Chapter 9 - The Salt Marsh
Friday afternoon on Sullivan's Island felt like the first day of an entirely new season.
The tide was coming in through the inlet, filling the salt marsh with clean, green ocean water that submerged the dark mud banks and lifted the spartina grass until it swayed like an underwater prairie. The air was warm, smelling of pluff mud, sweet pine, and the clean, sharp salt of the Atlantic.
The driveway was empty save for my Lexus crossover, which had been returned that morning by Sarah’s investigator, scrubbed clean, the oil changed, a fresh bouquet of yellow freesias sitting on the passenger seat with a handwritten note from Sarah: “To new beginnings and better corporate governance.”
On the back porch of the cypress cottage, Lily sat at a small wooden picnic table with a brand-new sketchbook.
She had three dozen colored pencils spread out before her—not the cheap, broken ones from her school pencil box, but professional artist pencils that Marcus Choi had sent her via courier that morning, complete with a tiny pencil sharpener shaped like an old-fashioned cargo ship.
She was drawing a house.
It wasn't the white shiplap mansion in Mount Pleasant with the four-car garage and the laser-cut lawn.
It was a small house on stilts, painted seafoam green, with a large porch that looked out over the marsh, surrounded by pelicans and a massive, smiling dog with floppy brown ears.
I walked onto the porch carrying two plates.
On each plate were four thick strips of applewood-smoked bacon, cooked until they were crisp and dark around the edges, three scrambled eggs with melted cheddar cheese, and a warm, golden-brown buttermilk biscuit split open with a pat of melting butter.
I set the larger plate in front of Lily.
She stopped drawing, looked down at the food, and then looked up at me.
Her hazel eyes were clear, bright, completely devoid of the shadow that had lived behind them for as long as I could remember.
"Mommy?" she asked.
"Yes, sweet girl?"
"Can I have three pieces?"
I pulled out the wooden bench across from her, sat down, and picked up a piece of bacon from my own plate.
"Lily," I said, leaning across the table and smiling—a real, wide, unobstructed smile that reached all the way to my temples. "You can have as many pieces as your plate can hold. And if your plate isn't big enough, we'll get a bigger plate."
She looked at the bacon, then picked up a strip with her right hand.
Her fingers were steady. The pink mark on her knuckles had completely faded, replaced by the soft, healthy skin of an eight-year-old girl whose hands were made for climbing trees, holding pencils, and building things that didn't break when someone yelled.
She took a bite, chewed slowly, and let out a small, contented sigh.
"This is the best breakfast in the whole world," she said.
"It cost about four dollars," I said with a laugh.
"Is that a lot?"
"No," I said, reaching over and tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "It's just right."
Across the marsh, the horn of an outbound container ship rumbled—a deep, resonant bass note that vibrated through the floorboards of the porch. It was leaving the Wando terminal, heading past Fort Sumter, out into the deep water of the shipping lanes toward the open ocean.
Apex Logistics was still moving freight.
Under the new board of managers, three of my father's former operations directors from Savannah had taken over the dispatch offices. The fleet had been inspected. The owner-operators had received a twelve percent rate increase, funded by the cancellation of Grant’s executive expense accounts and the termination of the luxury box at the Charleston riverfront stadium.
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The trucks were running. The drivers were getting paid.
And every single share of common equity was held in an irrevocable educational trust stamped with the name Lily Hollister.
