The Son Who Returned to Expose Their Shame novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Maxed Out
Out after five years, I sit down at my family's Sunday table, tear up the confession they want me to sign, and hear the cane tapping in the hall: the girl I was jailed for running down, on my brother's arm.
My family let me do five years for what my brother did, and on the day I got out, none of them came.
The gate buzzed at 8:02 a.m.
I walked out with a paper bag holding a toothbrush, a library paperback and $41.
The parking lot was empty except for one car.
A gold Buick the size of a boat, parked across two spaces.
My grandmother was leaning on the hood in a straw hat, eating a peach.
"You got tall," she said.
"I was already tall, Gran."
"Then you got taller. Get in. The air conditioning only works if you yell at it."
She hugged me first.
She smelled like peaches and cigarettes she swears she quit in 1990.
I held on longer than I meant to.
In the car I asked the only question I had.
"Did they say anything?"
Gran kept her eyes on the road.
"Your mother said Sunday lunch is at one, same as always. She didn't say you were invited."
"Take me there."
"Roark."
"Please."
She looked at me for a long second at the red light.
Then she turned toward the Battery.
The house on South Battery hadn't changed.
White columns. Black shutters. The same iron gate that stuck in summer.
I lifted it the way I used to and it opened.
The housekeeper answered the door.
She saw my face and went pale.
"Mr. Roark."
"Is lunch still at one?"
She didn't answer, so I walked past her into the dining room.
They were all there.
My father at the head of the table in a yellow bow tie, carving ham.
My mother at the other end in pearls.
My sister Callie, halfway down, with her thumbnail in her mouth.
And Bryce in my old chair, at my father's right hand.
The knife stopped.
My mother set her fork down without a sound.
"Roark," she said. "You could have called."
"I didn't have a phone. You stopped paying for it the week I went in."
Nobody said anything.
My mother turned her head toward the kitchen door.
"Would you put the silver away, please? All of it."
The housekeeper came and started taking the forks off the sideboard.
She wouldn't look at me.
Bryce stood up first.
Blond, tan, a linen shirt open at the collar, a gold signet ring on his little finger.
My father's ring. The one my grandfather wore.
He came around the table and hugged me hard.
"Brother. God, look at you. Welcome home."
He smelled like the same cologne he wore at twenty-three.
I didn't hug him back.
He let go and kept smiling.
"Sit, sit. Somebody get him a plate."
Nobody got me a plate.
My father wiped his hands on his napkin.
He reached under the table and brought up a thick white envelope.
He slid it down the tablecloth.
"Twenty thousand dollars," he said. "And a lease on an apartment in Columbus, Ohio. A year paid. There's work up there for a man with your history."
"My history."
"Don't be difficult."
Under the envelope was a typed page.
I picked it up.
I, Roark Keene, accept full responsibility for the events of May twenty-sixth. I apologize without reservation to Miss Annie Garner and to my family for the pain I caused.
There was a line for my signature.
"For the press," my mother said softly. "There's going to be attention this week. It would help everyone if you said it yourself."
"Said what?"
"That you're sorry."
I looked at Callie.
She was nineteen the last time I saw her, in the witness box, in a navy dress my mother picked out.
She was twenty-four now.
She stared at her plate.
"Callie," I said.
Her shoulders jumped.
She didn't look up.
I tore the page in half.
Then in half again.
I set the pieces on top of the ham.
"I'm not going to Ohio," I said. "I'm staying with Gran. I'm staying in Charleston."
My father's face went the dark red it went before he shouted.
He didn't shout. He never did with guests in the house, and I counted as a guest now.
"You will not embarrass this family again."
"Again?"
"Five years, Roark. Five years we've had people whispering at church."
"I had people whispering too," I said. "Mostly about who'd get my shoes."
Bryce laughed, then stopped when nobody joined him.
My mother folded her napkin into a perfect square.
"There's a party Saturday," she said. "It's important to your father. To all of us. I'd like you to be gone by then."
"Then I'll see you Saturday."
That was when I saw the invitation.
It was propped against the silver bowl on the sideboard, cream card, gold edges, the kind you pay extra for.
Keene Development celebrates forty years.
Please join Leland and Joelle Keene in honoring their son Bryce, the company's new Chief Executive Officer.
And celebrating his engagement to Miss Annie Garner.
I read the name three times.
Annie.
The girl in the road.
The girl I'd gone to prison for leaving there.
"Roark," my mother said. "Put that down."
Behind me, out in the hall, something tapped on the heart pine floor.
Tap.
A step.
Tap.
A cane.
Bryce's face lit up.
"There she is," he said. "Babe, come in. You won't believe who's here."
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