A Woman Booked My Carriage in Charleston Every Morning for Seven Days, and Every Morning She Asked Me to Drive Past the Same House. On the Last Day, She Told Me Whose House It Was

She booked the carriage at seven in the morning.

That alone was strange. The first tour in Charleston leaves at nine. Nobody wants a carriage at seven.

But the booking was paid in full. Private tour. Seven days in a row. Her name was on the reservation: *E. Whitfield, Chicago.*

At 6:55, she was waiting on the corner of Market and Church, in a camel coat, with short dark hair and sunglasses, holding a paper cup of coffee in both hands.

She was about fifty. Elegant. Nervous in a way she was trying very hard to hide.

“Good morning,” I said. “I’m Beckett. This is Duke.”

Duke is my horse. A gray Percheron, nineteen hands, two thousand pounds, with the temperament of a retired schoolteacher.

“Good morning, Duke,” she said.

She said it to the horse. Not to me.

I’m Beckett Lowry. I’m 50. Before I drove carriages in Charleston, I was a litigation attorney in Atlanta. I lost a marriage, had a small heart attack at forty-two and bought a horse.

“Where would you like to go?” I asked.

She took a folded piece of paper out of her coat pocket and handed it to me.

An address.

A narrow street in the old Harleston Village neighborhood. No mansions. No famous houses. Nothing that would ever be on a tour.

“Just there,” she said. “Please. And stop in front of the yellow house.”

I drove her there.

She didn’t get out. She didn’t take a picture. She just sat in the carriage and looked at a small yellow house with green shutters, a wrought iron gate and a palmetto tree, for exactly fifteen minutes.

Then she said, “Thank you. Same time tomorrow.”