Page 74 of Rhodes

He stands in front of every person he loves, and he looks at Greer, and he doesn't reach for a single one of his exits.

"I married you to keep from admitting I wanted you," he says. "Figured if I made it a deal, I could have you and still call it a plan." His voice doesn't waver. "I'm done calling it a plan. I want you. Not the arrangement, not the version I could explain to a board. You. Out loud, where everybody can hear me say it."

My collar's too tight. I roll my shoulder and it doesn't help.

"So here it is, out loud, where everybody can hear me." His dimples are gone. He means it, and he's letting them all watch him mean it. "Be mine forever?"

He's doing it. He's standing there asking to be chosen in front of the whole world, and the whole world could laugh, or say no, and he did it anyway.

Two rows up, Tallulah's hand comes to her mouth. Her eyes are wet. I look at the sea instead.

Cooper leans in. "He's really gone, huh."

"Yeah," I say. "He is."

Greer says hers back through tears, and then it's official-official, now. The whole terrace comes apart at once, both families up out of their chairs, clapping, somebody whistling. Sisue shrieks in the middle of it on point, as if planned.

I stand with them, Cooper's arm around my shoulder, and I let myself have one look at Tallulah laughing across the crowd before I put my eyes back where they belong.

The reception spills across two terraces once the sun starts sliding down, everything gone gold. A four-piece band sets up near the low wall, and the food comes out in waves, plates going hand to hand. Granger is already lining up a table with Banksie and Thomas, two fast friends.

I'm at the bar when Tallulah walks up beside me.

"Club soda with a lime," she tells the bartender before turning around to talk to someone I know I should know but don't.

The guy is slammed, three deep, reaching for six things at once. He tries to get her attention again, clearly struggling.

I catch his eye. "Club soda and a lime for her."

I set a hundred-dollar bill on the bar and slide it toward him. "You've got a lot going."

"Coming right up."

I don't wait to see her get it, turning to go find Cooper across the lawn. He's got a plate in one hand and his tie loose, and he's laughing at something Cain said.

"There he is." He knocks his shoulder into mine. "You know Greer's dad thinks you're the quiet dangerous one? I told him he had you pegged."

"You're a good friend."

"Best you've got." He forks a bite of something. "God, it's good to have everybody in one place."

I hand him my beer to hold while I fix my jacket, and he takes it without thinking, the way he's taken things from me our whole lives.

The band starts up something slow. Cain pulls Greer onto the makeshift dance floor, and the families whistle. Sisue toddles straight into the middle of it until Granger scoops her up and spins her instead.

Tallulah's across the terrace, club soda sweating in her hand, laughing with Libba. She looks up and finds me in the crowd first.

I lift my beer half an inch. That's all I let myself have. Then I turn back to Cooper and ask him about Spain, and the night keeps moving.

The band's got the whole crowd turned toward the water now, so I drift the other way, down to the low end of the second terrace where the lights don't reach as hard. A stone bench, a couple of empty chairs somebody dragged over and forgot. Quiet enough to hear the sea again under the music.

Banksie's already there. He's got a plate balanced on his knee and a glass of something amber, and he's watching the party like a man who found the trick to it a long time ago. Seventy-one and sharp as ever, still sits like the land belongs to him wherever he happens to be sitting.

"They wore me out," he says, not looking up. "All that whistling. Grandbank can only take so much."

"Take your time." I lower myself onto the bench a foot off from him. "I need a break every once in a while, too."

"Good boy, Cain turned out to be." He forks a bite. "I remember him so clearly as a little boy. He and your mom were like two peas in a pod."