Free Where the River Ends by Charles Martin

didn’t give two bits about his title.
    Thus began the tug o’ war.
    Ever since, they’d lived with this private uneasiness. In public, they shared a necessary truce. She gave him that. That, too, was Charleston. Appearances must be kept. But if you listened to the way she said “Daddy,” it was there.
    From the moment I’d met her, Abbie had been nothing I expected. On the surface, she was a senator’s daughter, birthed in lace, raised by “help” and K-thru-12’d at Ashley Hall, where the echoes of the Gullah nannies hung in the air.
I’m Charleston born and Charleston bred and when I die I’m Charleston dead.
Steeped in society and cured in culture, her first word had been
deb
—as in
debutante.
Beneath the surface, where we swam, she was as at home there on a beach wearing a bikini top and frayed cutoffs as at the Hibernia Society ball decked out in pearls and shoulder-length white gloves. Somehow, she moved seamlessly, and effortlessly, between both worlds.
    Miss Olivia, who changed her diapers and gets a good bit of the credit for raising her while Dad was trying to get reelected, said that somewhere in the first grade, Abigail Grace Eliot Coleman put her hands on her hips, stamped her foot and said, “What’s wrong with ‘Abbie’?” Over the years, in direct proportion to their escalating battle, she chipped away at her name. From third to sixth grade, she clipped it from “Abigail Grace” to “Abbie Grace.” Cute, while still respectable. It also fit with her starring role in the musical
Annie
at the Dock Street Theater. In junior high, as her modeling career began to take off, landing her jobs in national mail-order clothing catalogs and local commercials, her name survived another cut to “Abbie G.” A butchering that narrowed her father’s eyes, but technically it was two names and only used in informal settings—which meant never around him. She’d outgrow it. As a junior, several would-be beaus, prom hopes high, rang asking for “Abbie.” He responded with a dial tone. No matter, sixteen-year-old Abbie went anyway and just to add insult to injury she accepted jobs from two of the largest swimsuit makers in the country. Those two-piece photos quickly earned her a first-class ticket to New York where she and her agent—an attorney sent along by her father—met with cosmetics lines, shampoo and perfume companies, a sports news company with a rather famous swimsuit edition and one well-known lingerie monopoly. Midway through her senior year, he discovered that her teachers were addressing her as “Abbie.” Which was bad, but it would get worse. Much worse. One Saturday morning, after two cups of coffee and a bran muffin spurred his daily constitution, he was flipping through the swimsuit edition and stumbled upon her picture. That magazine went in the trash—along with his subscription. Abbie graduated and he brokered a peace with a gift. He pulled the Mercedes out of cold storage and gave her the keys. But the cease-fire was short-lived. Speaking at her commencement ceremony, Senator Coleman fired what he thought was a final volley across her bow, announcing her full name in a tone that sought to return her to legitimacy, reestablishing her bloodline. Owners spoke of horses in much the same manner. But the smug smile was premature. A year later, “Abbie Eliot” sealed her rebellion when she quit Georgetown and signed an exclusive New York contract. Within weeks, her travel schedule included Europe and the Far East. By the age of nineteen, her travel schedule included New York and London and her glossy picture stared back at him from the glass-topped table in the dentist’s office. Establishing a professional and public name that did not link her to him was a blow he could not counter.
    She’d made a name for herself. Which was just fine with her.

    A DEEP BREATH. “She’s right here.”
    “Where is ‘here’?” He could be direct when he wanted.
    “Sir, I can’t tell you