“I’ll be along in a minute,” I said, with the intention of walking Ted to his car.

“Good night, y’all!” he said. “Thanks for a great night!”

One of those star-filled skies was waiting for us outside, the kind you only see in a magazine with the pictures taken by super powerful telescopes.

“Look at that, would you?” he said. “It’s hard to believe it’s real.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes I like to come out and look at the stars and just lose myself in them.”

“We should do that,” he said. “You know, take a blanket down to the dark end of the island on a clear night, lie there, and just get lost in the stars.”

I looked at him and a thousand things raced through my mind. The main one was I knew that if we did that, I wouldn’t honestly be wearing white on my wedding day. Now that I had waited so long, I wasn’t budging.

“After we’re married,” I said. “I’m not that kind of girl. Sorry.”

“Oh, God! Of course! Only after we’re married!”

“Make it soon, okay?” I said. “Good night.”

“Where do you think you’re going so fast?”

All I can tell you is that it took Ted Meyers, chief of police, about two minutes to leave me breathless, weak in the knees, with an unfamiliar clench in an area I did not know could clench involuntarily. I felt like my bones had turned to jelly.

“Well, I just learned something.”

“What’s that?”

“Why people lie down to you know, you know . . .”

“Yeah, I think it’s so they won’t fall down.”

“You’d better get out of here.”

“I’ll be back, Little Queen Bee.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You need your own hive.” He smiled. “And I’m going to give it to you.”

“G’night!” I said and thought, Holy shit, there’s sex in my future after all.

Epilogue

SULLIVAN’S ISLAND

April 2019

Leslie finally divorced Charlie, who, as predicted by everyone involved, went on to become wildly successful as Cher’s long-lost identical twin sister, Char. We were actually all delighted for her. And Leslie’s involvement with Archie became more serious. Who cared? They were both happy. The boys were happy. But she would not marry him.

“I’m just dividing my time between our house and his. That’s enough for me. You think I want to be his third dead wife? No way, baby. Uh-uh.”

In the Lowcountry, we believed bad things happened in threes. Becoming the third wife of a man twice widowed was a terrifying prospect.

“I don’t blame you,” I said.