Rhodes
TWENTY-NINE
The Same Hand: A builder's habits repeat across every house he ever worked on, which is how a preservationist can name him a century later. They rarely identify him by his best work. They identify him by the mistake he made every single time.
I haven't been home in four days.
My bags are still zipped on the floor beside the bed at Creston House because unpacking would make this intentional. I pull another clean shirt off the top and leave the rest where they are.
Upstairs, Creston is all old New Orleans money and ghost-story bullshit, a nineteenth-century Garden District mansion the family opens for tours twice a week and rents out for weddings and parties.
Underneath it is Dad's contribution to the architecture, a bunker big enough to keep the Stones underground for a year if the world ever went to hell.
Apparently fucking up my own life qualifies, too.
Nobody's using the place this week, except Reeves, who comes to swim before work at the ass crack of dawn, so I've made it my temporary abode.
I walk down the hall to the kitchen and put the stainless stovetop percolator over the gas. It isn't my coffee pot at home, and the coffee is worse for it, but it will do.
Tallulah hasn't answered a call or text since before we talked at Tulane on Tuesday. She didn't tell me to stay away from the house. I did that part myself.
By ten, I can't stand another minute underground, alone in my own head.
Deuce sent a group text last night about pickleball at City Park, which I ignored because I hate pickleball and don't feel like being social. I find it, though, because I need something.
I'm coming out if y'all need another body. Or I'll just watch you losers. I need to get some fresh air.
The courts are already busy when I pull in. Deuce has commandeered one with Ford and two guys I know from Loyola. There are enough paddles leaning against the fence to make this look more serious than anything involving a plastic ball deserves to be.
Deuce spots me first. "Look who crawled out of his hole."
"Good morning to you, too, meathead."
He throws me a paddle. I catch it because that seemed like a better option than letting it hit me.
Ford's at the net. He lifts his chin at me, and I start toward the court. Then I see Jo sitting in the shade in the back corner. She's on the low wall outside the fence with sunglasses pushed into her hair and a cup of something in her hand.
I stop. Every question I've had for four days lines up at once. Ford follows my eyes and shakes his head.
"Don't, dude," he says quietly.
Rage rises up inside me. I ball my fists at my sides, knowing this isn’t about him, even though I want to take it out somewhere.
"She's not your biggest fan right now."
"I'm used to that."
"Then just leave her alone."
"I'm not going to bother her," I assure him.
I make it through eleven points despite the fact that going to the dentist would be more fun than this. I keep thinking that if I fake it until I make it, it will be better.
I miss two balls I should've buried, put one directly into the net, then send an easy return three feet long. Deuce lowers his paddle. "Are you having a stroke?"
"Shut up."
Ford serves.
I don't even see the ball until it skips past my shoe.
"Jesus Christ." Deuce catches it off the back fence. "Go deal with whatever the fuck this is. Chris is ready to step in. Let someone who wants to be here play."
I hand him the ball and walk off the court. Chris fist bumps me as he takes my place.
Jo sees me coming before I make it halfway across the grass. She brings the cup to her mouth, but otherwise doesn't move. I stop a few feet away.
"I just need to know she's okay."
Her mouth presses into a line.
"I'm not asking where she is. I haven't heard her voice in four days. I just need to know she's okay."
Jo looks past me toward Ford. He has very deliberately turned his back on us.
"She's safe."
The breath leaves through my nose.
"Thank you."
I start to turn.
"She stayed with me Tuesday night after she left you. She went to her meeting and then came back to my house."
I stop, but don't say anything. Then I turn back around and walk over, sitting on the wall not too close, but close enough.
"I haven't been back to my house, so you can let her know she can stay there and not worry that I'll be up in her shit. I won't bother her. I just want to make sure she's safe and comfortable."
"I'll let her know. She stayed with me Wednesday, too, because she didn't want to see you. She flew to Charleston after her lab on Thursday."
My hand closes around the paddle grip I'm still carrying for some damn reason.
"She's there now?"
"She was when I talked to her last night."
"Is she okay?"
"I already answered that."
"Jo."
Her eyes come up.
"Is she okay?"
"She's functioning." She gives me a hard look. "That's all you're getting from me about that. You fucked her over pretty bad. How do you think she's doing?"
I nod.
"Fair."
"Did she get anywhere with Oak Moss?"
Jo's expression hardens.
