Page 105 of Rhodes

He lets it drop, which is the good thing about Reeves. He doesn't circle a thing to death, especially when he can sense I don't want to talk about it anymore. Rolling the bottle between his palms, he looks back out at the field, and then back at me, wanting an answer.

"That's what Ridge says. I'm not sure I've ever seen myself as the corporate type, so it's almost like it isn't real. But yeah, that's the plan."

"You'll be great," he says. "You're a Stone. You'll find your way."

I look at the tree line going gold at the top. "I suppose so."

Reeves drains the last of his beer and pushes up off the step.

"I need to get back before Charli sends a search party. Benjy's got some tank show he wants me watching by seven or the world ends."

"Go, then. I'll load up the bikes."

"No, I got you, brother. Let's go."

We gather the bottles. He drops his in the cooler, and I drop mine on top, and we roll the bikes up the ramps and strap them down, working easy, not talking much. The one beer I had over the whole long sit is nothing. My hands are steady, my head is clear. I'm good to drive.

He claps me once on the shoulder, hard, and gets in his truck. He flips me off before kicking up dust as he peels out. I flip him the bird before jumping in my own truck, following him out, nose to tail. Dust hangs pink behind me, and at the gate his brake lights flare before he swings left toward the bay and Charli and his son.

I sit there for a minute before I turn right toward New Orleans, with four words riding shotgun in the dark. "It's the land problem."

The porch light's on when I pull in. I kill the engine and sit a second in the dark yard, the house glowing yellow at the top of the steps like it's waiting on me.

Inside, her keys are on the hook by the door. Her boots are crooked against the baseboard where she always leaves them, one standing, one tipped over. The house is dark past the front hall, telling me she's gone to bed, even though we promised to pick up where we left off this morning.

I guess she was too tired to wait up. I don't turn on lights because I know this house in the dark.

My bedroom door's open and as soon as I walk in, I see she's in my bed, on the far side. She's got the sheet kicked down to her waist and one arm thrown up over the pillow, dead asleep. Her phone lies face down on the nightstand.

I empty my pockets onto the dresser, putting down my wallet and keys and a folded receipt I don't remember. I plug my phone into the cord that lives on my nightstand.

Something crosses in me while it's in my hand, half of Coop's grin about the twenty-ninth and half of what Reeves said out at the field, the two of them touching just long enough to make my thumb move. I get as far as Coop's name in the thread and the empty box under it before I lock the screen and set the phone face down.

I strip down and slide in behind her.

She shifts back toward me in her sleep, the way she does every night now. Her spine finds my chest and her cold feet find my shins. I get my arm over her, and she settles.

I asked her once at Cowbell, over a burger. I put it out there plain and simple, and she told me she had too much moving until Oak Moss was settled. Asking didn't break anything. We're still here. But it didn't move her either, and I'm not going to ask again.

I'm asleep before I can think of one thing I'd trade for this.

TWENTY-SIX

Tilly

The Stop-Work Order: A single posted notice halts everything on a site, and nobody standing there can lift it. Not the crew, not the architect, not the family whose name is on the deed.

The carrel light hums over my legal pad. My handwriting from a month ago stares back at me from the early pages, angrier then and a lot less sure.

Six pages in, JUNE 15 is large, bolded, and sits boxed at the top of a clean sheet where I put it after Dad told me the hard date. I've gone over that box so many times since that the pen has cut through.

"So walk me through it one more time," I say into the phone, pen ready.

"Yes, ma'am." The woman from the land trust has a voice like sweet tea and patience.

"So the federal deduction is based on the difference between development value and restricted value?"

"That's right," she says in a slow, Southern drawl.