"What?" I echo, startled. But then Sheba makes one of her patented entrances for the crowd that awaits us. I stop at the refrigerator and open up a beer, then move into the sitting room where Sheba has just announced her engagement "to the Toad, of all fucking people." She kisses me with real feeling, which takes me by surprise, and my friends laugh at my obvious discomfort, with the exception of Molly, who raises her eyebrows, and Niles, who doesn't laugh at all. Despite his exhortations for me to leave Starla, the subject still carries the power to hurt him deeply.

"Sheba's just kidding, Niles," I assure him.

"I hope not," Niles says. "That scene the other night was a nightmare."

"Amen," Fraser says. "You don't know how bad it got when Niles brought her to our house."

"Starla's lost," Niles says. "It's over for her."

Molly doesn't allow herself to get drawn in, but says lightly, "Get on your bathing suits, everyone. The chief of police gave us permission to go swimming before he conducts his doom-and-gloom session."

"I forgot to bring a bathing suit," I say.

"I've got an extra one in the bathroom downstairs, Leo," Chad says easily, with no sign of jealousy, no indication that he's picked up on any clue that his wife's friendship with me has changed. "It'll be a little big in the crotch, but fit otherwise."

"The last one in has the shortest pecker and the littlest tits in Charleston," Fraser says, racing out the front door. She and Niles have a footrace to the beach. Both are still superb athletes and in perfect shape. Their sons are all ferocious competitors and eating lesser rivals alive in their sports teams.

I put on Chad's swimsuit, then leave the basement on the run, onto the sand and into the ocean until I reach a depth safe enough for me to dive in. The heat of the day vanishes in a heartbeat as I swim underwater until I burst out into the sunlight, then a wave crashes over me. I look back at the house and feel a deep gratitude to that disheveled, shabby cottage with its sprawling rooms and comfortable furniture. The house has become a fixture in some of our lives, a place of safety and refuge for the others. Due to Molly's generosity, I have always used the beach house as a place of escape and spiritual healing. She has always let me stay here at the house on Sullivan's Island whenever Starla embarked on one of her desperate walkabouts. The first time Starla ran out of our house on Tradd Street, she stayed away for a month. The second time she stayed away for six months, the third a year. Then I stopped counting. On each occasion, Molly brought me the key to this house, and I went out and stayed here. It is a place of comfort in a falling-apart life. I know every inch of this beach the way I know the oddities and markings on my own body.

Swimming into deep water, I am blessed by the warm currents of the Atlantic. My body feels as though I am swimming through a bright veil of silk in the green caress of the waves. Looking out onto Fort Sumter, I watch as the last ferry leaves for the return trip to the city. The island seems much too small to have started the deadliest war in American history. But I am old enough to remember when it would've been against the law for Ike and Betty to swim in these waters or to set foot on these beaches.

Molly swims out to me. She balances herself against my shoulders as I stand on my tiptoes, and we ride the waves that answer some internal timepiece set by the laws of moonlight. This is the first time we've been alone since my bed in San Francisco, an evening that seems an eon ago.

"Cat got your tongue?" she asks. "Why are you being so antisocial?"

"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't mean to."

"Why didn't you call me about Starla?" she asks.

"Bad night, Molly. The worst. And, I think, the last."

"And your engagement to Sheba?" she teases.

"A joke. How else could Sheba grab center stage with all you pretty girls out here? She's a pro. She knows how to do it."

"I don't think she's joking."

Sheba is riding the waves with Betty, Ike, and Chad. The tides are strong and moving us quickly, already three houses down from Molly's grandmother's house. Sheba waves to Molly and me, and shouts: "Keep away from my fiance, bitch."

Chad shouts, "Stay away from my wife, you horny bastard."

He says it with a smile, and it occurs to me that Chad isn't worried. The day has yet to come when a man of Leo King's ilk steals anything from a man like him, his expression tells me. I glance at Molly for confirmation and it is written on her face, which is resigned and even a little comforted. I can feel a density in her sadness, but also resignation to the case-hardened life she was born to lead. We have lost the ease of communication we enjoyed when we first arrived in San Francisco, where the sun set over an alien ocean, far enough away that we could put aside the responsibilities that lay in ambush for us in Charleston, and say things to each other we could never utter in our South of Broad lives. We are now shy around each other; a dark star has grown between us. Words have gone on holiday. Molly swims ashore and walks into the house.

