17. Rhodes
SEVENTEEN
Rhodes
Boarding Up: Plywood over the windows keeps out weather and keeps out people, and it also keeps out air. A house left boarded too long rots from the inside faster than one left open to the street.
The morning light comes through the gallery doors and lies across the floor in long bars. The old house is quiet now, the way it only gets when Tallulah's already gone to campus. I'm about to take my second sip of a strong coffee when the phone lights up with Coop's name.
"How's it going across the pond?" I answer.
"Brother." His voice comes through half a second delayed. "It's amazing. How's it landing over there? Til went to Charleston, my dad said. Is she still there?"
"She's back. She doesn't have class on Friday, so she left Thursday and came back the next night, so she didn't miss anything except her reef work."
"What a shit show, huh? He said she's not being reasonable, and wouldn't accept the reality of what needed to happen."
"That's actually not what happened from my vantage point.
" I set the mug down harder than I should have.
"She flew home on her own dime, walked the whole property with both of them, and put a folder in your father's hands with real data she spent days pulling together.
She got twelve weeks and he sent the crew home.
Nobody in your family has ever gotten Granger Maybank to hold anything. "
Coop is quiet a second.
"He didn't tell it like that."
"No. I bet he didn't. It always makes for a better story to make her hysterical and unreasonable, right?"
I don't tell him the rest. That she came back Friday night with her jaw set and went straight to that legal pad and has been on it every night since, and that watching her do it is the best thing I've seen anybody do in a year.
I keep the pride out of my voice, because it has no business being in it.
"I'm proud of her," Coop says. "She's like a dog with a bone when it comes to something she cares about. Honestly, I figured she'd blow up, and it'd be over."
"She did blow up. The night she found out, she was in pieces on my kitchen floor, Coop."
He exhales. "That was the worry. Everyone just wants to protect her."
Something in how he says it snags.
"You knew," I say.
Silence.
"Of course."
"If I'm being honest, that's pretty shitty. No wonder she lashes out. Y'all all treat her like she's made of glass."
"She had a full plate, Rhodes. I wasn't going to gut her over something she couldn't change, as my mom is dying. There just hasn't been a good time."
"That's the part I don't buy." I lean into the counter.
"You didn't protect her. I watched her the night she found out.
She was upset about possibly losing Oak Moss, sure.
But what gutted her was that everybody who loves her knew, and purposefully kept her in the dark until the last possible moment. I didn't realize she was right."
"You weren't there," Coop says, sharper now. "The bad years, when she was barely holding herself together, and one wrong thing could tip her. Protecting her stopped being a choice and became instinct."
"I know what happened, Coop, and I know why you do it." I rub my thumb along the edge of the oven, cleaning off some leftover grime from dinner last night. "But she's not there anymore. At some point you have to stop making every decision based on the worst year of her life."
He doesn't answer for a long moment. I know I'm the last man alive who should be preaching.
"You've gotten close to her. I can hear it in your voice. But, respectfully, living with her for a month or so doesn't make you an expert on Tilly," Coop says finally.
The phrase "close to her" stops me for a second.
"I didn't say I'm an expert."
"The way you're talking makes it seem like you know better than we do."
"I'm saying I watched what it did to her when she found out a major thing was happening and no one in her family told her. She had to find out from an old lady down the street. That part doesn't take an expert."
"I hear you. Look, I need to go. I'll see y'all in Ravello. I fly in Saturday morning, so I'll be cutting it close to the ceremony."
"See you there."
I've been looking forward to this trip since Cain announced it at Christmas. Coop ending up being able to make it was supposed to be a bonus. Instead, I stand here staring at my dark phone with an argument still sitting hot in my chest.
I know why he does it. Hell, if Tallulah were my sister, maybe I'd be worse. But he isn't seeing it through her eyes like I am.
The Boot hasn't changed since freshman year. Same sticky tables, same three pitchers already sweating in front of us, same music turned up loud enough that Deuce has to shout to be heard from two feet away.
It's the first time I've been out in weeks. Somewhere along the line I stopped coming, traded the noise for a quiet kitchen and a girl bent over field notes.
"Rack it up," Sully yells at Nash, who's guarding the pool table like it owes him money.
Ford isn't watching the pool game. Ford's watching the door.
"You expecting somebody?" I ask him.
"No." He picks up his beer too fast. "Just looking."
