Chapter 16
16
5:29 p.m. Friday, November 1
“ W ait till you see my surprise,” Blossom sang by way of a greeting when she flung open the front door of Riley’s childhood home. Not much had changed since she’d lived at 69 Dogwood Street. Her mom still wore hippie outfits and gardened barefoot. Her father still lived to annoy the next-door neighbor. The brick two-story still butted up against the sidewalk, and the neon Psychic Readings sign in the front window still lit up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.
It was chilly edging toward cold as the November evening fell. Riley was tired. Finding dead bodies took a lot out of a person.
A low moo sounded from the fenced backyard. Burt answered his four-legged bovine friend with a cheerful bark and barreled past Blossom into the house.
That was the main difference, Riley supposed. Instead of raising children, now her parents had a backyard cow named Daisy. Her father was more enthusiastic about the addition than her mother.
“Thanks for the invite, Blossom,” Nick said.
Riley signaled to him that he had a spot of ketchup in one dimple. As was their Thorn family dinner tradition, they’d stopped at a drive-thru for predinner dinner on their way. Her mother was a bit too much of an adventurous cook when it came to her family’s digestive systems.
Nick surreptitiously swiped his forearm over his face before dropping a kiss to Blossom’s cheek.
Riley used the sleeve of her jacket to erase all evidence of Gabe’s milkshake mustache.
“Come in! Come in,” Blossom said, all but dragging them across the threshold.
“I literally can’t wait to see what the surprise is,” Nick whispered to Riley.
Giggles and cheers erupted from the kitchen. “Mr. Gabe!” Riley’s nieces exclaimed in unison.
River smiled up from her crayon drawing. Rain and Janet abandoned the carrots they’d been sword fighting with and raced to hug Gabe around his tree trunk legs.
Riley’s sister, Wander, looked up from a pot of something that smelled horrendous on the stove and beamed like a lighthouse at the man she’d recently seen naked.
“Something…uh…smells,” Riley said.
“It’s a lentil and mung bean soup. I sprouted my own mung beans,” Blossom announced proudly as she ruffled River’s hair.
“You hear that, Rye Bread? Your mother sprouted her own mung beans ,” Roger said, enunciating each word.
“I did indeed hear that. Very impressive,” Riley said and patted the pocket of her jacket.
“Hey, Bloss, didn’t you want to get that thing out of the basement?” Roger asked.
Blossom frowned. “What thing?”
“You know. The thing that you talked about. It sounded important. Maybe if you go down there, you’ll remember,” he prompted.
“Oh, all right. But then I’m showing everyone my surprise,” she said.
The second Blossom disappeared down the basement stairs, Riley produced the cheeseburger she’d hidden in her coat pocket and handed it over to her father.
“You’re my favorite,” Roger whispered before making a mad dash into the TV room. She was fairly certain he was talking to the burger, not her.
Wander floated over and gave Riley an incense- and aloe-scented hug.
“We have a lot to catch up on, don’t we?” Riley teased.
Wander’s smile was like looking directly into oncoming LED high beams. “Maybe. Speaking of, would you and Nick mind watching the girls Sunday evening?”
“I don’t know about Nick, but count me in,” Riley said.
Nick wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. “I’m an awesome babysitter,” he insisted.
“Really?” Wander and Riley said in unison.
“Just because I’m not a seven-foot-tall human jungle gym doesn’t mean I don’t know how to entertain kids. My niece, Esmeralda, used to spend every other Friday night at my place until my sister found out about our ice cream dinners.”
“As long as it’s sustainably sourced, dairy-free ice cream, I have no problem with that,” Wander said quickly.
“Hear that, kids? Ice cream dinner with us Sunday,” Nick said.
Riley’s nieces abandoned Gabe and threw themselves at their favorite aunt and uncle. “Yay, ice cream dinner! Thanks, Uncle Nick,” Rain said, hurling herself at Nick’s knees.
He picked the six-year-old up and held her aloft. “Uncle Nick. That’s better than Mr. Gabe,” he said pointedly.
“Why must everything be a competition?” Gabe asked.
“Nothing’s a competition because I win everything,” Nick insisted, tossing Rain over his shoulder and catching four-year-old Janet with his other arm as she jumped at him from the kitchen chair.
At eight, River was more dignified than her sisters and hastily added another smiling stick figure to her crayon drawing and labeled it Uncle Nick . She frowned at it for a beat and then added three red slashes to his face. Riley cocked her head over her niece’s shoulder, but before she could ask any questions, Burt drew her attention with an excited yip.
Her dog was already planted at the sliding door, nose to the glass, hot doggy breath fogging it up.
The basement door flew open, and Blossom returned to the kitchen. “Well, I went down there and stared at the BowFlex for a full two minutes and still couldn’t remember for the life of me what I was supposed to be down there for. I swear it happens at least once a week. And when I come back, it always smells like red meat. It’s the darndest thing,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.