When Molly calls us in, we go inside wordlessly, and go about helping, laying out food on a sideboard. The food is simple and perfect for a summer day. Niles made coleslaw and potato salad and baked beans, while Ike brought take-out pork barbecue and ribs. Molly puts out a stack of her grandmother's finest china and her best silverware and insists we use it, even as we raise our voices in a collective complaint and argue for paper plates and plastic utensils.

"I'm not a paper-plate kind of person," Molly insists, her face strained, but always the perfect hostess. "So kill me."

We spend a half hour listening to reports about news of the children and how the various sets of grandparents have managed to spoil them, to set them on the path to ruin, all the disciplined and well-trained children of my friends.

"My father took our kids over to our house on Edisto Island and went on a fishing trip that lasted a week. None of them brushed their teeth that week. Or changed their clothes. Or took a bath. He managed to turn them into savages in the time it took us to find Trevor," Fraser says.

"They had a blast," Niles says.

"Let's call Trevor," Molly suggests.

"Great idea," I chime in. Molly dials the main number for the Medical University. Sheba talks to her brother first, and I talk to him last. When I take the receiver from Betty, Trevor sounds exhausted. I say, "Just wanted to say hi, Trevor. Get some rest."

"Come see me and I'll promise to talk dirty to you," he says. "I think I'd be dead now if you guys hadn't found me."

"Old news. Now you've got a whole bunch of tomorrows to get ready for."

After I hang up, Ike rises. His innate authority brings the room to a hushed, patient silence. Though he is dressed in shorts, a billowy Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops, his carriage lends him a gravity that is inseparable from his character. He clears his throat, takes a swallow of beer, and checks several handwritten notes on note cards. "As Betty and I see it," he says, "we still got one big problem. We don't know where Trevor and Sheba's daddy is. But we think it's a pretty good bet he'll end up in Charleston."

"How can you be so sure?" Fraser asks.

"We can't," Betty answers. "The guy may be a psycho, but he's a sophisticated one and a weirdly obsessive one. We've been looking at case studies today. We can't find anything like this in crime literature. This guy's special and he'll go to extreme measures to get at the twins."

"Betty and I are convinced that he will come here. From everything Sheba has told us, he started out as a run-of-the-mill pedophile; this usually stops when the kids hit puberty. But something snapped in this guy, and Sheba's fame as a movie star clearly drove him around the bend. We're lucky he didn't kill one of us in San Francisco. The authorities at Sing Sing sent his mug shot and fingerprints and his psychiatric evaluation when they transferred him to a mental hospital. They don't like to send their prisoners to a mental hospital; otherwise, all of them would act crazy, just to get out. You've got to be a special nutcase with a real gimmick to be transferred."

"I give up, Ike," Sheba says. "What was my dad's gimmick?"

"I wasn't going to tell you this," Ike says reluctantly, "but since you asked-he had a bad habit of eating his own feces."

The room fills with howls of disgust. Betty passes out copies of the mug shot, and we study the face of a moderately attractive middle-aged man who looks far more quizzical than monstrous. Sheba explains that when she was growing up, her father seemed like a hundred different men inhabiting the same face. There was no role he could not play with the mastery of a born actor, except he never let anyone know the moment when the games ended and the man himself stood facing the world without artifice. He had a flair for accents and costumes and personas. He forced Evangeline Poe into home-schooling the twins as he rented country houses and farms, and they sometimes found themselves living in homes with no address. He was a jack-of-all-trades and he would come home dressed as a minister, a rural surgeon, a veterinarian, a TV repairman. For each role, he perfected different mannerisms; he dyed his hair so many times that the twins used to argue over its natural color.

They moved every year, sometimes twice a year. In isolation, they grew up terrified and abused. Finally, their alcoholic mother made contact with someone in her family. Evangeline discovered that an aunt she'd never heard of had left her money and a run-down house in Charleston, South Carolina. It took her two years to make a break, but she finally summoned the courage to leave. She took the money the aunt left her, plus what she'd hoarded for years waiting for the chance to escape. She got a moving van to take them across the country for the chance of a renewed life. They were living in Oregon then and, of course, their father tracked them down because of the van. Sheba said her mother had always managed to make such small errors of tactics and judgment.

