Epilogue
Maintenance: A restored building is never finished. It is walked, inspected, patched, and painted year after year by people who intend to still be standing there the next time it needs them. In New Orleans, that turns out to be what preservation actually means.
One Year Later
Cooper drops the folding table on my foot.
“Motherfucker.”
He winces. “My bad.”
“You let go on purpose.”
“I slipped.”
I know he didn’t, but this argument is stupid. I know him better than anyone, and Coop always does dumb shit most people wouldn’t notice to poke at people.
“You absolutely let go.”
“Prove it.”
I wave my hand at him. “You’ve been waiting a year for a socially acceptable reason to injure me.”
“I wouldn’t call this socially acceptable.”
“That’s because you’re bad at revenge.”
I grab my end, and we haul the table the last few feet toward the patch of St. Charles Avenue Cain has apparently been defending since noon, like somebody is going to annex it if he looks away.
Reeves got here before any of us. He still acts like he’s the recon hero. Probably has something to do with him running security for Stone Intermodal.
He’s already lashed a box seat to the top of a ladder for Benjy, who is standing up in it with both hands on the rails. Charli has their baby girl tied onto her in one of those bookbags for babies, and she’s out cold. The four of them are in their own world.
New Orleans is already loud even though the parade is still an hour out.
Kids run between ladders strung with beads.
Somebody three setups down has a speaker playing brass music loud enough to compete with the streetcar bells, and the neutral ground is packed with coolers, folding chairs, wagons, blankets and enough food to survive a natural disaster.
Cain looks up from where he is unfolding chairs. “You two finished?”
“Coop tried to kill me.”
“I missed.”
Cain nods. “Do better next time.”
“Thanks, Brother,” I say.
“You are all so lucky I chose this family,” Greer says.
I point at her. “Yes, we are. Especially Cain. Why you love that bald bastard, I’ll never know.”
“Be nice to your brother.”
Coop opens the cooler.
“Yeah, be nice to your brother, Rhodes.”
He pulls out a beer and holds it toward me. I take it. That's pretty much where we are.
A year ago, there were stretches when I wasn’t sure he would ever willingly sit across a table from me again. He answered my calls if they were about something important, ignored the ones that weren’t, and spent about three months calling me asshole instead of Rhodes.
Eventually, asshole started sounding affectionate again. We never had one giant conversation that fixed it. There isn't anything to fix with one conversation.
I lied to him. He knows why, and I know why he was furious. He also knows Tallulah chose me, which took him longer to accept than either of us enjoyed.
Now he drops furniture on my foot and gives me beer. I call that progress.
“Where is your sister?” I ask.
Cooper immediately points the bottle opener at me. “Don’t.”
I laugh. “I asked where she is.”
“You’ve known her location every second for the last year. You don’t need me to track her.”
I stare at him. He realizes what he said, and for a beat, neither of us moves.
Then he rolls his eyes. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Cain looks between us. “Did you two just have a breakthrough?”
“Shut up,” Cooper and I say together.
Greer laughs. My phone vibrates in my pocket. It's Tallulah.
Parking is a nightmare. Jo says this is your fault.
I type back.
Always
Three dots appear.
We’re walking now. Be there in 10 minutes.
I put the phone away.
“They’re coming,” I tell Cooper.
“See?” He gestures at me with his beer. “Tracking.”
“Communication. Couples do it.”
“You were unbearable before you were dating her. Somehow this is worse.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cain hands me a stack of plastic cups. “Make yourself useful.”
That phrase used to irritate me. Now I take the cups.
Nero has me in New Orleans more than it did when I started, although I still spend enough time in airports that Tallulah knows which terminals have decent coffee from Houston to Tampa.
Cain moved me into bigger projects last summer, then made a point of telling me it had nothing to do with being his brother. I believe him because he also made me interview for it.
Twice.
I am still deciding whether that was necessary. Work is good. Harder than I expected, but better too.
Turns out I like being the guy people call when something has to get from one place to another. Nobody else can figure out how to make the pieces fit. I like airports before sunrise, docks when they are waking up, warehouses with problems nobody solved before I got there.
I even like spreadsheets now. I've told absolutely nobody that.
“Here.”
Greer hands me a plastic container. I look through the clear lid. “What is this?”
