By the time Carson got to Dunleavy’s the ovens were lit, the fryers jump-started, and the coffee made, and Ashley was covering both of their tables. After punching in, she almost tripped over the liquor shipment that had come earlier that morning. The top box nearly tipped but she grabbed it just in time.

“What happened to you?” Ashley asked when she burst into the kitchen to deliver the order.

Carson was tying her apron around her waist. “Don’t ask,” she said. She grabbed a stack of menus and headed out to face the lunchtime rush. She needed to keep busy or she’d go crazy with worry over Delphine.

Brian gave her several of his punishing looks during the shift but Carson felt too numb to care. She went through the motions like an automaton, not laughing at the cornball jokes the patrons made, answering the monotonous questions that she’d heard a thousand times with a dull voice. Ashley sensed something was wrong and gave her a wide berth during the shift.

When the last customer finally left, Brian waved them over to the bar. He was drying a glass with a towel.

“Ashley, you can go home early,” he told her. “You covered the shift. Carson, you close up. Any complaints?”

“I don’t mind helping close,” Ashley said, but her hesitancy was polite more than altruistic.

“Go on,” Carson told Ashley. “Thanks for covering for me.”

Carson began stacking dirty glasses on a tray.

“What happened to you today?” Brian asked her when Ashley walked off.

Carson shrugged. “I got held up. Family problems,” she replied.

Brian studied her face, then let the matter drop. “Okay, then,” he said, and went back to drying his glasses. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

Carson ran the cocktail trays through the dishwasher and put away clean glasses so hot she had to pull them out with a towel. After that she got the restaurant ready for the evening shift. Brian had left the bar and gone to pick up something from the grocery store. Carson was alone in the pub. She stocked the waitress station with ice and wiped each table, making sure the condiments were filled.

The last task was cleaning the bar. She walked behind it, polishing the lacquered wood clean. Wiping the liquor bottles was next. Her hands ran along the bottles one by one as a sudden thirst felt like it was burning in her throat. Her hands shook on the bottles, the urge suddenly so strong. Looking around, she saw that she was alone. Quietly, she reached under the bar for a shot glass and grabbed a bottle of tequila from the shelf. She filled the shot glass, her hand shaking so hard she spilled some. She took a deep breath and paused, staring at the glass.

Her mind railed at her not to drink it, to fight the temptation to fall off the wagon. Yet even as she heard the voice in her head, she knew she would do it. She didn’t care anymore about sobriety. What did it matter? Her mother was a drunk. Her father was a drunk. So was she.

Ducking low, she drank the tequila down in a gulp. Carson winced at the jolt of what felt like needles flowing down to her stomach. Brian would fire her if he caught her. But Carson was far from caring at this point. Without thinking further, she poured a second shot and, closing her eyes, sent it down the hatch. Licking her lips, she screwed the top back on the bottle, rinsed the shot glass and wiped it with a towel, then neatly put all back in order. Reaching for a lemon slice, she popped it into her mouth to mask the scent of tequila.

The clock over the bar was neon with a beer logo surrounding the casing. Brian had told her that the distributors coaxed him to put it up there with season tickets to the Citadel games. Glancing at it, Carson saw it was time to go home. She went to the back room to get her bag and lock up.

Home. Where the hell is that? she wondered bitterly, putting her fingers to her forehead and pressing hard. The one place she’d always felt was her home—Sea Breeze—was the last place she wanted to go to now. She felt adrift without an anchor. Desperately sad and lonely. She just wanted to forget this horrible day. Forget Delphine and Nate and Mamaw. Forget Blake.

And her mother. A horrid image of her mother burning in her bed flashed in her mind.

Oh God, she needed another drink. A real drink.

She spied the shipment of alcohol waiting to be shelved. The top box was open and partially emptied. In a rush, Carson pulled out a bottle of Southern Comfort and quickly wrapped it in one of the dirty towels. Looking over her shoulder, she stuck it in her purse, locked the back door, and walked directly to the golf cart. She opened up the small metal trunk in the back. Carefully she set the bottle next to her beach bag. When she turned back toward the restaurant, her heart leaped in her chest. Brian was a few yards away, walking back to the pub. He was carrying the mail and shuffling through the envelopes.

Carson didn’t wave or shout out a hello. She slipped into the cart and fired the engine, her heart racing. She’d never stolen anything before in her life. Not even when she was a kid and her friends shoplifted for fun. Carson had never been able to do it, because she knew it was wrong.

As she drove down the street, farther from Dunleavy’s, she was surprised how, after a morning of ragged emotions, she now felt absolutely nothing.

The floating dock was rickety, bobbing in the small waves. Carson stepped carefully on the creaking wood. She’d been drinking all afternoon, knew she’d had too much and it was not a good idea to be on a floating piece of wood when you’d had a few too many.

She sat in a gloomy funk and let her legs dangle in the water. She heard a fish jump and swung her head around, instinctively searching for Delphine. The black water of the cove was bleak and empty.

“Delphine!” she cried out.

Tired, woozy, she laid her head on her arms, awash in loneliness. She longed to hear Delphine’s nasal whistle, to see her sweet face. Carson turned her head and stared out at the water with longing. How was she? What was she doing now? When was Blake going to call and tell her the status?

Carson dragged herself back to sitting position, cradling the bottle of Southern Comfort in her arms. She brought the bottle to her lips and drank. She had no idea what time it was. It had to be at least nine o’clock, because the sun had set and the sky was turning that deep purplish gray that heralded night. The current was running with the tide, churning the mud and water into a brackish brew. In the far distance she could make out the small, twinkling lights on the bridge that joined Mt. Pleasant to Charleston. Carson wished she were a kid again, swimming with her sisters, innocent and full of hope for the future, rather than sitting on a dock with a bottle of Southern Comfort, a bitter old woman at only thirty-four, trying to make sense of how it all went wrong. She took another sip of SoCo. Could she ever forgive Dora for flinging those hateful words at her like stones—husband-stealing drunken suicide.