Now Evangeline is sick of running from this creep and can accept whatever fate is due her. Sheba Poe has returned home, and she is certain that her father will be making his way south. Besides, Sheba says, she is dead set on marrying the Toad, having a couple of kids, and settling down for the rest of her life. She has known too much chaos in her life and has caused too much of it in the lives of others.

"Sheba, would you knock it off about our marriage?" I ask. "You know I was fooling around."

"Actually," she says, "I wasn't. You proposed to me and I accepted. It seems simple to me."

Fraser is worried, though, and ignores both of us, addressing her question to Betty and Ike. "What about our children and our families? Are we placing them in danger?"

"We think everybody surrounding Sheba and Trevor are potential targets for this guy," Ike says. "He doesn't seem to set any limits."

"Then we can't help you anymore, Sheba," Fraser says. "We went to San Francisco gladly. But the stakes have changed. This is asking too much."

"Speak for yourself," Niles says. "I'll guard your house at night, Sheba."

Chad scoffs. "Don't be ridiculous, Niles. Our children and families are the most important things here. They trump everything."

Betty says, "Ike had an idea and I like it."

Ike asks, "What about Macklin Tijuana Jones?"

"No fucking way!" Sheba says.

"He's in rehabilitation," Betty says.

"Betty and I both talked to him today," Ike says. "Part of his rehab is taking a course. He's studying to become a bodyguard."

Betty says, "So, we hired him to be your bodyguard, Sheba. He can live in your basement room. A former Oakland Raider wandering your grounds at night is not the worst idea in the world."

"He came through for us. He delivered Trevor," Ike reminds her.

After a moment of deliberation, I say, "Do it. Or I'm calling off our wedding."

And the meeting ends in a relieved laughter that we all know might not last long.

CHAPTER 25.

Parade.

On the first Friday of September, The Citadel Corps of Cadets marches onto the parade ground from the four battalions to the rhythm of drums and bagpipes and in fine order. Captain Ike Jefferson had been sworn in as the new chief of police by Mayor Joe Riley earlier in the day at a moving and heartfelt ceremony that seemed both historical and familial as I watched my friend take his oath of office. Now the Corps was moving out in the reckless eloquence of soldiers on the march to honor the first Citadel graduate ever to become Charleston's chief of police. In his dress uniform, Ike stands at strict attention beside The Citadel's new president, General Bud Watts. The rest of Ike's large and vocal entourage sit in a red-ribboned section of VIPs. It is the largest crowd I have ever seen gathered at a summertime parade, and it gives simple testimony to how beloved and respected Ike has become in his native-born city. His parents, wife, and three kids seem delirious with pride, and Coach Jefferson cries whenever his son's name is mentioned, from the moment the marching band begins the music that calls the Corps to the field till the last cadet passes in review.

"Suck it up, Coach," I tease him.

"Sometimes you've got to take a stand and be a man," Niles adds, throwing back the words he'd screamed at us at every practice.

"You boys leave me be," Coach Jefferson manages as he wipes his eyes with a tear-soaked handkerchief. "Who'd a thought such a thing could happen?"

"Who would've ever thought my hard-assed coach was such a crybaby?" Niles says as he walks over and embraces the old man, his own eyes wet. It is impossible to remain unflappable on such an amazing day. It seems like fully half of our Peninsula High School class is in attendance, and a rowdy contingent of our Citadel class of '74 has filled the reviewing stands.

I watch as Sheba's limousine pulls through Lesesne Gate. Niles and I drift over toward the front of the Padgett-Thomas Barracks. When the limo stops, I open one back door and Niles opens the other. Sheba wears a clingy yellow dress and a white sun hat that looks like a piece of architecture attached to her head. She almost starts a riot among the cadets on guard duty. "Fashionably late?" I ask.

"Early for me," Sheba answers.

"Take this cadet's arm, and he will lead you to your seat," I tell her. "I'll help your mother to her seat. Trevor's waiting for you."

I walk to the side of the limo. "Evangeline? I'm Leo King. Remember me? I lived across the street."

"You brought us cookies. Such a lovely gesture. This man has tried to molest me," she says, her eyes fearful and confused. "Where are we?"

"The Citadel," I say. "Where the cadets go to school."

"Oh," she echoes faintly, "cadets."

