Kate MacKenna and Carl Bertolli

Kate MacKenna and Carl Bertolli’s friendship joins personal loyalty to practical support: Carl admires Kate’s character, remembers her care for his sister, and tries to help her company thrive. Their relationship reaches from a hospital waiting room to Charleston’s social world and the warehouse whose ownership Carl kept from her, revealing a friend whose generosity is real but whose efforts to help are not always openly disclosed.

How the Friendship Began

Carl met Kate years earlier at a hospital, where Kate was accompanying her mother and Carl was visiting his sister, Susannah. Kate was still in high school. Susannah and Kate began talking while Kate waited for her mother to come out of X-ray and Susannah waited to be taken in; Susannah introduced them. The connection between the two young women formed quickly, and Carl’s account makes their friendship the starting point for his own lasting attachment to Kate.

Kate was already making candles with unusual scents and asked Susannah to give her opinion of them. Carl recalled that this made his sister feel important. The exchange was modest, but it established a pattern that endured: Kate made room for Susannah’s voice and treated her interest as worth seeking, even when her own work did not depend on the feedback.

A Friendship Sustained Through Susannah

Susannah was ill for a long time and repeatedly returned to the hospital, which she called her home away from home. When Kate’s mother went into remission, Kate no longer needed to come to the hospital as often, but she did not let the change end her connection with Susannah. She continued visiting, including when she returned home from college during vacations.

Kate also sent Susannah a small gift every week, such as a candle, special lotion, or flower, wherever Kate was. As she developed new products, she called Susannah for her thoughts. Carl understood that Kate did not need Susannah’s opinion to proceed; asking for it gave Susannah something to anticipate, especially when illness had left her weak in her final days. For Carl, these repeated acts showed that Kate’s care was not confined to the circumstances in which the two women first met.

Susannah died in September, but Kate continued to honor her. She developed a special perfume named for Susannah, whose family nickname was Sassy. The perfume gives Carl’s gratitude a lasting focus: Kate’s friendship with his sister persisted beyond Susannah’s illness and death, and Carl’s affection for Kate is inseparable from his memory of what she had meant to Susannah.

Carl’s Support for Kate’s Work

Carl’s support also took public and commercial forms. He arranged for Kate’s products to be displayed at an event he hosted, where Charleston’s elite were expected to attend. He saw the occasion as a chance to introduce Kate and launch her products before an influential audience. When asked what he expected in return, he described his reward as satisfaction, presenting the effort as a pleasure in helping rather than a transaction for personal gain.

That support extended to the warehouse, where Carl had a controlling interest but had not told Kate he was an owner. He explained that he planned to offer the property through a Realtor at a substantially reduced price because he wanted to help her. He had watched the difficulties of the previous year with distress and believed Kate’s company had been on a promising course. In his view, she had the connections to move the business to Boston, where it could become a major industry presence within a year and sell products worldwide within five. These were Carl’s projections, but they show how seriously he took Kate’s prospects and how strongly he wished to protect them.

Carl also recognized the constraint behind Kate’s decision not to relocate. He believed she would remain in Silver Springs first for her mother and then for her younger sister, Isabel, because she put responsibility before her own plans. He estimated she would stay at least two or three more years. Though he would have liked her to remain permanently and expand locally, he did not doubt that she could succeed wherever she went; his preference for Silver Springs coexisted with his confidence in her abilities.

Trust, Candor, and Character

When Carl was away after calling Isabel, Kate explained that he sometimes withdrew into seclusion when life became stressful and returned refreshed. She urged the others not to leap to conclusions and defended him as kind, sensitive, decent, and valuable to the community. She also doubted he could have witnessed anything relevant to the warehouse investigation. Her readiness to explain his habits and defend his character reflects familiarity as well as trust, even as Nate Hallinger insisted he would find Carl rather than wait for his return.

Carl’s concealed ownership complicates, but does not erase, that trust. He asked Dylan Buchanan to keep his explanation discreet because he thought Kate would be embarrassed, then spoke frankly about the reduced-price offer and his hopes for her future. Dylan regarded Carl as a contradiction: pretentious and arrogant in some respects, yet straightforward and considerate, with little concealment in the expression of his feelings. Their friendship is therefore not based on an uncomplicated image of Carl. It is shown through Kate’s long memory of his conduct, her confidence in his decency, and his repeated attempts—sometimes indirect—to support her work and the life he believes she deserves.