. It’s registered under *Julian Holloway*."
She looked up at him, her gray-blue eyes widening slightly.
"You named him after the saint?"
"I named him after the creek," Grant said, his mouth twitching once with that dry, iron humor she had known five years ago. "The saint had too many rules. The creek just goes to the sea and minds its own business."
He reached into his pocket.
This time, he didn't pull out the plain silver band he had twisted for five months in the dark.
He pulled out a heavy gold ring—an old thing, eighteenth-century, set with a small, flat square of sea-green beryl that had belonged to his great-grandmother, the one who had come over from Inverness with four trunks and an iron kettle.
He took Jolene’s left hand.
Her fingers were still scarred from the cold water and the work in the nine-by-twelve room on Lincoln Street, but they were warm now. He slipped the gold band over her fourth finger.
It fit perfectly.
"Chen said we can go to the courthouse on Friday," Grant said. He didn't ask. But he didn't order her, either. His voice was level, steady, like an anchor sinking into twenty feet of good sand. "Judge Blackwood owes me two favors from the dock strike. He’ll open the side door before nine so we don't have to look at the reporters."
Jolene looked down at the green stone on her finger.
The beryl took the sun from the river, throwing a small, emerald star against the white linen of her child’s swaddle.
"Monica Langford," she murmured, "would have had five hundred guests and six bridesmaids in peach silk."
"Monica Langford," Grant said, "would have had a husband who hated her by breakfast and a house that smelled like an auction room."
He leaned forward. He laid his forehead against hers, the way he had in Operating Room 3 when the monitors were screaming and the blood was on the floor. His hand moved over hers, covering both her fingers and the child’s small, sleeping back.
"I don't need five hundred guests, Jolene," he whispered against her lips. "I only need the clerk who knows what the coal is worth."
May you like
The baby shifted between them, drawing in a long, milk-sweet breath that sounded like a sigh of relief.
Out on the river, the *Holloway Pride* moved slowly down the main channel, heading out to meet the evening tide. Its foghorn blew once—a deep, low, golden note that rolled across the salt marsh, over the green spartina grass, over the white shell drive, and died away into the southern sky where the storm had gone, leaving only the sun, the salt, and the long, quiet reach of the river.