“King cake.”
“I can identify king cake.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Why am I holding it?”
“Put it on the table.”
I set it down beside enough fried chicken, chips, and sandwiches to feed the entire parade route. A hand slides around my waist from behind.
“Hi, sexy.”
I turn.
Tallulah is smiling up at me, cheeks pink from the walk and a purple-and-gold knit cap pulled down over her hair. She kisses me right there on St. Charles Avenue, in front of her brother.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Tallulah.”
Cooper groans.
“Jesus Christ. I still hate that.”
Tallulah pulls back and looks at him. “Then stop watching.”
“I wasn’t watching. I have peripheral vision.”
Jo comes up behind her carrying two canvas bags. “Can somebody please take these before my arms fall off?”
Ford takes one from her. “You should have called me. I would have come and helped.”
“I thought I had it. Don’t worry, I made it.”
She leans over and kisses him.
Tallulah snorts at something Jo says and comes back over to me with her chin up. Her life is still hers.
That was the deal from the beginning of the second time around, although we never really called it a deal.
She has school, her Tuesday meetings, Helen, Jo, and the reef work every Friday she can manage it.
Oak Moss is still a priority whenever she can get back to Charleston, and luckily she lets me help her with it.
The conservation easement was finalized last summer. Grandbank threw a party afterward and pretended it wasn’t a party, which meant forty people showed up, and there was enough food for eighty.
The restored sections are holding. The shell we sourced last January did what it was supposed to do. Tallulah still checks every damn inch of it whenever we’re there.
And when something goes wrong, sometimes she calls me. Sometimes she doesn’t. I finally learned not to take either personally.
“You brought the good beads?” I ask.
She looks offended. “Obviously.”
“I saw that box of cheap ones you bought. Just making sure.”
“Those were from last year, before I knew better.”
The first distant thump of drums rolls down the avenue. Everybody around us starts moving at once. Someone farther up the route yells that they can see the first float.
Tallulah catches my hand.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Closer.”
“We have a perfectly good spot.”
“You sound ninety.” She pulls me toward the curb.
She still has a way of deciding she wants something and moving toward it like the rest of the world should keep up. The difference is I do not try to clear the road anymore. I just go with her when she asks.
The parade turns onto St. Charles in a wall of music, light and screaming people. Tallulah raises both hands when the first float gets close. “Throw me something!”
A strand of purple beads comes flying toward us. She reaches and misses. I catch them over her head.
She turns around. “Those are mine.”
“I caught them.”
“They were thrown to me.”
“You have no evidence.”
She grabs the beads and pulls, but I hold on.
“Rhodes.”
“Tallulah. You know what you have to do to get these beads.”
Her eyes narrow. Then she yanks hard enough to pull me down and kisses me before I can argue. Behind us, Cooper makes a disgusted sound. Someone else cheers.
“I’m going to do better than show you my tits. If you give me those beads, I’ll do something for you tonight you’ll never forget.”
I let go of the beads. Tallulah wins. She loops them around her neck and grins at me.
“Should have gotten that in writing.”
Another float is coming. She turns back toward the street, but keeps hold of my hand.
I look at the people around us. Cain has one arm around Greer. Jo climbs onto the bottom rung of a ladder while Ford tells her she is going to break her neck. Cooper is arguing with somebody over whether the cooler needs more ice.
Reeves has Benjy by the ankles now, holding him steady while the boy leans out over the street with both arms up.
He told me about Vin, and I’m still not entirely clear about the complicated feelings surrounding him. I’ve quit waiting on that to sort itself out. I loved him, and I hated him in the same breath, and that’s the messy truth about my relationship with Vin.
I haven’t told anybody what he told me that day. That’s his to tell if he wants to.
Tallulah is beside me. That’s the one that matters. A year ago, she came to my house and asked if I wanted to try dating her. We still have not moved in together.
She still has another year of school, and I still travel too much. We have time.
For most of my life, somebody else always seemed to know what came next. Now I know what I want, and I know better than to decide the rest by myself.
Tallulah squeezes my hand. “You ready, Baby?”
I look down at her. “For what?”
She smiles and points toward the next float coming around the bend. “Whatever they throw.”
I tighten my fingers around hers. “Yeah, love. I am.”