14. PRESTON
Chapter fourteen
PRESTON
COOKIES ARE ALWAYS THE ANSWER
“Hi, Mom,” I call, walking through the back door like I always do when I visit. I don’t use the front door. No one does. Not because it’s bright green, though it is. Mom got it into her head that colored doors were the in thing at some point years ago and she made Dad paint it. The back door is actually more like a side door, and everyone just seems to gravitate to it, I guess. The second I pull open the door, I’m met with the most delicious familiar scent. Sweet and nutty with a hint of cinnamon. Mom’s baking.
“In here, hon,” Mom calls back, and I follow the sound of her voice up the hallway.
The hallway is decorated with countless photos of me in my youth, from newborn baby all the way up to pimple-faced teen. There’s an animal in almost every one of them, too. That was life growing up in a vet’s house. Dad always brought his work home, but Mom didn’t mind. Once she carried a litter of raccoon kits in her sweater for weeks. Their mom had fallen from the rafters of the O’Malley’s barn. I pause at a photo of me sitting on top of a giant white Chianina. It remains the largest cattle I’ve ever seen in my life and the most beautiful. Most of the dairy cows on the Beaker ranch are Holstein heifers and cows, but they also have a few Jersey bulls they use for crossbreeding and a stunning American White Park that Dean bought when he was still in school. It’s not as big as the Chianina but it’s just as pretty. They have the mini highlands, too, but those aren’t bred for milking, they’re just for cuddling, which is where the new calves will get to spend some time, too, until they’re too big and get moved out to the playground. That’s what they call the small pasture, where they have direct access to the blue barn for extra feedings and a safe space to play with others about the same size. My mind throws up the delicious memory of Dean shirtless as I’m enveloped by his scent. Best idea I’ve had in years. Watching him work shirtless for twenty minutes was the highlight of my week.
I find Mom pulling a tray of freshly baked cookies from the oven.
I shouldn’t be surprised to find her in the kitchen. It’s where I always found her growing up. She loves to bake, and feeding people is how she shows love. It’s also the reason I joined the track team in high school. I needed to burn off all her school snacks somehow.
“Good, you’re just in time to try one of these,” she says, handing over a cookie from a cooling tray to her left.
I know better than to say no. I take a bite, the still-warm cookie melting in my mouth and flooding my brain with the dopamine hit that only comes from the happiest of childhood memories. Cut knee, freshly baked cookie. A good report card, freshly baked cupcakes, every event, and every non-event was celebrated with food.
“It’s amazing,” I tell her, popping the rest of the cookie into my mouth and pulling her into a hug. She’s a large woman, my mother, and I’m enveloped in the warmest best hug in the world in her arms.
I reach over and grab another, and she pulls away and smacks the top of my hand with a spatula. “Leave some for Poppy,” she cautions.
“Is she here?” I ask before remembering it’s like seven at night. She’d surely be in bed by now. I mean, what time do ten-year-olds go to bed? I seem to remember Mom putting me to bed as soon as the sun hit the top of the north mountains. That was at like six-thirty, I think.
“No, my beautiful grandbaby isn’t here.” She sighs. Ever since Mom found out about Poppy, it’s all she can talk about. It’s nice seeing her this happy again. After Dad, it was rough for her. For both of us, but for her more so. They’d been together most of her life and now she was here, in the home they built together, living without him.
“Then she won’t know if I have another one,” I say quickly, grabbing another cookie and ducking around to the other side of the table before I get another smack.
She waves the spatula at me.
“These are for her birthday.”
“Her birthday isn’t for a few weeks,” I say, quickly thinking to be sure I was remembering the date correctly.
“I know, but I want to bake the perfect cookies for her party, and I don’t know which ones she’d like best, so tomorrow when she comes over, we’ll have a taste test, and she can pick her favorites.”
“Right, you have Thursday dinners.”
“She’s a good little eater. Though I shouldn’t expect any less. You were always finishing off your plate no matter what I put in front of you. She’s got your hair, too, and when she smiles, she looks like…” Mom trails off, then turns and busies herself putting another waiting tray of what appear to be chocolate chip cookies in the oven. I can guess what she was going to say. It’s the same thought I had. When she smiles, she looks like Dad.
I come around and hug Mom tight around her shoulders from behind and rest my chin on her shoulder.
“I’m happy you’re finally a grandmother,” I say, and she leans her head toward mine.
“And you’re a father now. How are you liking being a dad?” she asks, and I let go, pull out a seat and flop down.
“It’s amazing, exhausting, but amazing. She has so many questions, most of which I have no idea how to answer.”
“You were like that, too. Always following your father around, asking all sorts of questions about the animals he was caring for.”
“She loves animals, too, and I know it’s silly to think she gets that from me, because, well, most kids love animals. But I like to think maybe my genetics had a little to do with it.”
“I’m sure they had a lot to do with it. She’s something special, that’s for sure,” Mom says, ruffling my hair with one hand. “Just like her daddy.”
“She is special, and that’s why I need to get her the most special birthday present ever, so what do I buy a ten-year-old girl?”
“She’ll be eleven.”
“Right, an eleven-year-old girl.”
“Hasn’t she shown you her wish list yet? I saw it a week ago.”
“I saw the list, she wrote it one afternoon at the clinic, but Isabel said she’s got most of it handled, and she said you were getting her the cow sparkle lamp in at Easton’s so that leaves me with the only thing on the list I can’t get her. A cow.”
