Page 12 of The Shield
Movement in the glass of the doorway caught my eye. A familiar shape squared the frame, then banged the jamb like it owed him money.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” a voice boomed, huge and pleased. “If it isn’t my girl saving Charleston on a Saturday.”
“Granddaddy,” I said, standing so fast my chair clipped the credenza.
Butch Kennedy filled rooms. He couldn’t help it. Linen suit, pocket square like a flag, hair white as sugar and just as unruly, a smile he’d been feeding this city with since before I was born. He smelled like bay rum and smoke and a thousand hands shaken in summer heat.
“Boy,” he said, snagging Owen’s hand and squeezing like he intended to win that, too. “You still letting her drag you into storms?”
“When she’s right about the storms,” Owen said smoothly.
Butch laughed, the big laugh, the one that made people on Meeting glance inside as if someone had just told a secret they wanted in on. He clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to jolt my teeth. “Look at you,” he crowed. “Maps and machines and that Kennedy brain.”
I smoothed my ponytail even though I knew it was a lost cause since I’d been at the beach all morning.
He tilted his head, taking me in. “Hungry?”
“I—” I started.
“She’s starving,” Owen said, traitor, eyes dancing. “She’s been mainlining coffee since ten.”
Butch grinned triumphantly. “Lunch. My treat.” He didn’t wait for me to argue because he knew I wouldn’t. “Boy, you coming?”
Owen lifted both palms. “Kimmy will murder me if I don’t get home to mow the yard. You two go.”
“Noted,” Butch declared, and seized my elbow like I was six again and in need of shepherding through a fairground.
We hit Meeting, then East Bay, and Butch did what he did: walked like sidewalks were built to carry him and pulled a parade in his wake. People called out like they’d been waiting all day to perform the ritual.Mayor Kennedy! Someone’s grandmother grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles; a bachelorette in a pink sash asked for a selfie and ended up with a lecture about marrying a man with a good truck. He asked a tourist baby its name and then told the parents it was a good one. He hugged a woman at the bus stop like he’d known her his whole life. He hadn’t. He made it feel that way, anyway.
Inside the restaurant, the hostess looked at me and said forty minutes. Then she looked at my granddaddy and said, “There’s a table by the window, Mayor, if you don’t mind the draft.”
He did not mind the draft.
Juneberry wasn’t big—half café, half bakery, the kind of place that smelled like roasted tomatoes and yeast the second you walked in. They did pressed sandwiches on house bread, delicate salads piled with herbs, soups that tasted like someone’s grandmother had been stirring them all morning. The walls were a soft green that made the light feel clean, and little jars of wildflowers dotted the tables. It was the sort of spot young couples lingered over lattes, students tapped on laptops, and city staffers ducked in for something quick but good.
When my granddaddy walked through the door, though, the café transformed into his stage. Heads turned. A barista with a nose ring lit up like Christmas. A councilman’s assistant waved shyly from the back corner. Even the couple sharing a plate of avocado toast by the window broke into grins.
We slid into the best seat in the house. Butch ordered hushpuppies before his backside hit the leather, charmed the waitress into promising extra butter for his she-crab soup, and then watched her walk away with the nostalgia of a man who had never, in fact, learned the difference between affection and ownership.
“You can’t slap waitresses on the ass anymore,” he stage-whispered to me, eyes bright with mischief.
“You never should have in the first place,” I said, softly enough the waitress wouldn’t hear and sharp enough that he would.
He grinned because he loved fighting with me and because he loved me. “World got soft.”
“World got decent,” I said.
He spread his hands, and the room tilted toward him like sunflowers to light. “So. Huckleberry says you’re spooking folks with talk of rain.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Huck told youI’mspooking folks?”
He winked, caught. “Or you will be. Says you’re … enthusiastic.”
“I’m telling the truth,” I said, leaning in. “There’s a low offshore that might dump rain for days. Add king tides and some of these streets are going to become creeks. People need to move their cars off Lockwood and out of low garages today while it’s dry. Clear drains. We can help them. We’ll set up pop-ups. If we wait for Monday, it’s vanity.”
He cut a hushpuppy in half and buttered it like it had offended him. “Forecasts change, sugar. You light a fire on a perfect afternoon and they’ll call you Chicken Little.”
“Better a live chicken than a drowned ostrich,” I said, and he hooted loud enough to startle the table behind us.
