“You’re sick.” Julianne promised to check in with her again later that day to see if Turner had called her yet.

Daisy was the next member of the interrogation team.

“Who was that boy who picked you up last night?” she asked casually over pancakes in the kitchen.

“Just a boy from school.”

“That’s all?” Daisy asked, looking disappointed. “Is he in love with you?”

“No,” Savannah said, smiling. “He hardly knows me.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“No. I don’t know him either,” she said, her feet firmly on the ground.

“Then why’d you go out with him if you’re not in love with him?” Daisy asked, looking disgusted.

“Because we wanted to eat dinner and see a movie, and I figured I might as well do it with him, since he asked.” Daisy nodded at the logic of what she said, but found it pathetically unromantic. Their father walked in, in his tennis clothes, while they were talking.

“Was that one of the Ashby boys I saw you leaving the house with last night?” he asked with equal interest. Clearly, her dating life was the hot topic in town.

“Yes.”

“Nice kid?”

“I think so. He seemed like it,” Savannah conceded.

“I play tennis with his father. They’ve had some hard times. His wife died last year. A drunk driver hit her on Highway 526, five miles from home. It must be hard on the kids.”

“He didn’t say anything about it. We just talked about school.” Tom nodded, and told her that Henry was coming in from New Orleans that afternoon.

“He’s anxious to see you. He’ll be home for dinner tonight. Travis and Scarlette are coming over too. The whole family will be together,” he said, looking happy, as Luisa walked into the kitchen and ignored him. She said she was going to the country club for a spa day that was just for women. Tom said he was picking Henry up at the airport, and Luisa said she’d be home in the late afternoon. She left the house five minutes later, and when they were alone again, Savannah offered to take Daisy to the aquarium, which sounded like fun to both of them. It was called the South Carolina Aquarium, and was said to be very good.

She and Daisy left the house at eleven o’clock, walked all over the aquarium, and had lunch there, and came back at three in the afternoon. Tallulah said their father had just left to pick up Henry, so they played Go Fish and War and Hearts and Gin Rummy, and shortly after five o’clock Tom and Henry walked in. Daisy flew down the stairs to greet her brother. He was a year younger than Travis and was a handsome young man with a powerful athletic build. He had played football in college and instead of UVA had gone to Duke. Savannah knew that he had been an art history major and eventually wanted to teach. He wasn’t interested in business like his older brother or his father, and he was working in an important art gallery in New Orleans, and as an intern at a museum. He was interested in curating too.

After Henry had lavishly hugged his younger sister, he looked up the stairs and saw Savannah smiling at him. She looked no different than she had as a little girl, as Travis had already told her, just bigger.

“I am sooooo happy to see you,” Henry said softly, as he came up the stairs to where she stood and folded her into a bear hug. “I am so glad you’re here. Travis and Daisy already told me all about you. I came home this weekend just to see you.” And the way he said it, she believed him. They walked back down the stairs and into the living room. Fortunately, Luisa hadn’t come home yet, or she would have objected to his making a fuss over Savannah. But Henry didn’t care. He had never danced to his mother’s tune.

They sat down and talked for a while, and he asked pertinent questions, what she liked, what she did, what her favorite music was, her favorite books and movies, the names of her friends. He wanted to know all about her. And his eyes grew sad when he asked about her mother.

“I didn’t like to write when I was a kid, so I didn’t. But I always thought about her, and about you. Your mom did something very special for me when she was married to our daddy,” he said solemnly, as though he was about to share an important secret. “I’m dyslexic, and your mama tutored me for all those years. I hated the tutor I had, so she did it. I think she took classes to learn how to do it. Anyway, thanks to her, I got through school. I never forgot it. She was the kindest, most patient woman I have ever known, the spirit of compassion and love.” Tom had been standing in the doorway and heard Henry say it, and walked away with a pained expression. Neither Henry nor Savannah had seen him there, and then he disappeared.

“She never told me,” Savannah said honestly. “That’s pretty good if you got into Duke.”

“It’s a good school,” he confirmed.

They went on talking, and eventually Luisa came home from her spa day. She came to kiss her son, and then rapidly went upstairs to change. She wasn’t happy to see him talking to Savannah, but she didn’t comment, and she found her husband looking unhappy in their room. He had forgotten about Alexa tutoring Henry for all those years, and how loving she had been about it. Remembering it made him feel sick.

“What’s wrong with you?” Luisa asked him, noticing how unhappy he looked.

“Nothing. Just thinking. How was your spa day?”

“Very nice, thank you,” she said coolly. She had no intention of warming up to him again until Savannah went back to New York. She was planning to punish him for the entire time, to teach him a lesson. She wanted him to get the message loud and clear so he didn’t bring her back again. She was not going to tolerate having Alexa’s daughter in her house. But so far she was overruled.

The atmosphere at dinner that night was lively and jolly, thanks to Henry. He told funny jokes, did hysterical imitations, and teased everyone, including his mother. Travis was far more reserved, although a nice person too. Scarlette loved her soon-to-be brother-in-law, and he teased her mercilessly too, about the size of the wedding. Scarlette said her younger brothers did the same. Henry was twenty-four and he looked young, but there was also something more sophisticated about him. Savannah wondered if living in another city had shown him more of the world. Travis still lived in the family cocoon in Charleston. And even their father had done so all his life. Only Henry had really left home, although he had chosen another southern city. But New Orleans was bigger and more sophisticated than Charleston, and he seemed to spend a lot of time in London and New York. He knew all of Savannah’s favorite haunts in New York.

With Henry in charge of most of the conversation, everyone was in a good mood, even his mother. She asked him at the end of dinner how that lovely girl was that he went out with the previous summer, and he gave her a strange look.

“She’s fine, Mama. She just got engaged.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, gushing sympathy for him, and he laughed.

“I’m not.” Henry talked a lot about someone called Jeff who was his roommate. Apparently he was from North Carolina, and they had taken several trips recently. Luisa didn’t ask about him.

By the time they finished dinner, everyone’s sides hurt from laughing, and after they went back into the living room, Henry played cards with the girls. They were still playing when his parents said goodnight and went upstairs. Travis and Scarlette had left by then, since there was a breakfast shower for Scarlette the next day. She said she would have asked Savannah, but she’d be bored to tears. And Travis had told her she’d better not invite Savannah or his mother would be livid, so she hadn’t, but felt terrible about it. But she did what Travis said.

Luisa would have liked to keep Henry away from Savannah too, but there had been no obvious way to exclude her from the evening, and she knew Henry would have objected and accused her of being rude. He never hesitated to challenge his mother, and tell her when he didn’t like her behavior. He wasn’t afraid of her. And Daisy had already told him on the phone that their mother had been awful to her, so he had gone out of his way to be nice to Savannah at dinner. And when he said he had come home just to see her, it was true.