The screen of my phone was smudged with grease from the wedding buffet when the text arrived. It was exactly four in the afternoon on the Charleston hotel terrace, and the humid southern air smelled of diesel fuel and salt water from the harbor. Below us, the tide was slipping out, leaving a dark line of plashy mud along the seawall.
“Nobody gives a damn about your Navy career,” the text read.
My father, Arthur, stood three feet away from me by the raw bar, watching the gray water of the Cooper River. He was seventy-nine years old, his linen suit hanging loose on his narrow shoulders, his tie slightly crooked from the coastal humidity.
“Arthur,” I said, stepping closer to his side.
He did not turn his head to look at me, but his left shoulder rose slightly. He kept his eyes on a pair of young cousins who were laughing near the champagne fountain under the glare of the wedding string lights.
“They have decent oysters,” he said, his voice gravelly and slow. “You should eat something before the speeches start.”
I held the phone out so the screen was inches from his face. “This was sent three minutes ago from a local Charleston exchange.”
Arthur took off his wire-rimmed glasses and began polishing the lenses with the wide end of his silk tie. His hands were thick-jointed and spotted with age, but his movements were deliberate.
“People say foolish things when they have had too much to drink at these events,” he said.
“It came from a secure routing number,” I said. “The kind they use at the Navy Yard.”
He put his glasses back on, adjusted them against his nose, and looked past me toward the hotel lobby. He did not say another word.
The wedding photographer called for the immediate family to assemble by the brick arbor, but I walked back toward the lobby doors.
In my handbag was a heavy manila envelope that had arrived at my cottage three days ago, postmarked from Norfolk. It was sent by someone named Carter, and it contained forty pages of duplicated naval logs, all of them dated from the year I was promoted to commander.