an excerpt from Drift 

Cordelia woke to the cry of gulls and the smell of bacon rising through the floorboards.
For a moment, she drifted between places. The river’s heavy breath of pluff mud and marsh grass, threaded with something faintly floral she couldn’t name, breezed in from the Cape Fear, stirring the curtains to billow and fall. The room was spare and orderly: a dark dresser rubbed to a dull gloss, a straight-backed chair stacked with coverlets. The bones of the house were sound—a time-earned tilt to the spaces—but good Lord, the rooms needed softening; so much navy blue everywhere. The sheets were cool where Hoyt’s warmth had already faded, his imprint shallow against the mattress. Time to start the first day of her new life. Doubt took one hand, anxious joy the other.

Downstairs, she found Nicholas in the kitchen, dressed in a crisp white shirt, suspenders taut over his shoulders. A cast-iron skillet hissed on the stove. Henry sprawled nearby on his rug, nose twitching with every sizzle. He raised his head just long enough to thump his tail as she entered, then settled back down—clearly this kitchen was his kingdom.

“You take your coffee black?” Nicholas asked.

“Usually,” she said, surprised.

“Good. Cream’s gone sour. Sit.”

She obeyed, sitting at the kitchen table—a scarred pine workhorse that bore the marks of a hundred mornings. Coffee rings, a knife nick or two, a scatter of flour dust where someone had rolled biscuits straight on the wood. Nicholas placed a chipped blue mug in front of her, then a plate with two strips of bacon and a biscuit that looked, frankly, better than expected. A fish tin held a clutch of half-wilted wildflowers. Henry inched forward hopefully, but Nicholas gave him a stern glance and he retreated with a sigh, resting his chin on his paws.

“You sleep alright?”

“Fine,” she said, though it wasn’t quite true. She had dreamed of vines, twisting and thick, creeping under doorframes and around her ankles, and had woken more than once to a soft scritch at the window. There had been nothing there.

Nicholas watched her over his coffee. “I suppose you and Hoyt talked through why I summoned you to Southport.”

“It’s my understanding you’re ready to pass down the store and want us to live here.”

“Ready enough,” Nicholas grunted. “I don’t love it anymore—at least not like I used to. I find myself wishing people would hush when they’re in the middle of some long-winded confession. I’m ready to go fishing. Southport Sundries needs someone young and patient to love it. Someone who’ll see what it could be, not just what it’s been.”

Cordelia took a sip of coffee. It was strong enough to wake the dead. “Long-winded confession? Sundries is a general store, right?”

“You need to see it in daylight,” Nicholas said, ignoring her curiosity. “We’ll walk to the store after breakfast. Hoyt’s already gone—had to meet deliveries. We’ll take the boat out for a look around before your welcome party.”

Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “Boat?”

“You can’t understand Southport from a porch. Gotta see it from the water. It’s a town built on what the tide brings in.”

She smiled despite herself. “And what it takes away?”

Nicholas arched an eyebrow and cleared his throat. “Good one. Yes, that too.”

Meet some of the characters in Drift

• Cordelia Hadley Lowell: Piedmont-raised and newly wed, she bears a mountain of grief and a fragile self-regard, haunted by abandonment. She loves Hoyt and keeps a quiet hope that she can belong in his world without vanishing.
• Hoyt Lowell: smart, thoughtful, diligent, and openly charmed by his wife. He fixes what’s broken and looks at Cordelia as though she’s proof the world gets some things exactly right.
• Henry: The Lowell family’s loyal pointer, all heart and good sense—a most excellent dog who seems to know what his people need before they do. Henry recognized something in Cordelia the moment they met and quietly appointed himself her guardian.
• Nicholas Lowell: Hoyt’s grandfather and keeper of Southport Sundries and its blue ledger, a man with a fisherman’s patience and a heart wide as the river. He slips off to Bald Head when the world crowds in to fish, think, and write.
• Mabel Lowell: Hoyt’s exacting mother is the town’s high bar for manners. She is decidedly undecided about her new daughter-in-law. And once upon a hard evening her private grief became the first secret Nicholas wrote in the blue ledger.
• Pearl Hightower: Mabel sent her into the Lowell household with listening stitched into the job description. Pearl becomes their kind, clear-eyed center of gravity.
• Lois Mercer: A bright, brave Wilmington girl, a little left out and lonelier than she lets on, she hides it behind quick wit and a steady smile—until Cordelia arrives, and friendship feels like home again. 
• Dr. Billy Mercer: The town physician who is part balm, part brass band. He is devoted to his growing family, though some nights his rounds take the long way home.
• Vera Martin: the Mercers’ housekeeper, keeper of keys and common sense. She’s the first to arrive and the last to fret, practical as a list, protective as kin, and nobody’s fool.
• Eleanor, Judith & Lottie: The town’s Greek-chorus trio: afternoon teas, church committees, raised brows, and inconvenient truths.