The door swings open and Jo walks in. Ford sits up straight like somebody yanked a string in his back. His whole face goes stupid and bright.
"Oh, no," Deuce says, already grinning. "Oh, look at that."
"Shut up."
"You texted her." Nash points a pool cue at him. "You've been texting her, don't lie."
"We ran into each other." Ford's ears go red. "At the library. It's nothing."
"It's nothing," Sully repeats, delighted. "Look at his face. That's a whole lot of nothing."
Jo spots Ford and lights up too, cutting a path straight for our table, and the whole thing is so obvious it's painful. The guys howl. Ford tells them all to go to hell and stands to pull out a chair for Jo like a man who's been practicing.
I laugh with them. I mean it. It's the easiest thing in the room: two people who like each other and just haven't said it out loud yet.
Then Tallulah walks in, and my brain quits.
She's not the woman from my kitchen table.
That woman is barefoot and hunched and chewing a pen cap, hair shoved back with one hand.
This one has done something to her eyes, dark and sharp, and she's wearing a top that leaves the whole line of her shoulders bare, shoulders I've spent two weeks not looking at.
"Your break," I tell Nash.
"Tilly." Deuce waves her over. "You still owe me a rematch."
"I owe you nothing." She drops into the seat across from me without a glance my way, sipping on a clear plastic cup with something clear and carbonated with a lime on top. I know better than to side-eye it.
"You lost fair and square."
"Now you're lying. You can't have poker and pool."
"If I beat you, I can."
She's easy about it, laughing, leaning into Jo, giving Deuce hell. She doesn't look at me, and I keep needing to look at her, at the bare skin above the neckline and the way she tips her head back when she laughs.
"So which one of these idiots is holding down the Quarter while you're gone?" Sully drops into the chair beside me and points his beer down the table. "You're skipping town for spring break, right?"
"He's not skipping town." Nash chalks his cue. "He's going to Italy. Fancy."
"Italy,” Deuce says it like a curse. "You're leaving New Orleans during spring break, which is high-chick time, for a wedding?”
"It's a celebration. They already got married. Courthouse thing. This is the party."
"I'm jealous. I asked Tilly to sneak me in her suitcase. Where is it, again?" Jo leans forward, elbows on the table, Ford practically melting beside her.
"Ravello,” Tallulah answers before I can. "Remember, the Amalfi Coast."
"Cain's your brother?" Nash asks me.
"One of them." I catch Tallulah's eye across the table by accident, and she gives me the look she gives right before she says something with teeth.
"His new wife's very patient," she says. "She married into the entire circus."
Deuce laughs. "How big's this circus?"
"Both families." Tallulah ticks it off on her fingers. "All the Stone brothers, which is an entire basketball team plus one, then my dad, my grandfather, my sister, and then Cooper just found out he's flying in from Spain."
"Coop's going?" Sully perks up.
"He wouldn't miss it." I keep my voice level. "None of them would. Our dads built half their friendship on trips like this. Now it's us."
"So you two are going to Italy together." Deuce points between Tallulah and me, grinning wide.
"We're going to the same event," Tallulah says.
"Feels like more overlap than that." Deuce won't let it go.
"That's because you can't count." She sips her sparkling water, and half the table laughs.
I laugh too, because she's legitimately funny. I love the way she commands whoever is around so effortlessly. I've always known she's a spitfire, but damn, she can work a room. I missed that somehow over the last twenty years.
The more ordinary she gets inside my house, the more specific this hyper-recognition gets.
"Rhodes." Sully snaps his fingers. "Your shot."
"Yeah."
I stand and rack. The night keeps going. Jo's leaning into Ford, and Deuce is still needling Tallulah about the rematch. I swear he still thinks he has a shot with her. It's pathetic, really.
The bag's open on the bed. I'm losing the fight with it.
I grabbed shirts off the hangers without unbuttoning them, so now there's a wad of cotton that won't lie flat, and I keep pressing it down like that's going to help.
A blazer's slung over the gallery rail because I can't decide if Cain's thing needs a blazer.
Knowing Cain, it needs three, and possibly a tux.
The phone buzzes on the nightstand, and Granger's name lights up in front of a picture of him pulling in a seine net. Why the hell is he calling me?
I let it ring twice, and then realize it's probably something about the trip, so I pick it up.
"Grange."