CHAPTER ONE

Beneath the Cypress Knees

by Kim Slaughter

The drive from Dallas to Memphis felt longer than it used to or maybe I just had more to think about. The road stretched out in front of me, familiar in a way that didn’t require much attention, which left my mind free to wander where it wanted. And it went back to him. It always did. I hadn’t seen him since we were young—young enough to believe in true love, soul mates and happily every after.

Jackson Wheeler. Jax.

Our ending had been the kind that belongs to high school. Dramatic.Tearful. The sort of goodbye that feels permanent when you’re that age…and temporary once enough years have passed. Still…I had never quite stopped wondering what became of him.

The invitation had come weeks earlier. A reunion. Twenty years since we’d all stood together in caps and gowns, thinking we understood the world waiting for us. The war was over. The boys were coming home.

But when I heard about the gathering—the celebration for the soldiers returning home, and the twenty-year reunion wrapped into one—I knew I would go. Not for the war. Not for the reunion. But because there was a chance…he might be there.

The Mississippi stretched wide and slow beside us as the riverboat drifted through the evening. The first part of the evening was being held on a riverboat.I remember thinking how fitting that was. A group of people all coming back together again…drifting a little between who we were and who we had become.

The boat was already alive with sound when I stepped aboard. Music drifting through the room, laughter rising and falling in pockets, glasses clinking—everything felt easy, familiar. I was moving through conversations, smiling when I needed to, saying the right things without really thinking about any of it and then I saw him. OR more like he saw me. I caught his eyes glance my way.

He was familiar to me—that much I knew instantly. Not in the way strangers sometimes feel familiar, but in a deeper, quieter way. Like someone I had known once… or should have known. There was something about him that belonged to my past. But I couldn’t place it.

I searched my memory, trying to pull his name forward, trying to attach him to a moment, a classroom, a hallway… anything. But nothing came. Just that lingering sense that he wasn’t new to me—only forgotten.

His eyes seemes lovked on me and he didn’t look away. I looked at him for a moment but not so longs as it would impact my reputation. There was something in his gaze—not bold, not even intentional, just steady. It brushed against me so lightly I almost missed it. Like when something barely grazes your hand and you’re not sure if you actually felt it… just aware that something passed over your skin. That’s what it felt like.

Then the moment passed just as quickly as it had started, and I went on through the night, not thinking anything more about it.

Later, I slipped outside, made my way up to the deck of the riverboat. The night air wrapped around me. The Mississippi stretched out in front of me, wide and slow-moving, carrying everything with it.

We were already drifting.

Inside, they were beginning to serve dinner—the soft clatter of plates, low conversation, the hum of a night settling into something slower, more intimate. But out on that deck, it felt like I had stepped into something grounded, calm serene and beautiful. Timeless.

The river moved without effort, like it had for centuries,. Along its banks stood rows of cypress trees—tall, impossibly tall, the base of their trunks wide and grounded in something deeper than I could see.

Their knees rose up from the water all around them, thousands of them, just barely breaking the surface. It didn’t even look real. It looked like a photograph. The kind you don’t take with a camera—but the kind you hold onto in your mind because something about it feels too important to lose.

I stood there, letting it settle into me, memorizing the way the trees reflected in the water, the way the river carried the night without a sound.

All I could think of was Jax. Why wasn’t her there. Had he died in the war. It was a strange thought to have in that moment.

Uninvited, but there all the same.

I didn’t stay out there long. But when I went back inside… I looked again for him. What was his name, why couldn’t i remember him. Is there something between us I had forgotten. This time, I felt it before I even saw him.

I caught his eye again and quickly looked away out of embarrassment.

That same barely-there feeling—like something brushing across my skin, enough to know… something had shifted.

The low hum of voices layered over the steady churn of the river beneath us.

It was cooler than I expected for that time of year, the air thick. My mood was somewhere between excited anticipation and anxiety from the crowd.

Men who had gone off to war stood taller than they had before, but there was something in their eyes that hadn’t come back with them. Women laughed, the men boasted, glasses stayed full. The band played songs that tried to remind us of who we used to be.

I moved through the crowd slowly.

I talked, smiled. Everyone asked the same questions people always ask at things like that—

Where are you now?

Did you marry?

Do you have children?

And then, more than once, I asked the only question that mattered to me.

“Have you seen Jax?”

Every time, the answer was the same. A shake of the head. A pause, a shrug.

“Haven’t heard.”

“Not sure.”

“He kind of disappeared after school.” Disappeared? I tried not to let that word sit too heavily.

“No… I haven’t heard a thing about him since school.”

I told myself that was fine. Of course it was fine. It had been years. Lives move on. People disappear into them. Still… I had hoped.

