“Maggie asked where he kept the good pot," Lila said, following my gaze. She chuckled a little before she laughed even harder. “The expression on his face.”
"What did he say?" It was hard to imagine Rhodes having more than one set of pots and pans. He was newly divorced, and so far I hadn’t gotten the impression from anyone that his marriage had been happy. I wasn’t even sure he knew how to cook.
"He showed her another option, and then she reorganized the cabinet, complaining that men didn’t know how to organize.”
"He let her," Hattie said, like this was the significant part. "He just stepped back and watched and said 'yes, ma'am' when she asked him to move."
Maggie was her own force of nature, but she could be a little bossy. The last thing I needed was for Lila and Hattie to think that Maggie reorganizing Rhodes’ cabinets, or him letting her do it, meant we were in some kind of relationship. Because… we weren’t. Or…?
From this angle, I could see the edge of the porch. The shapes of the men there—four of them standing and sitting with the collective gravity of people engaged in a serious conversation. They all carried themselves with the same particular body language. Their voices were low enough that their words didn’t carry, but they all seemed to be articulating the same things. That they knew what they were locked into, whatever the problem was. Fish was collapsed on the floor next to Kipp, already exhausted after Opal chased him across the lawn for an hour.
Rhodes was at the center of it, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I just noticed him more or because he was the only one who wasn’t my brother. It just seemed like the others were orienting toward him the way a compass did, even Wade, who didn’t typically defer to anyone. It was interesting to watch.
He was in the same clothes he'd had on at the gas station, one hand around a beer bottle and the other flat on the porch rail. He was talking in a serious way that meant he was communicating information he’d already organized from earlier. He’d sent the footage from the convenience store to Redhawk, and I knew he’d already gotten several calls from them.
“It’s interesting to watch them together,” Hattie said quietly. “You know Rhodes is the one who got Jane’s ex to confess.”
The spit dried up in my mouth as I swiveled fully towards her. “I had no idea that Rhodes was even involved in all that.”
Hattie nodded. “Yep. At first, Kipp didn’t want to tell me, and it’s still a big secret, so don’t say anything to anyone.” I made a show of zipping my mouth shut and throwing away the key. It had been months of them keeping this secret, and they’d said nothing. “Apparently, he flew back East after he got information on me.” When I opened my mouth, she held up a hand. “Kipp had a stranger at his place. I didn’t begrudge him doing a little digging into my background, but the person he asked was at Redhawk. I’m not sure if he asked Rhodes directly,” she tipped her head toward the porch. “But when he went over everything and saw that Jane’s case wasn’t solved and that Nolan was the only link, he went there and somehow got Nolan to confess to Jane’s murder and show the cops where he’d buried her.” Hattie was silent for a minute.
“I can never thank him enough for that. Actually being able to bury her and getting justice was a big deal. It’s letting me move forward with a clean conscience.”
My mind reeled as I looked over at Rhodes. I could only imagine how he’d gotten Nolan Cannon to confess after all those years, and I would bet it involved pain.
“Wow, I had no idea.” That was all I could come up with. “That was nice of him.” He was friends with my brother, but it seemed like a risky favor, not to mention a criminal act to go beat someone up on a hunch. I checked in with my moral compass. Did I sleep with a criminal?
“What we’re saying is that we like him.” Lila nudged me with her shoulder. “He’d be good for you.”
“Hmm. Solid recommendation.” I winked at her. “I’ll take it under consideration.”
"Wade's trusted him for years," Lila added. "East too."
"Kipp likes him,” Hattie chipped in.
"Kipp likes everyone,” I noted. That wasn’t true. Kipp wasn’t exactly a social creature. He faked it well. He thrived in situations like this, but put him somewhere in town? Well, he hated that. Although I wasn’t sure why I was bothering to protest, I looked over at Rhodes, where he stood, all hot and commanding, with my brothers.
"Kipp tolerates everyone," Hattie corrected. "He likes very few people. Ask me. I live with him." She paused. "He called him a solid guy on the way over. That's basically a marriage proposal from Kipp."
Opal came back with her fists full of small flat stones and a piece of bark that she'd apparently decided was load-bearing, dropping them beside Jessamina’s kingdom with the satisfied exhale of a person who had just solved a significant logistical problem.
"Sage," she said, without looking up from her sorting, "do faeries like these purple flowers?”
"They love them,” I said. “That’s lavender. The bees like it too. It’ll help your fairy house be a home of love and peace."
She considered this, then carefully tucked one of the lavender sprigs along the entrance to Jessamina’s middle house.
"Good." She sat back on her heels and regarded her work with the critical eye of an artist assessing a nearly finished canvas. "I'm going to build another one for Princess Dewdrop. She’s going to be friends with Princess Jessamina forever and ever. Do you think she’ll stay with Jessamina?”
“She’d be crazy not to.”
She nodded as if this settled something, and went back to her kingdom, and Hattie's shoulder pressed into mine with the silent, specific language of a friend communicating.
I watched Maggie come out of the kitchen onto the porch with a tray in her hands. Her hair had turned gray, but she was still a beautiful woman. We’d all been urging her to date, but she’d laughed it off, telling us she was enjoying her time with her girlfriends and hobbies. The worst was right after Levi had died. We were sure she wouldn’t be able to pull through. She was so heartbroken, but it had been seven years now, and time had started to wear down some of the sharp edges of grief. I still saw her sometimes staring into space, and I knew she was thinking of him. She’d called him the love of her life.
“Tea for you girls. Dinner will be ready soon. Chamomile.” She pressed a mug into my hands without asking, and the warmth of it moved up my fingers and into the place behind my sternum where the day had been sitting, cold and unprocessed.
Maggie watched the lawn and Opal. Spread out before her, the grounds of this place were beautiful. It was hard to say it wasn’t the prettiest spot in the state right now with the grass and the greenhouse glass going amber in the fading light. Maggie watched it with the expression she had when she was being quiet on purpose, the one that meant she was thinking things over. I had spent enough years in the radius of that particular silence to know that it was better to wait her out.
