17. Rhodes #2
"Rhodes." That easy Charleston warmth comes down the line, unhurried, the same voice I've heard across a hundred crawfish tables. "You got a minute for an old man?"
"Always. Everything okay? Don't tell me you're bailing on the wedding."
"Everything's great. I wouldn't miss Cain's wedding for anything. Listen, I won't keep you. I know you're packing."
"You're fine. What's up?"
"I wanted to say it before the whole crowd's there and I forget. Thank you for taking Tilly in while Cooper's off in Spain. She's really doing well and says living with you has been great for her."
"Grange, you don't have to thank me. We're family. It was easy to do."
"Well, it means more to me than you know, Son. She's lucky to have so many great people keeping an eye on her."
I stop with a rolled pair of socks in my hand.
“Tallulah’s doing a pretty good job looking out for herself, Grange.”
He chuckles softly. “That she is.”
I leave it there.
"You're a good man." He says it softly, the parent register, the one that hears you and pats your head, and somehow misses the point anyway. "I'm just grateful you're there. That's all."
I don't argue it. There's no winning that particular hill, and I don't want to.
I've got things I could say about Oak Moss, but it's not my place.
He called to thank me, not ask what I think about his family business. And Tallulah sure as hell doesn't need me calling her father to argue her case for her.
"We'll see you over there," I tell him.
"You too, son. Gonna be one helluva wedding."
I hang up and set the phone on the arm of the chair and sit there with what he said. She's lucky to have so many great people keeping an eye on her. But they need to give her some credit.
Down the hall, her door is shut. She's been in there most nights for two weeks with the storage bin and the maps and the legal pad, and when I brought her a plate at nine last night she'd forgotten to eat again, and the first thing she said to me was a number about wave energy.
She's going to lose her argument.
That's what I don’t have the heart to tell her.
She is right, and she is going to lose, because being right has never once been what wins in a room full of men who have already decided.
Twelve weeks is not enough to build a survey and a case and a tax argument and turn her father around, and she knows it, and she is doing it anyway, and I get to stand in the kitchen and watch.
I get up and go stand in front of the refrigerator without opening it.
I go back and pick up my phone.
I don't know what I'm looking for until I'm looking for it.
Last fall, before Cain left for Nero, there was a developer putting houses in next to one of our facilities on the Gulf side, and the erosion off it was going to come back on us.
Cain copied half the family on the whole chain, mostly out of spite.
I read one line of it at the time and forgot the rest.
I find it. Eight months old, buried under four hundred emails I never opened.
There's a firm on it. Coastal and environmental consulting, an office over in Mobile, a phone number and a man's name in the signature block.
And what happened is that they sent a letter asking whether the wetland line on that parcel had been drawn right, and somebody at the Corps decided it was worth another look, and the whole project sat down for six months while they sorted it out.
Nobody sued anybody. Nobody bought anything. A man asked a question, and the question got to be asked.
I sit down at the table.
This isn't money. She said no to money, and I am not offering her money. This is not Ridge, and it is not lawyers, and it is not a Stone landing in Charleston with a checkbook to make her father fold in front of her.
It's a question about dirt, asked by people who ask questions about dirt for a living. If the line is right, then it's right, and nothing happens. If it's wrong, then somebody looks, and the development is put on hold.
Time. That's the whole thing. That's all of it.
She'll still make her own case. She'll still stand in front of Banksie with her own paper and her own numbers and win it herself. I'm not doing it for her. I'm buying her the room to do it in.
I open a new message and put his address in. I’m just buying her an insurance policy.
Both bags are by the front door by the time I come out of my room. Mine and hers, side by side on the hardwood, and she's crouched over the smaller one, zipping a side pocket.
"Passport." I hold mine up, then slide it into my jacket.
"Front pocket." She pats the bag.
"Phone." She lifts it, waggles it, drops it into her back pocket. "Charger's in the outside sleeve so I'm not tearing the whole thing apart in security. See? I've done this before."
"I'm traveling with a pro."
She stands and shoves her hair back. "I'm going to head out a little early so I can swing by Jo's and drop something off. I'll take the Cruiser and leave it in long-term parking. That way it's not sitting out front for a week.”
"That's stupid."
She turns and gives me a flat look. "Excuse me?"
"Leave whatever it is you need to drop off on the porch and tell Jo to come by here. I've got a car and a driver coming any minute." I nod at the front door. "You're going to pay a fortune to park your Cruiser at the airport when there's already a ride pulling up to this house."
"Well, aren't you bossy this morning?”
"I get anxious on travel days." I zip my bag. "But I'm serious. We're leaving from the same house, going to the same airport. You want to burn two hundred bucks so you can drop something off?"
She opens her mouth, then closes it.
"You do have a point," she says. "I just didn't want to put you out by making you go with me."
"You won’t," I say with a shitty grin. "You're riding with me, and Jo's absolutely coming by. Every once in a while, I come up with a good idea."
A horn taps out front.
"That's us." I grab both bags before she can reach for hers.
"I can carry my own."
"I know." I carry them anyway, out the door and down the walk, and load them into the trunk the driver's already popped.
She follows about a minute later, sliding into the back seat beside me.
"I thought you bailed," I say jokingly as she pulls her phone out of her purse.
"Had to write Jo a note and leave the fishing pole on the porch. It was already loaded in my car."
I shake my head as the driver takes off. Tallulah settles beside me, shoulder against mine for half a second when we take the corner.
Ravello is a long fucking way from New Orleans.