All of this was going through my mind as I held her, all of these strange and good and terrified feelings, and all of it was going through hers as well because she was shaking.

  “How — how have you been?” she asked.

  I chuckled. “We’re not doing that right now,” I said. “Not right now.”

  She nodded.

  “Why are you here?”

  She sniffed and looked up me, those huge eyes finally seeing me. “I got — caught. I was coming back. Made it to Edisto, right into town at the old laundromat. I stopped at the corner store to get gas, and then…” She trailed off.

  “And they got you?”

  She nodded again. “Came out of nowhere. A big guy and two others, smaller. Another one was driving the truck they brought me over here in.”

  “When was this?”

  “About a day ago.”

  I swallowed. “They’ve had you for a day?” I clenched my teeth and looked out one of the few remaining windows of my bar. “The guys outside?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “They said they were keeping me for something. ‘One for one,’ they said. Some ‘unfinished business.’ I had no idea what they were talking about. I still don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  I took a deep breath and swallowed. “It’s complicated.” I looked over at Billy, still standing by Shalice’s side. “But I want you to know this is not my fault.”

  Fellows and Joey were suddenly there, too. Joey had his hand on Hannah’s shoulder, and he was squeezing it gently. “He’s right,” he said. “Mason and I — we were… we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She forced a laugh. “Don’t you guys think that’s sort of your thing, now? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  I knew what she was getting at. Danger and severely pissed-off people seemed to follow me around. It was something I’d come to rely on.

  “But why you?” Joey asked. “How’d they know?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea, honestly. They just grabbed me and threw me in the back of their truck and took me to a little house outside of town. I think my keys are still in my car.” She paused. “How did they know?”

  “They’re not… the sort of people I’m used to dealing with. They’ve got eyes and ears everywhere. They operate out of Charleston, but they’re everywhere. And they’re well-resourced. And for some reason, they thought they’d come bug me tonight.”

  “You didn’t do anything to deserve being bugged?”

  I shook my head. “No, I guarantee it. But this guy did.” I nodded toward Billy, who shirked my stare by focusing his attention on the sleeping Shalice. “He came down from Charleston with that guy over there. They think I’m the sort of guy who’ll help them get out of a bit of a bind.”

  “What sort of bind?” Hannah asked.

  “The sort where people die.”

  Hannah glanced at Billy dismissively, then at Fellows, who was standing awkwardly behind Joey, his hands in his pockets. “You don’t know Mason very well, do you?”

  Both men shook their heads. “We didn’t know where else to go,” Fellows said.

  “Anywhere but here,” Hannah said. “Don’t you realize what sort of stupid crap Mason gets himself into?”

  “We do now,” Fellows said.

  I started to say something, to try to defend myself, but I stopped. What was the point? Was she wrong?

  Hannah pulled away from me and started toward the bar. “I need a drink.”

  I smiled, then wiped it away. This isn’t the time to be proud, I thought. “Let me help you with that,” I said instead. “What do you want?”

  “Something strong. And while you’re making it, you can fill me in on what the heck’s going on here.”

  I nodded, sighed, and got to work. I didn’t have any idea what to make her at first. Normally saying “something strong” to a bartender meant that you wanted something you could sip on a bit, something that had some depth to it and meant something, but at the same time wasn’t so pretentious that it took your mind off whatever it was that made you want something strong in the first place.

  I typically read my customers pretty well. The Oldies are easy — they want the same thing all the time. Usually beer, of which I keep a few good selections on hand. If not beer, than something traditional and straightforward — Old Fashioneds, martinis, whiskey sours. If they're new to the bar or to the town, I can tell pretty quickly how they're feeling from their facial expressions and their nonverbal cues. Downtrodden, they get a whiskey sour. Just enough to perk to remind them of the hope there is in life.

  Jumpy and upbeat to the point of jittery and annoying, they get a sidecar with a float of a special extra-oaked bourbon I keep on hand. It’s the sort of drink you go into thinking it’ll be an easy sipper, then you find out rather quickly you’ve been outmatched. Calms down even the most ferociously hyper patron.

  Melodramatic? I’ve got a special gin-based punch I whip up for that, using a melon liqueur I make. (Melodramatic — melon — get it?)

  Point is, whatever the ailment, I’ve got a prescription.

  Except now.

  Except for Hannah.

  I didn’t have a go-to drink for “haven’t seen you in almost a year and we were in love and I truly miss you but I’m also here because these thugs want something from you and we’re all going to die if you don’t give it to them.”

  A daiquiri could be strong enough if I made it like David Embury's recipe, but it was too peppy.

  A pour of something neat was too hamfisted, too obviously in the realm of “private eye detective story gone wrong.”

  And anything in-between was already taken. A margarita was just a daiquiri with culture. All the sours were out the window, and I knew she didn’t love gin.

  Sidecar.

  The World War I-era drink came to me in a flash, and I knew it was right. If ever there was a drink that spoke volumes about where we’ve come from and what we’ve done, all while remaining pleasantly and unashamedly in the background, it was the Sidecar.

  Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice. Couldn’t be simpler, and shouldn’t be underestimated. I grabbed a fine bottle of XO from the top shelf and made the drink. We didn’t have any chilled coupes, but I gave the drink an extra couple of shakes to chill it more, then expressed some of the lemon rind around the rim of the glass to open up the flavors.

  She came over to the bar and sat down as I worked. I was slow, methodical. Something inside me knew Rafael was out there appreciating this. Hell, he could probably see me through one of the gigantic holes in the building, making a drink for my long-lost love. And a part of me knew he wasn't going to act, not yet. He'd keep his word and wait until midnight. If he were anything at all like the thugs I'd dealt with my entire career, he'd have a flair for the dramatic; a whimsical side to him that appreciated the sort of thing he'd done here.

  He’d want us to really dig in and feel it. To bring us back together, for just one night, before blow it all up in our faces.

  In a way, it bought us time because I knew now that he wasn't going to jump the gun. He'd honor the couple of hours we had left.

  And I’d do my best to get Hannah out of here safely.

  19

  We drank together, sipping the Sidecars quietly, pondering the fruity esters and our place in the universe. She didn't say anything, and I didn't want her to. Joey, Fellows, and Billy murmured quietly in the corner of the room near Shalice, but I couldn't hear what they were saying.

  I closed my eyes and squeezed out whatever recognition of what was really happening around me, then opened them again and pretended to see my bar the way it should have been — full, happy, hearty laughter filling the air between pangs of oldies music and the clinking of glasses. My friends surrounded me, Hannah and Joey and Shalice and McNab. All of them smiling and raising their glasses to me.

  I looked at the wall and tried not to see the twisted, scarred sections of blasted-out windows but the decor Joey had chosen — a painted stripe pattern on the upper half of the wall and horizontal rows of distressed wood slats on the bottom half.

  Yes, I thought. That’s it. That’s the place I built.

  Then I blinked, and it was all gone, replaced once again by the terror and smoking mayhem, the headlights pointing in on him and the strangers talking to Joey.

  And yet Hannah was still there.

  I suddenly felt as though something had physically struck me. I had to lean forward and grab the edge of the bar to keep my balance, and I wondered if this was what having a heart attack felt like. The sharp pain passed, then settled into a constant uncomfortable pressure.

  I knew what it was.

  It was my subconscious, telling me something I didn’t want to hear.

  She came back.

  She came back for you.

  I didn’t want to listen, but the physical reminder — and her bright, wide-eyed face staring at me from across the bar — wouldn’t let me forget.

  She’s here for you.

  Not because the asshole outside kidnapped her and forced her into this miss — while that was true, that wasn’t why she was here.

  She'd been to France, Italy, Germany — a whirlwind European tour, and she hadn't told me when she'd be coming back. Or if she'd be coming back at all. After her brother's and father's death and the nightmare at their estate south of here, I knew she didn't need any more reason to call it quits and just start over.

  I would have done the same thing.

  But I thought about what she’d said when she came in. ‘I made it to Edisto, to the old laundromat.’

  She had no business in Edisto Beach except for me.

  I glanced up at her face and saw the concern in her eyes.

  “Mason,” she started.

  “You came back for me,” I mumbled.

  She nodded.

  “You came back… but why?”

  “For you,” she said. “You just said that.”

  “Why me?”

  She smiled halfway, then shrugged. “You’re… you. I’ve been everywhere, Mason. I’ve seen everything. We traveled a lot when I was younger, so this was hardly my first visit to Europe. I got halfway around the world and realized I’d seen it all already and that I was really just running from something.”

  “If anyone had a reason to run away and start over, it’d be you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess that’s true.”

  “But you came back.”

  “I did. I think I like the idea of starting over, of building something new.” She paused. “But I don’t want to do it alone.”

  I felt something strange, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. A tear. I let it hang there in the corner of my eye, ever so carefully lifting my finger to it to press it away. “Hannah,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “Stop it, Mason,” she said. “Those guys out there don’t know who you are. What you’re capable of. They don’t know not to get in-between you and something you care about, and I know they don’t know how much you care about this place.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. “But I wasn’t talking about them. In general. You shouldn’t have come back. The whole world’s out there. All of it. And sure, you’ve seen plenty of it. Enough to know that you’re not missing anything. Hell, I would’ve gone to Asia. Somewhere in China, maybe. I’ve never been there before. You know there are bars in China that —”

  She grabbed my shirt and yanked me toward her and then I felt her lips pressing into mine. I was leaning uncomfortably over the wide bar — we hadn’t anticipated having to kiss people over the top of it when we’d put it in — and I could feel my pants dipping into a tiny puddle of melted ice. But I didn’t dare move.

  She kept kissing me, now holding my face, and I reached out for her hand. She finally pulled away but left her hand there, resting in mine, and stared up at me.

  "I came back for you, Mason," she said. "I saw everything I ever thought I'd want to see and got over everything — my dad, my brother. All of it, I tried to heal. I think I have, mostly. But something was missing. Something I hadn't expected to miss.”