As the riverboat reunion wound down,

anxious and overwhelmed, she found herself agreeing to go, half-hoping that Jax might somehow appear there after all.

Someone suggested we continue the celebration at Mindy Cooper’s a house—someone we had gone to school with. I followed along with the rest of them. I am not sure why, maybe I wasn’t ready for the night to end. I had felt anxious and overwhelmed, I agreed to go, half-hoping that Jax might somehow appear there after all.

Or Maybe I knew this night would have a much bigger impact that I ever imagined.

The house was beautiful. A beautiful old Victorian in downtown Memphis. Three stories tall, old and proud, with wide porches wrapped around it and tall windows catching the last of the light. It sat beneath southern trees that looked like they had seen more than any of us.

The house was louder than the boat had been. Music spilled from one room into the next. Laughter echoed off high ceilings. Too many people in too many small spaces, all trying to recapture something that no longer existed. I stayed as long as I could. Smiled when I needed to. Nodded when it was expected. But eventually…it all became too much.

I was in the back room of the home. I stood just inside the doorway for a moment, taking it all in. I hadn’t come for the house. I hadn’t even come for the party. I had come…because I thought he might be there. I looked for him.

Once…

twice…slow enough not to seem obvious, but careful enough not to miss him if he was standing right in front of me. He wasn’t. I told myself that was fine. Of course it was fine. After all it had been years.

I slowly slipped out the back without saying anything to anyone. The air outside was cool and wet. Quieter. It was raining, but only just—a soft mist that hung in the air more than it fell. The kind of rain you don’t run from. I found the screened-in porch and stepped inside. There was a swing there, suspended just enough to move with the slightest shift of weight. I sat down and let it settle beneath me. For the first time that night…I could breathe.

The sound of bullfrogs carried in the distance. Fireflies flickered between the trees, slow and steady, like they had nowhere else to be.

And for a moment…I let myself feel the disappointment I had been holding back all evening. I had come all that way…for someone who wasn’t there. It was all I could do to hold back the tears. I think a few may have slipped down my cheek.

I didn’t hear the door open at first. Only the sound of footsteps—unhurried, certain. “Mind if I sit?” I turned, and it took me a moment to place him. Mark Bond.

We had gone to school together, though not closely. The kind of familiar that comes from passing in hallways, not sharing anything that mattered. I nodded.

He sat beside me on the swing, careful at first, like he understood the quiet and didn’t want to disturb it. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then he let out a soft breath, almost amused. “It’s a little much in there.”

“It is,” I said.

The screen door had long since quit squeaking, the wooden planks beneath our feet worn smooth by years of quiet conversations just like this one. A single bulb hung above, casting a soft amber glow, but it wasn’t what lit the night.

The swing moved gently beneath us. Back and forth. Slow. We talked. About school. About people we remembered—or half remembered. About where life had taken us since then. It wasn’t anything remarkable. Not at first. And then…somewhere along the way…it was. I don’t know exactly when it shifted. Just that at some point, the noise from inside disappeared. The reason I had come faded.

And the man sitting beside me became…clear. Not in a way that demanded attention. But in a way that held it. The rain tapped softly against the screen. The swing moved just a little slower and I became aware of him—not touching me, but close enough that I felt it all the same. He said something—I couldn’t tell you what—and I laughed. And when I did…

The moon was there—full, patient—but hidden behind a thin veil of drifting clouds. It didn’t shine so much as breathe through them, silver light spilling in soft waves across the porch, catching the edge of his jaw, the blue in his eyes, the slow movement of this hands as he talked. It wasn’t bright. It was better than bright. It was forgiving. Gentle. The kind of light that made everything feel a little more honest… and a little more possible.

And yet, even in that gentle, forgiving light—the kind that made everything feel honest—there was a truth he kept tucked quietly inside. A secret I could have never foreseen. It sat there between us, unseen, unfelt, like a shadow just beyond the glow. I could not have known how it would wait patiently through the years, how our lives would go on to live, only to find us again decades later—unchanged, unresolved, and powerful enough to alter everything I thought I knew about that night.

Crickets filled the silence when words paused, and somewhere far off, a train called out into the night like it knew something I didn’t.

We talked like people who had known each other forever… or maybe like people who were supposed to. Like something had simply picked back up where it left off, even if neither of them could quite remember where that was. For a little while, whatever had brought her there… didn’t matter anymore.

He leaned back in swing then, the wood creaking softly beneath him, his eyes drifting past the porch and into something much farther away.

“I don’t talk about it much,” he said, almost like he was warning her. “Most people don’t really want to hear it… not the way it actually was.” I didn’t look away. So he continued.

“I was stationed in the Pacific,” he said. “1944. I was a young officer aboard a destroyer escort—nothing fancy, just a ship built to keep other ships alive.”

