Page 70 of Rhodes

Downstairs, a hair dryer roars and cuts out. Libba got here a few hours ago and is already getting ready.

"Did you happen to bring a curling iron that works on this outlet?" She yells up to me.

"I don't use a curling iron. But I did bring a plug adapter. Let me find it."

"You're the yin to my yang," Libba calls back as she walks up the stairs, sticking her head in my room but not looking up from the earring she's threading into her ear.

I start pulling my stuff out, putting folded clothes in the antique cabinet against the wall. I hang my garment bag on the back of a navy blue Louis XIV chair and then kneel on the floor to dig through my suitcase. I know those European plug adapters are in here somewhere.

I toss out my shoes and hear Greer's laugh below out of the open window. Next, Sisue protests a hairbrush. That kid has a set of lungs.

"These or the studs?" Libba holds up two pairs of earrings, one in each hand, tilting her head.

"The studs. The others are too much for dinner."

"That's what I thought. I just needed to hear you say it."

"Here you go," I say, handing her the package of two adapters. She takes them and disappears downstairs.

I sit on the edge of the bed and listen to her footsteps disappear, and something turns over in me. It sneaks up the way it did on the terrace.

The last time we all stood in rooms and asked each other about earrings and zippers, called between doors, was for Mama's funeral. I go still. The dryer starts up again on the floor below, and just as soon as it does, it stops.

As if she feels it, Libba comes back upstairs. She's always caught things about me faster than anyone, even myself, sometimes.

"You feel it too," she says. It isn't a question.

I nod. I don't trust my voice yet.

She comes and sits beside me, her shoulder against mine doesn't say a word at first. Then she huffs out a breath that's almost a laugh.

"She'd have opinions about every single dress in this house," Libba says. "And she'd tell Greer that color washed her out and she'd be wrong and Greer would wear it anyway."

"She'd have made me change twice."

"At least twice."

Libba finds my hand and squeezes it, letting go before it can turn into something we can't come back from. That's the thing about us. We know the exact edge.

The front door opens downstairs without so much as a knock, and Grandbank's voice rumbles up the stairwell asking if anybody's seen his good belt. The Oak Moss thing flickers up in me, and I set it right back down. I know I have twelve weeks, so we don't need to re-litigate any of that on this trip.

Libba swears she only knew about it in passing, and thought I knew. She doesn't care about it as much as I do, so it just didn't come up.

Either way, we're not going there, not here. The fight is still there. It just isn't invited to this trip that is all about being together and celebrating Greer and Cain.

"Go help Grandbank. I need to get ready if I'm going to make dinner."

She gets up and starts to walk downstairs. I unzip the garment bag and pull the dress out, deep fuchsia, simple, the kind of thing you can breathe in. I step into it. Libba returns to do the zipper without being asked.

In the mirror, I look fine. I have a little sun on my shoulders from the warm Friday on the water last week, and my hair is behaving for once. The pink is good against my skin.

I take one more breath, grab the flip-flops that Libba assured me I can wear for our family dinner, and head downstairs.

Outside, somebody starts laughing, and Libba yells for me to hurry up.

The long table runs the length of the terrace, and somebody has strung lights through the fig tree so the whole thing glows. Platters keep coming, fish crusted in salt, pasta yellow with lemon, bread torn straight from the loaf. The sea has gone dark past the wall, but you can still feel it out there, big and patient.

The cousins are at the far end of the table. Wade's got a roll in one hand, and a story going before anyone's even sat down, something about the driver who brought them up from the airport, and Birdie's already telling him he's full of it.