Peyton didn’t know how on earth his mother could hold up through all of this. His father would know exactly what to do to make everything easy for her. That’s what he always did—before the bourbon, anyway. He made her troubles go away. Once, when she was anxious about hosting a luncheon for Grandmother Cabot’s garden club, his father brought in an extra maid and two gardeners to handle the house and yard, hired a chef and his staff to cook and serve, and booked the governor’s florist to do all the decorating. Then he took Peyton’s mother shopping for a new dress while her luncheon came together.

Ever since he came home from the war, it seemed as if he didn’t know how to love anyone but her. That sounded petty and jealous, Peyton realized, which wasn’t at all how he felt. He could never be jealous of his mother, who, in all honesty, had become his hero. Preachers were always talking about unconditional love, but he had watched his mother live it every day since the war. And if the tables were turned—if she were the one lying in that hospital bed—he knew his father would move heaven and earth to make her whole again.

“Son, if you don’t quit thinkin’ so hard, your head’s gonna fly off,” Chief Bramlett said.

“I’m not sure that’d be such a bad thing, the way my brain’s twisting all around,” Peyton said, rubbing his temples.

“We got five hours o’ drivin’ ahead,” the chief said. “Want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“Just thinking about Daddy, I guess . . . Did you know him when you were kids?”

“Sure. Everybody knew everybody around Savannah.”

Peyton looked out his window at nothing in particular. They were approaching a billboard with a huge picture of Rita Hayworth holding up a bottle of RC Cola. Her auburn hair reminded him of Lisa’s. Another sign promised “a burger worth fighting for” at Pop’s Diner. Maybe Pop’s should change their slogan now that the war was over and nobody wanted to think about it ever again.

Peyton didn’t know what to expect from his next question for the chief but decided to ask it anyway. “You remember anything about him—Daddy, I mean? Do you remember what he was like back then?”

“I remember he saved baseball for us.”

“Sir?”

“Saved it from your Uncle Julian. We’d start a pickup game, and sure enough, here would come Julian with his fancy glove, made special in Charleston. He couldn’t play worth a flip, and he was a bad sport, so we hated to see him comin’.”

“Why’d you let him in the game?”

“Because most of our parents worked in one o’ your granddaddy’s cotton mills. Julian would slither in an’ say something like, ‘First base is my spot.’ If anybody protested, he’d smile and say, ‘Where do your parents work again?’ Whenever he dropped the ball—which was pretty much every time he touched it—he’d blame whoever threw it.”