Father trembled.
Alex raised the riding crop.
The first slap of leather across flesh was exciting.
The fiftieth slap…ecstasy.
A Night at the Dinner Table
Christmas Eve.
Luther Kite watches as his mother, Maxine, carries the last casserole dish of candied yams up the staircase to the third floor cupola of the ancient house. The long table is candlelit, moonlit. Through the west wall of windows, a thin moon lacquers the sound into glossy black. Through the east wall of windows, the Atlantic gleams beyond the tangle of live oaks and yaupon. The tourists gone, the island silently twinkling, the evening is cold and glorious and more star-ridden than any night in the last three years.
Maxine sets the yams down on the tablecloth beside a platter of steaming crab cakes. Then she takes a seat at the end of the table, opposite her husband, and releases a contented sigh. “Mrs. Claus” is spelled out in rhinestones across the front of her bright red sweater.
Dressed up as Santa Claus, Rufus Kite occupies the head of the table.
At Rufus’s right sits Luther, who also wears a Santa hat, but isn’t happy about it.
“Beautiful,” Rufus says, addressing his wife, “I think I speak for everyone when I say this looks absolutely scrumptious.”
It’s a dream, Luther thinks.
But it can’t be.
Because it’s real.
Luther stares down the length of the table and sees…
Katie.
My sister.
His father called it the miracle.
Luther still remembers the flutter in his stomach when Rufus brought her home.
“We found her, son! We found her!”
Seven years older. Seven years lost.
But healthy.
And now…safe.
Fifteen and safe and finally home.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” Rufus says, raising a wineglass filled with sweet tea. “To my little girl. What it feels like to have you home again…” His eyes shimmer with tears. “…I am…at a loss to express.”
Tears are running down Katie’s cheeks, too.
They pass around the side dishes.
Luther fills his plate with raw oysters on half shells. He lifts one after another, shaking a few drops of Tabasco sauce onto the meat, and sucking it down his throat like a swallow of briny, spicy snot.
As Rufus tears into a hushpuppy, he glances at Luther, “Boy, I know it’s strange to have her back, but make her feel welcome. This is hard on her, too.”
“Katie,” Luther begins, twelve years old, and his prepubescent voice on the cusp of making the turn toward manhood. “How, um, does it feel to be home?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Tell her how much you missed her,” Rufus says.
Luther looks at his father, to Katie, then back to his father.
“Tell her!” Rufus roars, slamming a fist down on the table, silver and glassware trembling.
Luther turns back to Katie.
“Every day, I…I thought about you. I wondered if we’d ever find you.” His voice breaking. “I had forgotten what you looked like. I would think back to all the happy times, and I could remember your clothes and sometimes even your smell, but your face was always blurry.”
Luther stares across the table at his mother.
Seven years of grief have crept in and stolen away with her looks. Maxine has lost that striking softness he loved in his early years. Lost her perfect figure. Acquired those first few wrinkles near her mouth and hard edges and a gleam in her eyes that he’s learned to be wary of, to not set off.
“I don’t know what else to tell her, Mama.”
“Do you still love her?”
He nods.
“Why don’t you tell her that.”
Luther looks over at his sister, trying so hard to conjure the image of that eight-year-old girl who’d been his best friend in the most important years of his life.
Days they spent playing on the beach.
Or down on Portsmouth.
Or their favorite game of all…throwing chunks of stale bread to the cormorants who chased the ferry between Ocracoke and Hatteras.
“You were my best friend,” Luther says. “I loved you so much. Remember the time the hurricane hit and we lost power and it blew down the trees in the front yard, and we had to hide in the closet all night with the wind howling? And we pretended it was an army of ghosts trying to get us, but as long as we were in the closet, we were safe?”
“Boy,” Maxine says, “tell her you love her.”
He doesn’t want to say it, and he isn’t sure why.
Maybe because too many years have passed.
Because of the audience.
Because he’s been told to.
Because this is all very, very confusing to him.
Thinking it will be better to say it when he truly feels it. In a quiet moment when all is normal again.
“Goddamn it, Luther!”
“I love you, Katie,” he says.
“What a beautiful sentiment,” Rufus says, leveling his gaze on his daughter. “Anything you’d like to share, darling? We just laid our souls bare to you. I understand this is a difficult transition, but we always were an open family. Never held back our feelings. I happen to think that made us as strong as we were.”
Tears stream down her face.
She is visibly shaking.
“Please, Katie. Talk to us.”
The teenage girl wipes her eyes.
“I wanna go home. Please.”
“Honey,” Maxine says. “You are home.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” Katie screams.
“Katie, just listen, please—”
“That isn’t my name!”
The girl jumps to her feet and her chair topples back as she rushes past Maxine and Rufus and out of the cupola.
Her steps pounding down the squeaky staircase.
Rufus shakes his head.
“I told you,” Maxine says, “this is gonna happen every time if you don’t duct-tape them to the chair. Are the doors and windows locked?”
“No.”
“No?”
The girl’s footfalls growing faster but softer as she descends toward the first floor.
