Chapter 10: Wednesday Night

Poppy's fever broke on Wednesday afternoon.

Mavis took her home to West Ashley to sleep in her own crib, and she did not ask Holt to argue.

"One night," she said at the door. "Then she's yours again."

She did not say Bryn's name.

At eight Holt came back to the superintendent's house with a duffel bag, his clubs and no daughter.

The kitchen was empty.

Every light in the house was off but the one on the screened porch.

Bryn sat on the wicker couch with her boots off and her feet pulled up under her.

She had a bottle of beer in her hand that she was not drinking.

"She called me a ticket," Bryn said, without turning her head.

"Mavis?"

"She texted me at six this morning."

"She said, don't make her father a ticket to anywhere."

Holt set the duffel down.

"What did you say?"

"I said I'd never owned one in my life."

She looked at him then.

The porch light had caught the sunflower on her forearm and the line of her jaw.

"She's right to say it," Bryn went on. "She loves you, and she lost her daughter."

"If I want something from you, it's you."

"And what do you want?"

"I want you to play on Thursday and be better than every man there."

"And after that?"

"After that I want to walk the 14th at dawn with you and a thermos and nobody to see."

"Is that all?"

"No," she said. "That's what I'm saying out loud."

He crossed the porch in three steps.

He stopped in front of her, close enough to feel the warmth coming off her skin.

"You said you weren't asking me for anything," he said.

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