Page 4 of Wreckage and Rain

His office looks like a gentlemen's club and a natural history museum settled a custody dispute. Wood gone dark with age.Hunting prints of birds nobody in this family has ever shot. A globe in the corner that opens at the equator to a decanter of Macallan he has had refilled, never replaced, for as long as I've been alive.

Sonny Bennet sits behind the desk like he was poured into the room before they put the walls up. Silver. Square through the jaw. The permanent brown of a man who owns a home on the water and keeps a calendar clear to be on it. He doesn't look up when I come in. There's a stack of papers squared in front of him and he slides it a quarter inch left, considers it, slides it back, sets it parallel to the edge of the blotter, and only then says:

"Sit."

He says sit, and I sit. Tidewater pending, biggest deal of my life, and I still fold like I did at six.

He doesn't look at me yet. He turns a pen between two fingers. Lays it on the papers. Adjusts the angle a degree, then a degree back.

"Cheyenne's revisions." He picks up a coaster, turns the monogram to face him, sets it square to the corner of the blotter. "She's sharp. An asset."

"Yeah, she's good."

"Strategic."

He lets the word sit. My father doesn't spend praise, sostrategicis about the most he's ever set down on a hire. He put it on the desk on purpose, so I'd feel how rare it is. And I do. He hands these out maybe twice a year, and I still chase them like a kid every time.

"You two move well together. Clients feel it."

"We work well."

He nods. Drinks. Sets the glass down and turns it a quarter so the cut lines up with the pen. Three things on the blotter now, a small fleet, all pointed the same way. He leans back.

"How's Summer?"

The turn is so smooth it's done before I know he started it. He's good at it, turning praise into worry, making her sound like a problem, and I never catch it happening until I'm already nodding along.

"She's good. Book's coming along."

"Another thriller."

Not a question. He knows what she writes. He's letting me hear that he has filed it and weighed it and assigned it the importance a man gives something his son's wife does with her afternoons.

"Editor is happy with it."

"Hm." He moves the coaster a hair. "She travels soon."

Not a question. He has her calendar. I don't ask how. The not-asking is a reflex I learned in this chair before I had words for what I was learning in it.

"Savannah. Couple weeks."

"Both of you so occupied." He looks up. First time since I sat. His eyes are pale and empty. Cold all the way down, nothing at the bottom of him. And I still want him to be proud of me. I know what he is and I want it anyway. "Ships in the dark."

He sets the coaster down. Squares it. Holds my eyes the length of time it takes me to want to fill the quiet, and then past that, so whatever I say next is something I say to get out from under him.

"I want you clear, son." He setssondown like a hand on a leash, deciding whether to take up the slack. "Tidewater is the largest thing through these doors in ten years. I need you undivided."

"I'm clear."

"Good."

"Close Tidewater. Then you and I have the conversation."

He doesn't say the word. It has hung over this desk for two years, always one deal out, always contingent, kept at exactly the height where I have to stay on my toes to keep it in sight. He picks the pen back up. Turns it. Sets it at an angle to the fleet, corrects it toparallel, looks back at his screen. I'm dismissed without a word spent on dismissing me.

I walk out lit up and hollowed out at the same time. He gave me just enough to keep me reaching and just enough to keep me in line, and I took it. Same as every time. The deck's still on my screen when I get back.

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