Page 64 of Rhodes

That's the question I flew here for, and I've had the answer written on the inside of my skull since Monday night.

"I'm asking you to give me twelve weeks. Nothing gets cleared for twelve weeks, which is enough time for a real erosion survey by a licensed surveyor, not my notebooks. I'll put a written case in your hands with the easement numbers in it. If it doesn't hold up, I'll get out of the way. I’ll never say another word about it."

"And if we say no?"

"Then you say no." I close the folder. "And I'll be here at Easter anyway, eating deviled eggs from EarthFare by myself."

Grandbank makes a sound that isn't a laugh, but sort of sounds like one.

He walks out past me to the edge where the bank is worst and stands there with his hands behind his back, an old man on ground he has been standing on since before my father was born. Neither of us speaks for long enough that I have to lock my knees.

"Twelve weeks," he says to the water.

"Daddy," my father says.

"She asked for a date and a number, and she brought paper. That's more than the last three consultants managed between them." He turns around. "There's no reason we can't take a pause, Granger. That dirt isn't going anywhere in three months that it hasn't been going for forty years."

My father looks at me for a second, and I watch him as he realizes this isn't his decision. There are benefits to sitting in the mud with my grandfather all those years, listening to him talk about this space. He's giving me deference over my father for once, and none of us know how to handle it.

"Fine," he says. And then he ruins it. "If it'll settle you down, we'll hold it."

There it is. He isn't agreeing because I'm right. He's not pushing back because I'm upset, and a "settled" Tilly is better than the fear of what I might do if they don't let me think I have a chance.

I take it anyway. I take it because twelve weeks is twelve weeks, and because on the walk back up the path, Grandbank puts his hand on my shoulder and leaves it there for the rest of the walk up.

I fly back Friday night. Nobody has changed their mind about the land, and nobody has changed their mind about me. What I've got is a clock.

Twelve weeks. I can do a great deal with twelve weeks.

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."