18. Tilly
EIGHTEEN
Tilly
Shoring: Temporary bracing set against a wall to hold it upright while the work gets done. Shoring is not a repair, and a wall kept in it too long forgets how to carry itself.
The van climbs a road that has no business existing, switchback after switchback carved into a cliff that drops straight into water so blue it looks fake.
I press my forehead to the window and watch lemon groves scroll past, whole terraces of them netted in green shade.
The fruit hangs fat and yellow, like somebody hung ornaments to greet us on our arrival.
We left New Orleans yesterday morning and lost most of a day somewhere over the water, and now it is Friday afternoon in a country I have never set foot in, and my body has no idea what time it thinks it is
The van stops at a stone gate, and then we're spilling out into noise. Bags hit the gravel. Somebody's already yelling from a terrace above us, and it's Cain, bald head shining, waving a wooden spoon like it's a scepter.
"You made it! Watch the step, it's murder in sandals."
Greer comes down behind him with a toddler on her hip. Sisue is squirming to get down before her feet even touch the ground. She lands running.
"Grab her," Greer says to nobody and everybody. "She always heads for the ledge. I swear she's part goat."
Grandbank catches Sisue by the back of her romper before she reaches the wall, and she shrieks. Granger is already hauling luggage he has no business hauling. Based on how much this place costs, we should each have our own house manager. I go to take a duffel bag off him, and he swats my hand.
"I've got it, Til."
"You've got a hernia coming, is what you've got."
He laughs. Somebody hugs me from the side. I turn to see it's Quinn, Keller's wife, who I've met exactly three times but hugs like we grew up together like Keller and I did. Then Reeves is there, clapping Rhodes on the shoulder. Rhodes says something that makes his brother snort.
"You brought the whole reef with you?" Cain calls down, eyeing my bags. "What's in there, oysters?"
"Your wedding present. They're already dead, so hurry up before they start stinking."
Greer laughs, her hand pressed to her chest. She looks so happy it does something to the air. She catches Sisue again and blows a raspberry on her cheek. The kid goes boneless with giggling. The whole scene warms my heart.
I climb the terrace steps because that's where everyone's going, past a stone wall gone soft with age, past a fig tree. The villa opens up, and there's a gap in the buildings. I stop in awe. Wow, the view is stunning.
The Mediterranean is just there, below everything, spread out flat and enormous and lit up gold where the sun hits it. Boats no bigger than seeds are crossing it, the whole coast folding away in blue and haze.
Mama would have lost her mind over this.
It comes with no warning at all. She'd be standing right here with both hands over her mouth, making everybody stop and look at the lemons and the water.
"Tilly, are you looking?" She'd say it was too much, and she'd say it three times.
My throat pulls tight. There's a pressure behind my ribs that has nowhere to go, and I blink hard at the water until the shine of it goes sharp again.
"Til, up here, your room's the good one," Libba calls, and I go, smiling, the sea still sitting in me. She and I are sharing a villa, but we might as well have our own, because we each have our own suites on separate floors.
Cain has everybody spread across a cluster of little villas, but privacy is apparently theoretical. Nobody knocks. People keep wandering in and out of all of them as we all get ready for the catered dinner on the terrace outside.
My room has two windows thrown open to the hillside, and the warm air comes in smelling like lemons and something green underneath. I inhale deeply and make out cut grass and herbs.
Downstairs, a hair dryer roars and cuts out. Libba got here a few hours ago and is already getting ready.
"Did you happen to bring a curling iron that works on this outlet?" She yells up to me.
"I don't use a curling iron. But I did bring a plug adapter. Let me find it."
"You're the yin to my yang," Libba calls back as she walks up the stairs, sticking her head in my room but not looking up from the earring she's threading into her ear.
I start pulling my stuff out, putting folded clothes in the antique cabinet against the wall. I hang my garment bag on the back of a navy blue Louis XIV chair and then kneel on the floor to dig through my suitcase. I know those European plug adapters are in here somewhere.
I toss out my shoes and hear Greer's laugh below out of the open window. Next, Sisue protests a hairbrush. That kid has a set of lungs.
"These or the studs?" Libba holds up two pairs of earrings, one in each hand, tilting her head.
"The studs. The others are too much for dinner."
"That's what I thought. I just needed to hear you say it."
