“I just wanted to check in and see how everyone was doing after the big scare,” he said.

Patricia had thought she might not see him again after she’d overreacted the night the man got on their roof and shouted at him, as if he were the danger rather than the person trying to get into the house. She’d felt ashamed to think the worst of someone for no reason, so seeing him on their porch as if nothing had happened filled her with a profound sense of relief.

“I’m still kicking myself I wasn’t here,” Carter said, standing up from the table and shaking James’s hand when she led him into the dining room. “Thank God you came by. The kids say you were the man of the hour. You’re always welcome in our home.”

James Harris took this literally, and Patricia soon found herself listening for his knock as Korey ate the last roll or Blue complained that he couldn’t possibly finish his zucchini in this heat. Night after night she’d find James Harris on their front porch and they’d exchange comments about that month’s book club book, or he’d ask what the latest update was on getting the air conditioner fixed, or how Miss Mary was doing, or he’d tell her he’d gone to church with Slick and Leland. Then she’d invite him inside for ice cream.

“How does he know exactly when dessert’s going on the table?” Carter complained after James’s fourth visit, hopping up and down on one foot while peeling off his sweaty socks in the bedroom. “It’s like he can hear our freezer door open all the way down the street.”

But Patricia liked having him there because Carter had only managed to keep his promise to be home before dark for two days before he started staying late at work again. Most nights she ate alone with the children, and because Korey was going to two-week soccer camp at the end of the month and apparently had to spend the night with every single one of her friends before she left, most nights it was just her and Blue at the supper table.

Around the fifth night James Harris stopped by Patricia started leaving the windows open later, and then she started leaving the upstairs windows open overnight, and then the downstairs windows, and before long she just left the screen doors on their latches, and the house throbbed softly with fans sitting in open windows all day and night.

The other reason she was glad James Harris came by was because she didn’t know how to talk to Blue anymore. All Blue wanted to talk about was Nazis. She’d helped him get an adult library card and now he checked out photograph-packed Time-Life books about World War II. She found his old spiral notebooks covered in drawings of swastikas, SS lightning bolts, Panzer tanks, and skulls. Whenever she tried to talk to him about his summer Oasis program or going to the Creekside pool, he always countered with Nazis.

James Harris spoke fluent Nazi.

“You know,” he said to Blue, “the entire American space program was built by Wernher von Braun and a bunch of other Nazis the Americans gave asylum to because they knew how to build rockets.”

Or:

“We like to think that we beat Hitler, but it was really the Russians who turned the tide.”

Or:

“Did you know the Nazis counterfeited British money and tried to destabilize their economy?”

Patricia enjoyed watching Blue hold his own in a conversation with an adult, even though she wished they would talk about something besides the Third Reich. But her mother had told her to appreciate what she had, not whine about what she didn’t, and so she let them fill the space that had been left empty by Carter and Korey.

Those evenings over ice cream, sitting in the dining room with the windows open and a warm, salty breeze blowing through the house and Blue and James Harris talking about World War II, were the last time Patricia felt truly happy. Even after everything that came later, when everything in her life hurt, the memory of those nights wrapped her in a soft, sweet glow that often carried her away to sleep.

After almost three weeks, Patricia found herself actually looking forward to Grace’s birthday party. She finally felt confident enough to go outside at night, even if it was just down the block, and Carter had promised to be home early and she felt like they could finally get back to normal.

* * *

—

The second Patricia and Carter were out the door, Mrs. Greene stepped out of her shoes and peeled off her socks and stuck them in her purse. It was too hot to have anything on her feet. Blue and Korey were spending the night out, and no one was home to care if she went barefoot or not.

The carpet felt hot beneath the soles of her feet. Every door and window in the house stood open, but the puny breeze that trickled in from the backyard was sticky and stunk of the marsh.

“You feel like eating something tonight, Miss Mary?” she asked.

Miss Mary hummed happily to herself. Mrs. Campbell had said she’d been going through her old photo albums all week, and if she hadn’t lost so much weight Mrs. Greene would think she almost seemed like her old self.

“I found it,” Miss Mary said, smiling. She rolled her boiled-egg eyes up to Mrs. Greene. “Do you want to see it?”

An old snapshot rested facedown on her knee. She stroked its back with trembling fingers.

“Who’s it of?” Mrs. Greene asked, reaching for it.

Miss Mary covered it with the flat of her hand.

“Patricia first,” she said.

“You want me to brush out your hair?” Mrs. Greene asked.

Miss Mary looked confused by the change of subject, considered it, then jerked her chin down once.

Mrs. Greene found the wooden hairbrush and stood behind Miss Mary’s chair, and while the old lady looked at the TV and stroked her photograph, Mrs. Greene brushed her sparse gray hair, surrounded by the noise of the rushing fans.

* * *

—

Grace’s parties were everything Patricia thought parties should be when she was a little girl. In the living room, Arthur Rivers had taken off his jacket and sat at the piano playing a medley of college fight songs, which were greeted with boos, cheers, and raucous singing along, depending on the college. He wouldn’t stop as long as people kept bringing him bourbon.

The party spilled from the living room into the dining room, where it swirled in a circle around a table overflowing with miniature ham biscuits, cheese straws, pimento cheese sandwiches, and a tray of crudités that would be thrown out untouched tomorrow morning, and then it flowed through the kitchen and pooled on the sun porch with its panoramic view of the harbor. The white tablecloth-covered bar stood at the end of the room where the crowd was thickest, and two black men in white jackets made an endless stream of drinks behind it.

Every doctor and lawyer and harbor pilot in the Old Village had put on their seersucker and their bow ties and they held glasses and bellowed about what was wrong with Ken Hatfield this season, or if those businesses the hurricane had shut down along Shem Creek a few years ago would ever reopen, and when the Isle of Palms connector would be completed, and where all these damn marsh rats were coming from. Their wives clutched glasses of white wine and wore a veritable jungle of clashing prints—animal prints and floral prints and geometric prints and abstract prints—talking about their children’s plans for the summer, their kitchen renovation projects, and Patricia’s ear. This was the first social event she’d attended since the incident and she felt like everyone was staring at her.

“I can’t tell unless I stand right in front of you so I can see both ears at the same time,” Kitty reassured her.

“Is it that obvious?” Patricia asked, reaching up and smoothing her hair down over her scar.

“It just makes your face look a little cattywampus,” Kitty said, and then she caught Loretta Jones’s elbow as she shouldered past them in the crush. “Loretta, look at Patricia and tell me if you notice anything.”

“Well, that man’s grandmother bit off her ear,” Loretta said, cocking her head to one side. “What do you mean? Did something else happen?”

Patricia wanted to slink away, but Kitty gripped her wrist.

“It was his great-aunt,” Kitty said. “And she just took a nibble.”

Loretta cocked her head and said, “Do you need a good plastic surgeon? I can get you a name. You look lopsided. Oh, there’s Sadie Funche. Excuse me.”

“Loretta always was a pill,” Kitty said as Loretta disappeared into the crowd.

* * *

—