16. Tilly #2
"Daddy's plan isn't ugly, I know," I say. "One-story houses with big porches and keeping the oaks where you can. But that is our view of the Stono, our oak trees. Turning it into anything but our sacred place is awful, Grandbank."
"It's a good plan, Tilly. It's the best we could hope for. And we'll keep our house."
"That's not the point." My voice cracks. I hate it. "You're selling me on the houses. I don't care how pretty the houses are. The houses are the thing that kills it. Building houses around our house changes everything. It wrecks it all."
"I know what it is to you." He says it gently.
If he were dismissive, I could push against it.
"I do, girl. That's why I wanted to talk to you before it went any further.
I didn't want you finding out like this, and, honestly, I thought the permitting would take a lot longer than it did.
I thought we had time to work through this together. "
"You could have told me at Christmas. And I was home for Mom every weekend after that. You never told me."
"I didn't, you're right." He doesn't reach for an excuse. "I dreaded hurting you. And I'll be truthful, I didn't think there was anything you could do once it was decided. I thought telling you the whole of it over the phone was a cruelty I could spare us both."
"That's bullshit."
I've never talked like this to my grandfather, but this calls for it. He needs to know I'm not going to be gaslit or handled into subservience to this. I'm not going to go away quietly.
"Tallulah."
"Please say we can talk before you go forward, Grandbank.
" The words come faster than I've worked them out.
"We can fix this. Erosion isn't the same as gone.
I do this. Every Friday I'm out laying reef, watching a shoreline that was giving up start holding again.
There are things that can be done at that point.
I could prove the land's worth more than a bulldozer.
If somebody would let me show them the numbers instead of deciding I'm too much and too young to have them. "
"I hear you, honey. I do." A long breath. "We have other properties that are sentimental. We will always have our memories out there."
I sit there with the phone against my ear.
"Okay," I say, and I mean nothing by it. I can feel the tears welling up, and crying about this to him is the last thing I need to do. "I need to go."
I hang up and set the phone face down on the quilt. Then I pull the legal pad back into my lap and pick up the pen where I left off.
The knock is soft, not the kind that expects an answer.
"Come in," I say. Rhodes opens the door just enough to see me.
He takes in the floor. The maps are weighted down with my coffee mug and a shoe and the legal pad, three pages deep now, my handwriting getting worse the faster I go.
He doesn't step into it. He crosses to the desk and sets a plate down on the one clear corner. Rice and something with sausage in it is in the bowl. There is a fork laid across the edge.
"You haven't eaten," he says. Not a question. "It's almost nine."
I look at the window and realize it's dark. I've been sitting here for hours.
"Thanks." I mean it.
He stands there for a second. I can see him deciding how much to ask.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." I set the pen down.
He waits without trying to fill the silence. From down here on the floor, he takes up most of the doorway. His strong hands and veiny forearms are messing with me in a way I don’t have words for, so I look back down at the legal pad.
"I'm going to fight this, Rhodes." I tap the pad.
"There's a restoration argument I'm going to try to work out.
And there's a legal route, conservation easement, maybe a land trust. I'm at the very front of it right now, so I need to figure out the plan.
But I'm not going down without a fight, which is exactly why they didn't want me to know. "
"I think you should do exactly what you're doing, then."
"I'm not sure how effective it will be, but I'm going to be loud, and I'm going to have a good plan." I hold his eyes.
"Are you sure you don't want me to help you?"
"Thank you for trying to come up with a solution. I mean that. But I'm one hundred percent sure I don't want you making calls or Stone money thrown at it."
He's quiet for a few seconds.
"Fair enough," he says.
"Thanks for the food," I say, and pull the pad back into my lap.
"Don't forget to take care of yourself. If you're gearing up for a fight, you need your strength."
He smiles at me, hits the door frame, and then leaves the door open behind him.
I fly out Thursday morning after my class. I hated having to find someone to help Jo tomorrow, but this is more important.
Nobody picks me up at the airport in Charleston because I don't tell them I'm coming until I'm on 526 in an Uber with the marsh opening up brown and gold on both sides of me.
"Dad," I say into the phone when he picks up on the first ring.
"Hey, Tilly Girl. How is your day?"
"I'm in Charleston. Can you meet me at Oak Moss?"
"You're what? How?"
"I flew in after my class. Can you meet me?"
"Tilly. Goddammit. Come to the house."
"No, I'm already heading out to Wadmalaw. Are you meeting me or not?"
"I'll be there." He exhales loudly, and I can tell he isn't happy about my surprise visit. Good. It's high time I'm not the only one who finds out things at the last minute and has to adjust.
By the time the driver turns down the oyster shell drive at Oak Moss, my father's truck is already at the end of it, parked nose out, the way he parks when he pulls in hastily.
The house sits there proudly, under the oaks with the shutters latched and the porch swept by nobody since October. It's magnificent set against the Spanish moss framing its three-hundred-degree view of the water.