Page 6 of Rhodes

"I just miss you," he says quietly, too quietly for my father, who doesn't do anything quietly. "That's all it really is, underneath. I miss your mama, and I miss you. I don't like any of my girls being far off right now."

Libba, my twin sister, is ten minutes from him at the College of Charleston. I’m the one who ran the farthest, all the way to Louisiana, to a coast that isn't ours. I know I'm the one who left while our entire family is in turmoil.

"I miss you too, Daddy," I tell him, and mean it. "We'll see each other in Italy for the wedding, and then I'll be home for Easter."

Cain is the fourth Stone brother, the fancy one, as they like to call him. He lived in Manhattan for a while before moving home and bringing a whole drama with him. He and his wife married in the courthouse, so now they are throwing a family second wedding on the Amalfi Coast. They're flying my family there to celebrate with the Stones. That is exactly the kind of thing Cain does.

"Italy's going to be busy with the Stones and the wedding. I won't get my Tilly-Time. And Easter is so far away. Can you make a trip before? For the weekend?"

"I do my reef work on Fridays, so it will be hard for me to get East before the wedding. It'll be here before we know it. Also, I've been thinking. Let's do Easter out at Oak Moss this year, like we used to do. All of us. Grandbank, Libba, the cousins. I know Coop won't be able to come, but we can FaceTime him the whole time."

The line goes quiet enough that I pull the phone off my ear to check I still have him.

"Daddy?"

"I'm here. Just a gust of wind. That house hasn't been opened since your mama got sick, Til. The shutters are still latched. That's a lot of airing out and a lot of hauling, and your mama's the one who made that whole thing work. I don't know that any of the rest of us could pull it off the way she did, anyway."

"That's the point. She'd want us to figure out a way." My throat bobs and I fight it with little luck. "I don't want the first Easter without her to be in the dining room with her chair sitting there."

"No," he says. "No, you're right about that."

"So let's do it."

"Let me talk to your grandfather."

He says it like making it happen is an act of Congress. It's simple. We make a decision to all go to our family property on Wadmalaw Island, outside of Charleston, for the long weekend.

"Talk to him about what? It's a long weekend at a house we already own. What is there to talk about?”

“There are some things going on out there I want to run past him first."

"What things?"

A gull screams somewhere behind him. "Let me get off this dock, and I'll call you back tonight."

"Okay."

He won't call me back tonight. I know it, standing here, and I let it go anyway, and then I put it somewhere I can find it later, with everything else this family says sideways.

"Tell Grandbank he's on deviled eggs."

"I'll tell him."

"Listen, Dad, I've got to run."

"Okay, baby. I'll let you get back to whatever you're doing out there on the boat. Don't fall in."

"Everybody keeps saying that."

He laughs and tells me he loves me.

We hang up, and I stretch my knee on my makeshift cooler seat, letting the boat rock me for a second. I don't cry, despite the lump in my throat, which is its own small skill I have gotten good at.

The water slaps the hull. Somewhere behind me, Jo's little engine drones along the marsh line. The guilt settles onto me again, the old coat, the family weight, the sense of being a problem that a whole clan of good people love very much and would like to please solve.

I pick up the phone and text the one person who has never once tried to solve me. I pull up my twin sister's contact.

Dad just did the sideways sleep question. He also admitted the group chat about babysitting me exists. Please tell me you aren't on a group chat about how to keep me wrapped in bubble wrap.