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.

Daisy fell asleep during their card game, and Henry gently carried her upstairs to her bed, while Savannah went to her room. Henry knocked on her door to see if she was decent. She was in her nightgown, brushing her teeth, when he came in. He strolled right into her bathroom to chat with her, like a real brother.

“I like having another sister, one I can really talk to,” he said, smiling at her in the bathroom mirror. “You’ve been gone for way too long.”

They sat down in her room and talked some more then. He said he wanted to move to New York or London in a few years, once he figured out if he wanted to work in a gallery, a museum, or a school. But working in the art field was his dream.

“You don’t want to come back here?” She looked surprised. People in the South seemed to stay close to home and cling to their roots, judging from what she had seen so far.

“Too small for me,” he said simply. “This is a very small provincial city. And being gay is too complicated for me here.” She looked at him in surprise.

“You are?” She hadn’t figured that out, and his mother had asked about a girl he had gone out with the year before.

“I am. Jeff is my partner. I told my parents I was gay when I was eighteen. Dad wasn’t thrilled, but he’s okay about it. My mother acts like she forgot and doesn’t know, no matter how often I remind her. Like the girl she asked me about going out with. She knows I don’t go out with women. I figured out I was gay about a year after your mom left, when I was fifteen. By sixteen I knew for sure. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but for some people it is-my mother, for one. She’s going to ask me about the women I go out with till I’m a hundred years old. She’s probably hoping I’ll get ‘cured.’ My being gay just wasn’t in her plan. I think she’s relieved I don’t live in Charleston. It would be too embarrassing for her, and too hard for me. She still lies to her friends.”

“How weird,” Savannah said, looking puzzled. “What difference does it make to her?”

“It’s not ‘normal,’ as she puts it, or ‘right.’ But it is for me.”

“That’s just who you are,” Savannah said, smiling at him. “It shouldn’t be a big deal. Does Daisy know?” she asked, curious about it.

“They’d kill me if I told her, but she’ll figure it out sometime. I don’t think Travis is too thrilled about it either. He’s a lot more like them than I am. He’s a small-town boy who wants to do everything he can to make them happy and fit in their mold. I’d commit suicide if I married Scarlette, but she’s just right for him, a nice southern girl.”

“You’re sounding like a Yankee,” Savannah teased him.

“Maybe I am at heart. There are a lot of hypocrisies I don’t like here, or maybe it’s just a small-town thing. I hate seeing people covering up what they really think and feel, just to be polite or fit in. There’s a lot of that here. It’s all okay, if you have a couple of Confederate generals in the family, but not a gay son, at least not in this family. They tolerate it, but don’t like it. Shit, for all we know, maybe all those generals were gay.” They both laughed, and then he looked serious again. “It wouldn’t have mattered to your mother. She was the most loving woman I’ve ever known. I didn’t know I was gay when she was here, but afterward I wondered if she knew before I did. She’s very sharp.”

Savannah nodded, proud of her mother.

“Is your mom okay?” he asked her, and Savannah nodded. “She really got a shit deal from my mom and dad. I take it she never remarried, from what Travis said the other day. I asked him.”

“No,” Savannah said, “she didn’t. She’s only thirty-nine, though. But she’s still pretty mad about your dad,” she said honestly. “Or hurt, I guess.”

“She has a right to be,” he said, equally honest. “My mother really screwed her over, and Dad let her. I think their relationship has been lousy ever since, but Dad stays in it, and my mother walks all over him. She walked out on all of us when she left my dad. And everyone conveniently forgets she did. That’s just the way it works.” He looked disapproving as he said it.

“I’ve seen it,” Savannah admitted. “She’s furious about me.”

“Too bad. He should have brought you back here years ago. I feel terrible that I never reached out to you or your mom. I let it happen too. I was fourteen then, and I hated what they were doing. And then, I don’t know, high school, college, life, I never did anything about it,” he said. “But I’m glad you’re here. I hope I see your mom too one of these days. I have a lot to tell her.”