He let out a small breath.

“We were running convoy duty… slow, steady, mostly quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you nervous if you’ve been out there long enough.”

His fingers tapped once against the arm of the chair.

“One night, the ocean was black as ink. No moon. No stars. Couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face. That’s when it happened.”

He paused.

“We picked up something on sonar. Just a whisper at first. Then stronger.”

My breath caught without my intention.

“A submarine,” he said. “Japanese.” he paused to clear his throat. I hung on his every word.

“They were hunting the cargo ships. If they got through us, those ships… they didn’t stand a chance.”

He swallowed, remembering.

“I gave the order to turn. We cut across the water, full speed, trying to intercept. You could feel it—this tension… like the whole ship knew what was coming.”

“The first depth charge went off…” He shook his head slightly. “It’s not a sound you hear so much as something you feel in your bones. The whole ocean just… jumps.”

He glanced at me.

“We dropped a full pattern. Then we waited.” Silence.

“The first depth charge went off…” He shook his head slightly. “It’s not a sound you hear so much as something you feel in your bones. The whole ocean just… jumps.”

His voice lowered, like he was back there.

“We dropped a full pattern. One after another… and then…”

He paused. the said “We waited.”

The porch seemed to still with him.

His fingers tightened slightly on the arm of the chair.

“The entire ship just… froze. No one spoke. No one moved. Even the men who never set foot in a church… the ones who joked about religion…” He let out a slow breath. “They were praying.”

Not loud. Not spoken.

“But you could feel it. Every man on that ship, holding his breath, asking for the same thing… just to make it through.” “It not the noise, or the action… but the silence after.”

He glanced at her, something deeper in his eyes now.

“You don’t forget a moment like that.”

“Then we saw it,” he said. “Oil rising to the surface. Debris.” He looked back out into the night. “And then… nothing.” Another pause.

“We saved the convoy,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Every ship made it through.”

But there was no triumph in his voice.

“War stories don’t end the way people think they do,” he said. “You don’t walk away feeling like a hero. You just… walk away.”

Time seemed to stop and night seemed quieter after that.

The moon slipped free from the clouds for just a moment, brighter now, casting everything in silver clarity.

I looked at him differently—not because of the stor…but because of the way he carried it.

brushed my hair back from my face and glanced up at the moon, still playing peekaboo with the clouds. The swing swung gently beneath us, just enough to remind me how close we were sitting. Neither of us had said anything for a minute, but it wasn’t awkward—it was the kind of quiet that felt full instead of empty. I turned back toward him, maybe to say something, maybe just to look at him again… and that’s when it happened. He leaned in, simple and unhurried, like it wasn’t a big decision at all—and he kissed me.

It hit me like a bolt of lightning—quiet on the outside, but sudden and undeniable. The kiss itself was soft… innocent, even. No urgency, no show of it. And yet, somehow, it carried a weight I couldn’t explain. Something about it settled deep, like it belonged there. I didn’t understand it—not then. I only felt it. I melted into him without thinking, like my heart had already made the decision before my mind could catch up. I had no way of knowing that in that small, unassuming moment, something had shifted… something that would quietly haunt the course of my life.

I don’t know how long we sat there like that—lost in something neither of us had named.

The screen door creaked open behind us, and we pulled apart just a little too quickly. Like children that had been caught doing something they shoul dnot have.

“Well, there y’all are,” a familiar voice said with a soft laugh.

I turned to see one of the couples from inside stepping out onto the porch, the woman wrapping a sweater over her shoulders while the man jingled a set of keys in his hand. “We were about to head out,” she said, glancing between us with an easy smile. “Party’s about over anyway.”

“Yeah,” her partner added, nodding toward the quiet house behind them, “just a few stragglers left in there.”

I tucked my hair behind my ear, trying to steady myself, hoping my face didn’t give away how completely I’d been somewhere else just seconds before.

“Y’all take care,” the woman said as they moved past us, the screen door swinging open again.

“Drive safe.” I said.

“Night,” Then man called over his shoulder.

“Night,” we both answered, almost in unison. Then giggled.

And just like that, they were gone—car doors shutting in the distance, headlights sweeping briefly across the yard before fading into the dark. The night settled back in around us, quieter now… but not the same.

I could still feel it—what had just happened—hanging between us.

He looked at me then, something more measured in his eyes now, something I couldn’t quite read.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked. Simple. Casual. But nothing about this felt simple anymore.

I glanced back toward the house, toward the last flickers of a party that was already slipping away… then back at him. Without a thought a hesitation and for reason I still don’t fully understand.

I said yes. In that moment I knew Mark had already settled into a place in my heart I hadn’t meant to give.