Page 109 of Rhodes

"That's not the part."

He waits.

"He thinks I did it."

Rhodes goes still in the chair.

"He said it out loud. He asked me what I did." I press the heel of my hand into one eye, but it doesn't help. "And then he said I'd been telling him for two months that development shouldn't happen, and I'd had a crew out there in March, and he'd just told me he was coming around, so I didn't need to win. Which means I chose to." I hear my own voice go. "And then he called me manipulative."

Rhodes's hand goes around my ankle and stays there.

"That's the word," I say. "That's the word from the last year. That's the word for the girl who took her mother's prescription pad picture on her phone. That's what my aunt called me at Christmas and what he said on the phone to Coop when he thought I was upstairs."

"Tallulah."

"I know what I was. I know exactly what I was." I'm not crying now. Whatever this is, it's drier, and it's worse. "But I have been clean for twenty-one months. I have not lied to that man about one single thing since I got out, and I sent him an email about every phone call I made. Every one. And it took him about four seconds to go straight back there."

"He's wrong."

"That's not what's killing me." I look up at him. "If that's where he goes on a bad day, then where has he been the whole time? What does he actually think of me on a regular Tuesday? Because he's been so kind to me for two months and I ate it up like a dog, and now I don't know if any of it was real or if he's just been being careful around the addict."

Rhodes doesn't argue with me or try to fix it. He gets a paper towel off the roll and hands it to me, and when I've done what I can with my face, he takes it back and throws it away.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"You didn't do anything."

He doesn't answer that.

"The package is still in my car," I say. "The whole thing. I was going to fly out Saturday."

"You still could."

"To do what?" I laugh, but it comes out wrong. "There's nothing to present. There's no easement, there's no restoration, there's no oyster ground, there's no bulkhead. It's a frozen twenty acres, and my father thinks I froze it."

The refrigerator cycles on. The radio's still going low over by the stove, some woman singing about Texas. Then, somewhere underneath the wreckage, my brain finally catches on something solid.

I sit up straighter and wipe my nose on the back of my wrist like a child.

"There has to be more to this. I can't believe it's because I ordered an environmental survey or called the land trust to ask questions. Hell, I didn't even give her a tax map number. Like Dad says, there's no such thing as coincidences."

"There are absolutely coincidences. You can't put this on yourself."

"Wilkins knows who to call. The Corps has a district office," I say more to myself as I work it out than to him. "I'm going to call and find out how this happened."

"Tallulah."

"I'm going to find out who did this." I look right at him. "And then I'm going to put it in front of my father and make him read it."

Rhodes is quiet. I put my face back against his shirt and let him have all of my weight. He's the only person left in my life right now who sees me for me. I'm not sure how I would navigate this without him right now.

When I finally lift my head, my eyes are swollen, and my nose is raw. I’m certain I look like something that washed up.

"Take me to bed."

His hand stops on my back. "You need to sleep."

"That isn't what I asked for."