"This one will take you to your seat." A young sophomore approaches Evangeline. I thread her arm through his, and as he begins to guide her toward the VIP section, she turns and looks at the perfect stranger leading her through the restive crowd. I see the flicker of terror in her face, and before I can reach her, she seizes the boy's hand and bites it, hard. The cadet does not whimper or utter a sound, but continues to lead her to her seat, despite a bleeding hand. When she takes her seat between Sheba and Trevor, she settles down. The parade itself, with the cadets in their summer whites and the surging music of the band and the skirted polish of the bagpipes, seems to calm her roiled spirits. Niles hands the cadet a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, and suggests he go to the infirmary.

"Mom, you bit that poor boy," I hear Sheba say to Evangeline.

"What boy?" she stammers, her face taking in the crowd and trying for civility. "How pretty this, thing, is."

"Easy, Mom," Trevor tells her, with a pat of his hand. "Just enjoy the parade. Doesn't Ike look handsome? Yum, yum. The Corps of Cadets, let me at them, Lord. Just one night in the barracks."

"I knew it was a mistake to bring you," I say to Trevor. He is still too ill to be without the use of a wheelchair, but he is gaining strength by the day. It was a landmark day when he could brush his teeth unassisted; two weeks later he could comb his hair. He pitched a fit and told me he was going to crawl like a serpent through the streets of Charleston if I did not agree to let him attend the Citadel parade honoring Ike Jefferson. Under duress, I agreed, but soon regretted it when it took me an hour to get him into a coat and tie. Because he had lost so much weight, he could not wear any of the clothes that Anna Cole had forwarded from his former flat in San Francisco. The movers had stashed all of his earthly belongings in my attic. Trevor had forced me to unpack his impressive collection of LPs and to set up a stereo system in the downstairs guest room, where he fought valiantly to get back his health and buy a little more time on this earth. None of his records were scratched, and my house swelled with the heady genius of Brahms, Schubert, and Mozart.

"You're still so uptight about sexual matters, Catholic boy," Trevor complains. "I didn't mean to imply I wanted to sleep with the entire Corps of Cadets. Half of them would do fine."

"I'll take the other half," Sheba says. They flash each other the thumbs-up sign.

"The goddamn twins," Niles sighs.

"I'll second that," I say.

Before the cannons go off to announce "The Star-Spangled Banner," Niles and I try to warn everyone in the VIP section to brace themselves for the earthshaking report. But Evangeline begins screaming and clawing at the air like a wounded cat. Niles and I have to escort her back to the limo with Sheba in rapid pursuit.

"I'll take her home," Sheba says, jerking off her hat. "Guess this wasn't such an inspired idea."

"Put her in a nursing home," Niles says.

"I can't do that," she answers, fanning her face with her hat. "You ought to know that better than anyone."

"I do know that, baby. It's one of the reasons I love you."

"What about my legs?" Sheba winks as she enters the backseat beside her mother.

"They are the first reason."

Niles and I turn back toward the parade ground, and place our hands over our hearts as the band plays the final bars of the national anthem. We walk back to our seats, but barely get comfortable when two sharp cadets approach and ask me and Niles to follow them to the general's box. Surprised, we do as we are told, and find ourselves standing at attention beside Ike and the general, both of us confused about the meaning of this unscripted moment. Since I am closest to Ike, I whisper, "What's this about?"

"Fuck you, Toad," he whispers out of the side of his mouth. "This parade is to honor my ass. So shut up and let me enjoy it."

"I hope you fall off the jeep when you review the Corps and break your sorry ass," I say.

"You're riding with me. So is Niles," he says, unable to suppress the note of triumph in his voice.

"That's illegal."

"It ain't now," he says.

A military jeep pulls up in front of us, driven by a cadet who glitters in his well-groomed sharpness-a poster cadet if I've ever seen one, and I have seen swarms of them in my day. General Watts marches smartly in front of me and introduces himself.

"I'm General Bud Watts, Mr. King. Class of '58."

"Leo King, General," I answer, shaking his gloved hand. "Class of '74."

"Niles Whitehead, General," Niles says. "Class of '74. We were Ike's roommates."

"I know," General Watts says. "That's why Ike insisted you two have the high honor of reviewing the Corps with him. Mr. King, you take the shotgun seat beside Cadet Sergeant Seward. Mr. Whitehead, you'll be on my left. The chief of police will stand on my right."