“If you’re Marley, I’m sorry I’m late.”

Marley smiled. “And if you’re Billy, time doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re here.”

Following their hearts, and ignoring advice from family members that it was too soon, a starry-eyed Marley and a smiling Billy married six months later on a frosty New Year’s Eve. While Marley completed her dental-hygiene classes a semester early and went to work at a popular dental practice, she didn’t think twice about Billy’s taking an extra two years to graduate from pharmacy college. Everyone had their own pace.

Billy repeatedly overslept in the mornings and arrived home late at night. Marley shook off her brewing anxiety, trusting that God knew what He was doing.

Why think poorly of a husband who brought home apricot-frosted roses when late for their “date night” dinner? Why gripe about a man who fetched mint chocolate chip ice cream for her sore throat an hour after rescuing the neighbor’s kite tangled in the red and golden leafed maple tree?

Two years after they married, denial morphed into anger.

Billy worked as a pharmacist for a rehabilitation hospital. With an updated kitchen, car payments, and Marley beginning work at a new dental clinic, Billy couldn’t risk his cushy job by arriving late. Never fear, Marley to the rescue.

“Billy, the alarm’s set for five.”

“That’s overkill. I start work at ten.”

“You touch the set time and you’re a dead man.”

“What kind of story shall I tell you today?” Grandfather Will asked.

I, Will the younger, tucked my feet under my legs Indian-style, scratched my knee, and considered. “The one about the wicked Captain Hook.”

Grandfather snorted. “It wasn’t Hook, youngin’, but Huick. Dutch. Nowadays folk just call him Huck. Christian Huck—or Huick—was his given name.”

Could he not just tell the story? “Yes, yes. The most feared Royalist of the Revolution.”

“Aye, lad.”

Grandfather smacked his gums, but I waited, tugging on my ear.

“Fine, then. It was the summer of 1780, and I was but a sprout like yourself.”

“And Huick was the terror of the Carolina backcountry.”

“Aye, a right evil man. Bloody Ban Tarleton had nothing on him.”

“And Huick had said—”

“Huick had said that even if rebels was thick as trees, and if Jesus Christ Himself became a rebel, they couldn’t stand against Huick’s men.”

Huick hadn’t been the only one who spoke so foolishly. Captain Patrick Ferguson, himself a colonial and a Royalist, had died on King’s Mountain after a similar declaration. But I held my tongue and Grandfather went on.