Page 57 of Rhodes

"I lost seventy dollars," Deuce announces to the room. "To a girl who wouldn't even show her cards."

"You lost seventy dollars because you play like you're at a birthday party," Tallulah says. She's still in the chair, chin on her hand, watching them scatter. "Come back next Monday. I'll take the rest."

"That's cold."

"That's math."

Sully lingers by the door, jangling his keys, because Sully can never just leave. "Best two out of three next time. I had bad cards all night, so I have to cut my losses."

"You had bad cards because you kept smiling at the good ones," she says.

"You're crazy."

"Ford, back me up."

"You did smile," Ford says around the pizza, and Sully throws his hands up and finally goes. Not long after, they're all heading out, the slow shuffle toward the door, jackets, phones, one more thing somebody has to say.

"Night, Til," Nash says.

"Night."

The door shuts behind them.

And the house drops. That's the only word for it. The noise just falls out of the room all at once, the way it does when a fan cuts off and you didn't know it was running. My ears ring a little in the quiet.

The table's a wreck, cups everywhere, chips scattered across the felt, cards face-up and face-down, the two boxes stacked crooked.

There's no audience left, nowhere to put my eyes that isn't her.

"They're terrible," she says still seated, stretching her arms over her head. "You know that, right? Genuinely bad at cards."

"You've been running your mouth for two straight hours." I start gathering cups. "One winning night and you're insufferable."

"One?" She grins. "I'm always insufferable. Tonight I got paid for it."

I stack a cup inside a cup inside a cup. The room was easier full. The noise gave me cards to deal and Ford losing his mind to watch, somewhere to put all of it.

Now there's just the two of us and a wrecked table and the hum of the refrigerator.

I clear the napkins and fold a box flat. She pulls her phone out to check the time. I notice the change in her body immediately when she goes still. It isn't the sleepy kind, or the bored kind. Every part of her stops at once, eyes locked on the screen, and I know before she says a word that it has nothing to do with poker.

"Tallulah, is everything okay?"

She doesn't answer. Her thumb moves on the screen, and she keeps reading, her eyes tracking back to the top and starting over like the words might rearrange into something better on the second pass.

"Tallulah, what is it?"

She stands, the chair scraping back, and she's on her feet with the phone pressed to her ear. I set down the cups I'm holding because whatever this is, it's bigger than a mess on my table.

"Dad." Her voice is thin. "Dad, I just got an email from Miss Ada. What the hell is going on at Oak Moss?"

Oak Moss is the property her family has owned outside of Charleston for as long as I've known them. There are twenty-odd acres running out to a point on deep water, one old house sitting up under the live oaks and not another thing on it but marsh and mud and oyster ground. There's a porch all the way around, tin roof, no air conditioning worth the name. Half the summers of my childhood that I wasn't at our place, I was on those steps eating off a paper plate.

She listens. Her free hand comes up and grips the back of her own neck.

"No, don't do that. Don't. Just tell me what's going on." A pause. "Why are there excavators parked out there? She says they've been sitting there for two days."

Whatever he says lands wrong. Her spine goes rigid, straight up, like something yanked a wire tight through the middle of her.