Page 39 of Rhodes

"So many people are dead because of him, including our father, and we let him keep his prized Corvette in a garage on the river. So quaint, don't you think, that he wanted to leave that to me? Mother fucker."

It still eats me up that Ridge made the decision not to torture and kill him like Vin did our father. I wanted to look in his eyes while it happened, for him to know that we are the ones that ended his life, not natural causes.

Ridge doesn't defend him. I know he hates him as much as I do, so it’s no surprise.

"Killing him would've been the easy thing." His voice doesn't move. "We took everything down to nothing and left him breathing. A bullet ends it too easily. Rot doesn't."

I look back at the paper still in my hands. The death record's clipped behind it, and the date on it catches my eye. It's a good three weeks before the night Ridge gathered us and said Vin was gone. I glance up at him, but his face gives nothing.

"I don't want the car."

He doesn't argue. I can't believe he dragged me downtown on a Saturday, instead of putting this bullshit in an email.

All for a dead man's car.

I stand. My legs remind me of what I did to them this morning.

"I won't change my mind.”

"Okay." He picks the key up off the desk and puts it in his shirt pocket, which is not the same as putting it away. "I'm keeping it. It's yours whenever."

He doesn't try to stop me or convince me of anything when I turn to leave. I don't have anything else to say about the matter.

The elevator takes me down through the empty tower, and that wrong-looking date sits somewhere behind my eyes. I'm sure it's nothing. Ridge sits on things all the time, decides when and if he gives me information all the time. This will is a prime example. Who knows how long he's had it.

I pull out of the garage and turn right on Prytania. I don't take the ramp home, convincing myself the interstate's backed up, and that I want the surface streets. But I know it's not true. My hands turn the wheel toward the river.

The levee road runs along the water past the wharves, and I pull off where the grass shoulder widens, and the batture opens up below, cut the engine, and roll the window down.

A tanker's working upriver, riding so deep it looks like it should sink and doesn't. Its hull is red, rust streaks bleeding down from the waterline. Behind it, a tug shoves a string of barges the other way, and somewhere past the bend a horn goes off.

I sit there, not thinking, just watching. The tanker has a place it's going. Somebody plotted it, gave it a heading, told it where to be and when. It doesn't drift or wonder. The engines turn, and the screw bites. The whole thing does its job, because that's the only thing a job is: a set of instructions and a result.

Vin's hands come up once, grease in the knuckles, a rag over one shoulder, his thumb dragging along a fuel line to feel for a crack he already knew was there.

The windshield's gone cool under my palm where I've got it braced against the dash, and the light's dropping fast now. The water's gone from brown to something darker, the far bank down to a line of dots.

I lose track of how long I sit there. When the first lights come up along the bridge, I turn the key and go home. I don't want to meet Deuce and Nash any more. I don't bother texting them to let them know.

Her Cruiser's parked in the driveway in the same spot.

Inside, the house is dark. I flip the kitchen light. The hall stays black except her door's standing open now. On the way past, I catch it, something floral in the air that isn't her morning soap. It's the going-out one.

Her car's here, and she's not. Somebody came and got her. I bet she’s with that douchebag.

I smell perfume wafting up from down the hall. She got dressed up for him. My hand closes on the counter edge until the stone hurts. Then I put the phone face down and go find the eggs.

I get the pan out. Butter goes in and hits the heat with a hiss, and I crack two eggs, then two more, out of habit more than hunger. Dropping a slice of bread in the toaster, I turn back to the stove and push the yolk around.

The eggs spit and bubble at the edges. I flip them, break the yolks, grab the toast, and lay it down over the grease. Cutting them into two sandwiches, I slide them onto a plate, and stand at the counter with it, not the least bit hungry.

My phone lights up on the counter, and I turn it over.

BROTHER.

Then right after it, a photo of Coop's face, sunburned across the nose, grinning like an idiot in front of a stone building with a harbor behind him, fills the screen. He's holding a plate piled with something dark and knuckled I don't recognize.

you will not BELIEVE what I ate today.