Page 67 of Rhodes

I laugh too, because she's legitimately funny. I love the way she commands whoever is around so effortlessly. I've always known she's a spitfire, but damn, she can work a room. I missed that somehow over the last twenty years.

The more ordinary she gets inside my house, the more specific this hyper-recognition gets.

"Rhodes." Sully snaps his fingers. "Your shot."

"Yeah."

I stand and rack. The night keeps going. Jo's leaning into Ford, and Deuce is still needling Tallulah about the rematch. I swear he still thinks he has a shot with her. It's pathetic, really.

The bag's open on the bed. I'm losing the fight with it. I grabbed shirts off the hangers without unbuttoning them, so now there's a wad of cotton that won't lie flat, and I keep pressing it down like that's going to help. A blazer's slung over the gallery rail because I can't decide if Cain's thing needs a blazer. Knowing Cain, it needs three, and possibly a tux.

The phone buzzes on the nightstand, and Granger's name lights up in front of a picture of him pulling in a seine net. Why the hell is he calling me?

I let it ring twice, and then realize it's probably something about the trip, so I pick it up.

"Grange."

"Rhodes." That easy Charleston warmth comes down the line, unhurried, the same voice I've heard across a hundred crawfish tables. "You got a minute for an old man?"

"Always. Everything okay? Don't tell me you're bailing on the wedding."

"Everything's great. I wouldn't miss Cain's wedding for anything. Listen, I won't keep you. I know you're packing."

"You're fine. What's up?"

"I wanted to say it before the whole crowd's there and I forget. Thank you for taking Tilly in while Cooper's off in Spain. She's really doing well and says living with you has been great for her."

"Grange, you don't have to thank me. We're family. It was easy to do."

"Well, it means more to me than you know, Son. She's lucky to have so many great people keeping an eye on her."

I stop with a rolled pair of socks in my hand.

“Tallulah’s doing a pretty good job looking out for herself, Grange.”

He chuckles softly. “That she is.”

I leave it there.

"You're a good man." He says it softly, the parent register, the one that hears you and pats your head, and somehow misses the point anyway. "I'm just grateful you're there. That's all."

I don't argue it. There's no winning that particular hill, and I don't want to.

I've got things I could say about Oak Moss, but it's not my place.

He called to thank me, not ask what I think about his family business. And Tallulah sure as hell doesn't need me calling her father to argue her case for her.

"We'll see you over there," I tell him.

"You too, son. Gonna be one helluva wedding."

I hang up and set the phone on the arm of the chair and sit there with what he said. She's lucky to have so many great people keeping an eye on her. But they need to give her some credit.

Down the hall, her door is shut. She's been in there most nights for two weeks with the storage bin and the maps and the legal pad, and when I brought her a plate at nine last night she'd forgotten to eat again, and the first thing she said to me was a number about wave energy.

She's going to lose her argument.

That's what I don’t have the heart to tell her. She is right, and she is going to lose, because being right has never once been what wins in a room full of men who have already decided. Twelve weeks is not enough to build a survey and a case and a tax argument and turn her father around, and she knows it, and she is doing it anyway, and I get to stand in the kitchen and watch.