Page 61 of Rhodes

Nobody puts an easement on land against the owner's will. I can't force this. I can only make the argument, which means I have to understand why they'd ever say yes to giving up the very thing that makes the land worth the most.

I dig into that next: land trusts, tax incentives for donating easements, programs that pay landowners to conserve working coastal ground. There's real money in some of these, federal and state both, for exactly the kind of tract Oak Moss is. Not house money, but not nothing.

And here's where it clicks together: restoration on one page and law on the other.

My family looks at Oak Moss and sees a losing hand: beds that don't produce like they used to, a bank washing away a little more every year. To them, the erosion isn't a problem to solve. It’s the proof that holding the land is sentimental and stupid, that the only rational thing left is to cash it out as waterfront lots before the water takes it for free.

Their whole case rests on the land being worthless as land.

So I don't argue that I love it. Loving it is exactly what they expect from me, the difficult one, the one who feels too much and thinks too little.

I argue that they're wrong about the value.

Restore the shoreline, document the ecological worth, highlighting the reef, the marsh, the nursery habitat that a working oyster coast holds, then attach a conservation structure that pays out and protects it at the same time.

I sit back and look at the legal pad. It's not sentiment anymore. It's a case.

And I might be the only Maybank alive who knows enough to build it. I pick up my phone, find Grandbank in my contacts, and call him.

He picks up on the second ring, which he always does, because he's seventy-one and keeps the phone in his shirt pocket.

"Tilly girl." His voice warms the second he says my name. Usually that’s comforting, but right now, it grates on my nerves.

"Grandbank." I've got the legal pad on my knee. "Why are you letting Dad develop Oak Moss?"

There's a pause, but it's not a dodge. He's not the type.

"It's time, Tilly. I wanted to tell you in person, but then your mom got sick, and then⁠—"

He doesn't finish.

"Why?"

I hear him settle into his chair, the one by the window that looks out at his own water. I can see it without him telling me a thing about where he is. "You want the honest answer or the soft one?"

"When have I ever wanted the soft one?"

"No. I suppose you haven't." He breathes out. "Oak Moss is going backward, honey. The beds don't make what they made. The bank takes more every year. I've watched that point shrink for forty years, and I'm not going to be here to watch it much longer. When I'm gone somebody's got to make the hard call, and I'd rather make it myself than leave it to you children to fight over."

"Daddy's plan isn't ugly, I know," I say. "One-story houses with big porches and keeping the oaks where you can. But that is our view of the Stono, our oak trees. Turning it into anything but our sacred place is awful, Grandbank."

"It's a good plan, Tilly. It's the best we could hope for. And we'll keep our house."

"That's not the point." My voice cracks. I hate it. "You're selling me on the houses. I don't care how pretty the houses are. The houses are the thing that kills it. Building houses around our house changes everything. It wrecks it all."

"I know what it is to you." He says it gently. If he were dismissive, I could push against it. "I do, girl. That's why I wanted to talk to you before it went any further. I didn't want you finding out like this, and, honestly, I thought the permitting would take a lot longer than it did. I thought we had time to work through this together."

"You could have told me at Christmas. And I was home for Mom every weekend after that. You never told me."

"I didn't, you're right." He doesn't reach for an excuse. "I dreaded hurting you. And I'll be truthful, I didn't think there was anything you could do once it was decided. I thought telling you the whole of it over the phone was a cruelty I could spare us both."

"That's bullshit."

I've never talked like this to my grandfather, but this calls for it. He needs to know I'm not going to be gaslit or handled into subservience to this. I'm not going to go away quietly.

"Tallulah."

"Please say we can talk before you go forward, Grandbank." The words come faster than I've worked them out. "We can fix this. Erosion isn't the same as gone. I do this. Every Friday I'm out laying reef, watching a shoreline that was giving up start holding again. There are things that can be done at that point. I could prove the land's worth more than a bulldozer. If somebody would let me show them the numbers instead of deciding I'm too much and too young to have them."