  “Please don’t say it was me.”

  “It was you, Mason. I wanted you. That’s why I came back.”

  “Hannah, this is crazy. What are we supposed to do? Go travel the world on a retired bartender’s salary? I can’t give you what —”

  “I don’t want what I had, Mason. Like I said, I’ve already done that. That’s my past. I want you to be my future.”

  I sighed. What she was saying sounded nice. Perfect, even. But still, I couldn’t imagine how it would work. This woman didn’t want to be in Edisto Beach, South Carolina. She was too classy for that. I couldn’t keep her here, and I had nowhere else to go.

  “Where would we go? Where would we live?”

  “I don’t care, Mason. I’ll stay here. Edisto’s a fine place to live.”

  “Eight-hundred people live here. The only grocery store worth anything closes at 9pm. And the movie rental place is a couple shelves in the back of a used furniture store.”

  “You can stream everything online these days,” she said. “No need for a rental store.”

  “Don’t even get me started on the internet speeds out here.”

  “Shut up, Mason,” she said. I shut up. “I love you. Okay?”

  I leaned back, standing up once again, and I felt the ice-cold wet part of my pants pressing against the outside of my thigh. It was uncomfortable, but I couldn’t pull away.

  I hadn’t heard — hadn’t thought those words in thirty years. My late wife had been the last person I’d spoken them to, and I’d always believed she’d be the last person I’d need to speak them to.

  “I love you, Mason. I didn’t know it then — didn’t want to know it — but I figured it out pretty quickly in Europe. I walked into a bar, a little tiny thing at the end of a strip of run-down pubs. It was the only one that looked like it could serve a proper Old Fashioned, just the way you taught me.”

  I couldn’t help but smile as she continued.

  "It was dark inside, and the place smelled like old frying grease and vinegar. You never would've let that fly. I walked up and tried to order, but the place was packed, and no one could hear me. That's when I knew."

  I laughed. “You knew you loved me when you couldn’t get the bartender’s attention to order a drink?”

  "No! I knew I loved you when I looked around and you weren't there. It was a sudden thing, I think. I was just standing there, getting frustrated, and I felt myself getting angry that you weren't there. I hadn't even been thinking about you, honestly. And then, poof, my eyes start looking around at everyone, and I'm getting frantic because I can't see you, as if we'd walked in together."

  “What’d you do?”

  "I left. Too many people inside. I came back outside and just stood there on the corner. It was snowing, I think. Maybe. I'm not sure — I was pretty rattled. At first, I couldn't figure out why I'd expected to see you there, why after ten cities and countless hotels and plenty of decent Old Fashioneds why then was when I suddenly started looking for you, but then it hit me. I was doing all the things I knew we would do if you were there, too. All the stuff I was doing was just going through the motions. I don’t even really like Old Fashioned, but I had this idea that I needed to find the best one in Europe.”

  She stopped and laughed, and I joined her. We both took the final sips of our Sidecars, and I collected the glasses.

  "So I knew it then. I think I'd known it all along, but sometimes your subconscious doesn't let you in on it until it thinks you're ready. And apparently, it thought I was ready in that bar, getting jostled and pushed around by all the people who weren't you."

  I nodded. “Very interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Sorry, I just mean… hell, yeah, I think it’s interesting.”

  “…and why is that story interesting? I just poured my heart out, Mason. I —”

  “Because I love you, too.”

  She stopped. Looked down, her wavy hair falling around her face. Pushed it back with her free hand. Looked back up at me.

  “You — you do?”

  “Hell, I fell in love with you the moment you walked through that door, the first time I ever laid eyes on you.”

  “Oh, come on. You don’t believe in that ‘love at first sight’ stuff?”

  “Okay, fine. I guess it was the same sort of feeling you had. That my subconscious knew it, that it knew you were someone I could love. If you were interested, if you wanted to explore it, if you happened to even come up to the bar and order something. I think our subconscious protects us, in a way. It doesn’t let us get too attached or too weird too soon, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  "So I looked at you, and I was interested, but I thought your brother was your husband or something, and then…"

  “Yeah.” Her voice was softer now, sadder.

  I didn’t intend to open old wounds, so I shifted. “But after everything, after the Wassamassaw, you going to Europe, after all of it, when it was just me and Joey, I… knew it.”

  “You didn’t say anything?”

  “To whom? I don’t even have your phone number, Hannah.”

  She sat in her barstool, stunned. Her mouth opened wide. “Oh, my God. I didn’t even think about that. Seriously?”

  I shrugged, laughing. “Yeah, but I sorta thought I was past that ‘asking a girl for her number’ thing, so when you left and had to get a different international phone, I didn’t think about it.”

  “Man, that’s funny. So you couldn’t have told me if you wanted to.”

  “Nope,” I said. “But I didn’t think I should have. I didn’t believe it would be anything but bad news — falling in love with someone who’s been through all that and just wants to be alone? Sounds like a recipe for heartburn.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So where does that leave us?” I asked.

 

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