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He always stopped there when he was going to the store because Gus’s family didn’t have a car. One of the daughters hopped up and rode with him, and they did their shopping at Capers General Store. When he got home he didn’t unpack the groceries right away. Instead he showered, found a Budweiser and a book by Dylan Thomas, and went to sit on the porch.
    She still had trouble believing it, even as she held the proof in her hands.
    It had been in the newspaper at her parents’ house three Sundays ago. She had gone to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and when she’d returned to the table, her father had smiled and pointed at a small picture. “Remember this?”
    He handed her the paper, and after an uninterested first glance, something in the picture caught her eye and she took a closer look. “It can’t be,” she whispered, and when her father looked at her curiously, she ignored him, sat down, and read the article without speaking. She vaguely remembered her mother coming to the table and sitting opposite her, and when she finally put aside the paper, her mother was staring at her with the same expression her father had just moments before.
    “Are you okay?” her mother asked over her coffee cup. “You look a little pale.” She didn’t answer right away, she couldn’t, and it was then that she’d noticed her hands were shaking. That had been when it started.
    “And here it will end, one way or the other,” she whispered again. She refolded the scrap of paper and put it back, remembering that she had left her parents’ home later that day with the paper so she could cut out the article. She read it again before she went to bed that night, trying to fathom the coincidence, and read it again the next morning as if to make sure the whole thing wasn’t a dream. And now, after three weeks of long walks alone, after three weeks of distraction, it was the reason she’d come.
    When asked, she said her erratic behavior was due to stress. It was the perfect excuse; everyone understood, including Lon, and that’s why he hadn’t argued when she’d wanted to get away for a couple of days. The wedding plans were stressful to everyone involved. Almost five hundred people were invited, including the governor, one senator, and the ambassador to Peru. It was too much, in her opinion, but their engagement was news and had dominated the social pages since they had announced their plans six months ago. Occasionally she felt like running away with Lon to get married without the fuss. But she knew he wouldn’t agree; like the aspiring politician he was, he loved being the center of attention.
    She took a deep breath and stood again. “It’s now or never,” she whispered, then picked up her things and went to the door. She paused only slightly before opening it and going downstairs. The manager smiled as she walked by, and she could feel his eyes on her as she left and went to her car. She slipped behind the wheel, looked at herself one last time, then started the engine and turned right onto Front Street.
    She wasn’t surprised that she still knew her way around town so well. Even though she hadn’t been here in years, it wasn’t large and she navigated the streets easily. After crossing the Trent River on an old-fashioned drawbridge, she turned onto a gravel road and began the final leg of her journey.
    It was beautiful here in the low country, as it always had been. Unlike the Piedmont area where she grew up, the land was flat, but it had the same silty, fertile soil that was ideal for cotton and tobacco. Those two crops and timber kept the towns alive in this part of the state, and as she drove along the road outside town, she saw the beauty that had first attracted people to this region.
    To her, it hadn’t changed at all. Broken sunlight passed through water oaks and hickory trees a hundred feet tall, illuminating the colors of fall. On her left, a river the color of iron veered toward the road and then