"I'm not asking so I can step in. She told me to stay out of it, and I'm staying out."
"Good."
"I just need to know I didn't leave it worse than it was. I've hardly slept since all of this went down."
"Good. You should lose sleep." She actually laughs. It is not a friendly sound.
"You're an asshole, Rhodes. This is so bad."
"I know."
That takes a little of the fight out of her face, but not much.
"Please tell me she was able to make it right."
"Of course she's fixing it. That's what Tallulah does."
The answer comes so fast I almost smile. I want to ask details, but I bite my tongue.
"Don't."
"I'm not."
She exhales loudly, and then answers the question as if she can read my mind. "She went home to tell Banksie in person, and help him do whatever it will take to make it right."
My stomach drops even though I already knew that was the only path.
The noise from the courts gets louder behind us. Somebody yells about a line call.
"She told them she did it, you know?"
For a second, I think I heard her wrong.
"What?"
"She took the blame."
"No."
"Yes."
"Why the fuck would she do that?"
Jo stands and walks over to a trash can to throw away her empty cup without answering me. Then she walks back over to me, standing directly in front of me.
"Because telling them the truth means explaining you."
I don't answer.
"She wanted Oak Moss fixed. That's it. She didn't want another family war because of her."
Her voice stays low, which makes me lower mine.
"She shouldn't take the fall for me."
"Again, this isn't about you. Do not mistake what this is, Rhodes."
I look up at her.
"She isn't protecting you," she says with a huff, crossing her arms. "She's containing the damage.
If she tells Banksie what really happened, then she has to explain why you cared enough about Oak Moss to pull strings behind her back.
Then she has to explain Italy, and whatever the hell you two have been doing since you got home.
She has to explain every bad decision tied up in this instead of talking about Oak Moss. "
Bad decision. My thumb digs into the edge of the paddle handle. Jo looks away first.
"I'm not saying that to be cruel."
"No, you're right."
"Right now, she wants one problem. Oak Moss is her priority, and has been since this all came up. She doesn't want you turning into five more."
"I didn't ask her to lie for me."
"No. You just left her with a mess where lying was the cleanest option she could find."
I deserve that one, so I take it. She studies me for a few more seconds, then she sits back down.
"Jo."
"What?"
"Don't tell her about this conversation."
Her eyebrows lift, as if to say she doesn't owe me shit, especially when it comes to Tallulah.
"Tell her about the house. That part is hers, and she deserves it. The rest of this is just me, and she doesn't need one more person passing information around behind her back."
That gets the first change in Jo's face since I walked over.
"Okay."
"Thanks."
I jump off the wall and head back toward the courts.
My bags aren't on the floor anymore.
Sometime around week three, I got tired of digging through them and put my clothes in the dresser at Creston.
I drove down Audubon exactly once in those three weeks, the Sunday after I talked to Jo.
The Cruiser was in my driveway with the hatch up and a laundry basket sitting on the bumper.
The house is hers until the end of the semester, as I said, so I didn’t slow down.
I’ve thought about that laundry basket more than is appropriate.
The phone buzzes in my hand, and I look down to see it's Cooper. We haven't talked much lately, and when we do, I keep it short. That's been a small mercy. He's been busy wrapping up Spain, and I've gotten good at being unavailable when our time zones line up.
I walk up the stairs out of the bunker to sit on the porch of the main house.
I watch the screen, letting it ring several times, and consider letting it go to voicemail.
"Coop," I finally say into the phone.
"Brother." There’s a lot of muffled noise behind him, like always when he calls. Spain must be the noisiest country in all of Europe. "Hold on, I'm walking out. These guys won't shut up about some soccer game they are all watching."
"Where are you?"
"Cádiz. Down on the southwest coast." The noise drops away until there's nothing but wind. "This is my last stop, man. I fly into Charleston, see my dad a couple days, then I'm coming down to y'all."
My stomach drops.
"Good."
"Heard Til and Jo finally signed a lease this week for the fall. It will be weird not to have a place there anymore, so I may really crash in your spare bedroom, at least to help them get moved in, if that's cool. I still don't know what I'm doing after graduation."
"Yeah." I set my coffee on the gallery rail. The oaks out front hang low over the gate, and the street is empty at midday. "Are you glad you did the whole Spain thing?"
"Fuck, yeah. This experience has been amazing. I'm so grateful you pushed me. You and Mom were right. I needed to do this."