"Here you go," I say, handing her the package of two adapters. She takes them and disappears downstairs.
I sit on the edge of the bed and listen to her footsteps disappear, and something turns over in me. It sneaks up the way it did on the terrace.
The last time we all stood in rooms and asked each other about earrings and zippers, called between doors, was for Mama's funeral. I go still. The dryer starts up again on the floor below, and just as soon as it does, it stops.
As if she feels it, Libba comes back upstairs. She's always caught things about me faster than anyone, even myself, sometimes.
"You feel it too," she says. It isn't a question.
I nod. I don't trust my voice yet.
She comes and sits beside me, her shoulder against mine doesn't say a word at first. Then she huffs out a breath that's almost a laugh.
"She'd have opinions about every single dress in this house," Libba says. "And she'd tell Greer that color washed her out and she'd be wrong and Greer would wear it anyway."
"She'd have made me change twice."
"At least twice."
Libba finds my hand and squeezes it, letting go before it can turn into something we can't come back from. That's the thing about us. We know the exact edge.
The front door opens downstairs without so much as a knock, and Grandbank's voice rumbles up the stairwell asking if anybody's seen his good belt.
The Oak Moss thing flickers up in me, and I set it right back down.
I know I have twelve weeks, so we don't need to re-litigate any of that on this trip.
Libba swears she only knew about it in passing, and thought I knew. She doesn't care about it as much as I do, so it just didn't come up.
Either way, we're not going there, not here. The fight is still there. It just isn't invited to this trip that is all about being together and celebrating Greer and Cain.
"Go help Grandbank. I need to get ready if I'm going to make dinner."
She gets up and starts to walk downstairs. I unzip the garment bag and pull the dress out, deep fuchsia, simple, the kind of thing you can breathe in. I step into it. Libba returns to do the zipper without being asked.
In the mirror, I look fine. I have a little sun on my shoulders from the warm Friday on the water last week, and my hair is behaving for once. The pink is good against my skin.
I take one more breath, grab the flip-flops that Libba assured me I can wear for our family dinner, and head downstairs.
Outside, somebody starts laughing, and Libba yells for me to hurry up.
The long table runs the length of the terrace, and somebody has strung lights through the fig tree so the whole thing glows.
Platters keep coming, fish crusted in salt, pasta yellow with lemon, bread torn straight from the loaf.
The sea has gone dark past the wall, but you can still feel it out there, big and patient.
The cousins are at the far end of the table. Wade's got a roll in one hand, and a story going before anyone's even sat down, something about the driver who brought them up from the airport, and Birdie's already telling him he's full of it.
It's the first thing since arriving that hasn't felt like walking on glass. I drop into the chair between them and let Wade talk over me the way he has since we were six. He's the only guy I let do that.
Cain stands with a glass, and Ridge taps a fork on his wine glass until people quiet.
"To my brother," Ridge says. "Who somehow tricked a woman this smart and beautiful into a lifetime of his jokes."
"It took real effort," Greer calls, and the table roars.
Cain presses a hand to his chest like he's wounded, then bends and kisses the top of Sisue's head where she's slumping against Greer, fighting sleep and losing. He looks stupid happy. So does Greer. So does everyone.
Somebody keeps coming down the length of the table, topping up glasses.
There's a full one sitting at my place because a caterer who doesn't know me poured it before I ever sat down.
I turn it a quarter turn away from my hand and slide my water in front of it.
That's the whole thing, and not one person at this table sees me do it.
Better than that, no one is freaking out about all the wine and worried I'll fall off the wagon.
That part's easy. That part has been easy for a long while now.
It's the rest of it that isn't. The laughter and happiness of the night pull at me until I catch myself measuring this whole loud table against the size of what's missing, and I have to set my water down and breathe.
Across the table, Rhodes is listening to Reeves, sleeves pushed to his forearms, collar open. He laughs at something, and it changes his whole face. He looks up and catches me looking.
I go to refill the water pitcher at the sideboard, just to move.
"There she is." A man follows me over, one of Cain's college friends, wine sloshing in his glass. He's been getting louder for an hour. "You've been hiding all night."
"Just getting water."
"You're Coop's little sister, right?" He steps in closer than the space needs. "He didn't tell me you look like this now!"