“You could get her a stuffed one. They had some at Easton’s when I picked up the lamp. Though I think she probably already has all of those. The only reason she doesn’t already have the lamp is that they only just got it the day I went in.”
“Exactly. Dean offered up a lifetime pass for her at the cuddle cove.”
“That’s sweet of him. How is Dean?”
“They’ve had a few more births on the ranch today, and the horse, Loki, he’s starting to let Skye come close enough to pet him now, so that’s progress.”
“That’s nice honey, but I asked how Dean was, not the ranch animals, and peculiar farm hand,” she says, shaking her head. “You and your daddy, always talking about pets before people.”
“They’re dairy cows, so hardly pets, but I see your point.”
“So, I’ll ask again. How is Dean?”
“He looked tired, and I kind of feel like that’s a little my fault,” I say, and she raises one brow with a small smile on her lips.
“And why’s that now?”
“Because I gave him a pygmy goat that is obsessed with him and won’t leave his side unless tricked into it.”
“Is that the only reason?” she asks, and I roll my eyes and grab a cookie from a container on my right. It’s raspberry white chocolate and is perfectly chewy.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I say, taking a bite. My heart is racing. Does she know something? She couldn’t. I didn’t tell anyone about the mini barn, and I’m fairly sure Dean didn’t either. Did one of the guys poke their head in to check on us and we didn’t see them? Fuck. My mother has the loosest lips in three counties. If she knows about Dean and me then the whole town will in a matter of days. Not that there is a Dean and me. We’re friends. We decided that was best. Actually, I decided that was best because I just found out about Poppy and wanted my focus to be on her. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about him all the time. Think about that kiss. About how his calloused hand wrapped around my cock, those perfect lips following.
“You didn’t go dropping off those bunnies you had left over from your adoption thing, did you? I know Sally-May isn’t keen on having them around. And for good reason, you let one of those things loose in the garden and there’d be nothing left by dawn,” she says, and I laugh.
I can relax. She doesn’t know about me and Dean. Again, not that there is a me and Dean. Except I really kind of wish there was a me and Dean. Maybe I was too quick to decide we shouldn’t be something, like we can start slow. Coffee maybe. Does he drink coffee?
“You did, didn’t you?” She sighs, shaking her head and dropping the spatula to the table to wave a finger my way instead. “Not everyone is happiest surrounded by animals, love, and maybe it’s time you stepped out of your comfort zone a little. I hear the new librarian is gay, you could ask him out for dinner.”
“Mom, please, no,” I say, waving my hands in front of me like they will magically stop this conversation from happening. It won’t.
“I’m just saying. I won’t be getting any more grandbabies unless you start dating. It’s been forever since you talked about a guy. Last was that nurse you met at the hospital when the horse kicked you. Whatever happened to him?”
“I was never dating the nurse, you asked him out for me while he was stitching up my arm, remember? Plus, how do you know that meeting a guy will get you more grandbabies, anyway?”
“You’ve been fixed on having a big family since you were Poppy’s age. I doubt that’s changed, has it?”
“Okay, so it hasn’t, but I met the librarian, he’s not really my type. Plus, I don’t really want my mother setting me up on dates.”
She scoffs, setting her hands on her hips. “All my friends set up their children. It’s the in thing now.”
“Like painting the door green was the in thing back then? How did that work out?”
“It looks fine. Doesn’t open now cause your father used oil paint and closed it before it was dry, but it’s pretty.”
“Is that why we stopped using the front door?” I ask, leaping to my feet and craning my head towards the hallway to check out the rear of the door. She’s got potted plants on the floor and on stands blocking it. I guess if it doesn’t open, there’s no need to keep it clear.
“Course it is. He tried for days to unstick it. God knows I loved that man and he had a gift for fixing up animals but give him a hammer and he’d see the inside of Doc Green’s office in no time.”
It’s nice talking about Dad like this. I wish Poppy had gotten to know him. She said she remembers him from the vet clinic when she was small, but she’ll never get to really know him. Not as her grandpa, anyway. That thought sits heavy in my gut, and I reach for another cookie on reflex. My mother bats my hand away at the last second, and I rub the spot to take away the slight sting.
“I can have a look at it if you like?” I say, and she scrunches up her nose, the same way Poppy does. Another trait that could be genetic just as easily as it could be a coincidence.
“Don’t worry about it, unless you find a lovely carpenter you start courting and need an excuse to see him again, then you can invite him over.”
Courting? Seriously, what generation does she think her son was born into? I’m definitely not interested in the new librarian, or in any carpenter that might happen to pop up around town, because ever since I moved back to town, all I can think about is Dean Beaker and it’s worse now that I know what he tastes like.
“Mom. I’m okay on my own,” I lie.
“I just don’t want you missing out on sharing your life with another person. It was the best part of mine.”
I open my mouth in awe, clutching my chest. “I should be offended,” I say sternly, but I can’t keep a straight face to save my life and burst out laughing a moment later. She tosses a chocolate chip cookie at me, which I catch easily and take an immediate bite out of. These are crunchy, not soft, and while they’re good, they aren’t as nice as the chewy ones. I won’t tell her that, though.
“We thanked god every day for you, cheeky boy. You were the blessing we never thought we’d have, but the love we have for a child is so different to the love of a husband. Your father knew me better than anyone will ever know me, and I him. That’s something special, and I hope that one day you get the chance to find that, too.”
I walk over and hug her close, kissing the side of her head.
“Me, too, Mom. Me, too.”