Roger, who had just stuck his head into the kitchen from the den, slunk guiltily back into the shadows licking his fingers.
“So what’s this surprise, Mom?” Riley asked.
Blossom clapped her hands. “Okay, everyone unhand Uncle Nick so Hesty can show off her surprise.” Hestia, Greek goddess of hearth and home, was the name Blossom had chosen instead of Grandma. However, her granddaughters had shortened it to Hesty.
Nick shed Riley’s nieces at the table next to their sister.
“I drew this for you, Uncle Nick,” River announced, holding up her drawing. It was a series of crayon-drawn diamond shapes encircling two stick figures. “It’s you and Aunt Riley. I couldn’t get the pretty glitters the right color, so I went with orange.”
“Wow, Riv. That’s a cool drawing. It would be even better if the artist signed it for me,” he said. Over River’s bowed head, he pointed at the drawing. “I got a drawing, Mr. Gabe. What did you get?”
“We wove him matching drink coasters,” Rain announced.
“Yes. I received handmade gifts from the heart,” Gabe said with just a hint of smugness.
“You annoy me on so many levels,” Nick said.
Blossom clapped her hands like a kindergarten teacher. “Save the testosterone-fueled grudge match for dinner, and move your rear ends to the backyard.”
“Is it another cow?” Riley asked her sister out of the side of her mouth.
“Oh, it’s worse,” Wander whispered cheerfully.
Blossom wrestled open the door, and Burt shot out like a bullet. “Be careful with my babies, Burtie boy,” she called after him.
“What the—” Nick’s sentence was abruptly cut off by a white feathery thing that bounced off his head. With lightning-quick reflexes, Gabe snatched the flying object out of the air.
A head emerged from the ball of fluff, then bobbed. Dull, emotionless eyes blinked at Riley.
“Oh boy.”
It was a fat feathery chicken.
“Why did you hit me in the face with a chicken?” Nick demanded, rubbing his stubbled cheek.
“I did not hit you in the face with a chicken,” Gabe insisted. “I saved you from being further attacked.”
“You didn’t save me. You intervened before I could react,” Nick complained.
“If your reactions were not so slow, I would not have had to intervene,” Gabe pointed out.
“They’re just a little wound up,” Blossom insisted, wringing her hands like a nervous mother.
“They?” Riley repeated and glanced around the backyard.
“Well, you can’t expect me to get just one. She’d be lonely,” her mother explained.
The squawking bird in Gabe’s huge hands was not the only fowl in the backyard. Daisy the cow morosely munched on a patch of grass while a clucking chicken clung to her back and pecked at her haunches. Burt galloped around the swing set, barking joyfully at the pair of brown birds squatting obliviously atop the sliding board. A small banty rooster strutted out of the remains of Blossom’s vegetable garden. He gave them all a dead-eyed stare and crapped on the grass.
“That’s Mr. Feathers,” Blossom said, gesturing to the rooster.
“Wow. That’s a lot of…poop,” Riley noted.
“Apparently chickens shit all day every day,” came her father’s disgruntled commentary from inside the house.
She didn’t need to be psychic to know her dad wasn’t pleased with the new additions to the family.
“A coodle doodle do,” Mr. Feathers warbled.
“Is there something wrong with that rooster?” Riley asked.
“I’m just saying, I was stunned by beak and feathers. I would have handled it myself,” Nick insisted to Gabe.
“Of course. You have the reflexes of a panther,” Gabe said. There wasn’t a hint of smugness on his handsome face when he released the chicken from his grasp.
It immediately flew at Nick’s face again. “Goddamn it,” he yelled, swinging wildly as the chicken flopped around his head and shoulders.
“Aww! I think KFC likes you,” Blossom said. “Your father named her.”
Nick ducked behind Riley’s mother, and Blossom gently captured the flapping fowl, cradling it in her arms like a newborn.
“Ursula the sea witch and poultry. Who knew?” Riley said. It was kind of nice seeing her usually cocky, fearless boyfriend show a little bit of vulnerability…even if it was over a small, feathered barnyard animal.
“Who the fuck throws a chicken?” Nick groused.
“Once again, I did not throw the chicken. I merely released it. I cannot help that it finds your face peckable or that your reflexes are slow and full of panic,” Gabe insisted.
Nick spit a feather out of his mouth. “I’m not panicked. You’re panicked.”
“Coo coo ca-cha,” the rooster said.
“Aren’t roosters supposed to crow?” Riley asked.
“Mr. Feathers fell off a truck on the highway. I think he might have a tiny little traumatic brain injury,” Blossom explained. She lifted the chicken in her hands, and Nick nervously dodged out of the way. “The one playing with Daisy is Summer Solstice. Those two are Toni Morrison and Yolanda,” she said pointing at the two birds on the swing set.
Upon hearing her name, Yolanda hurled herself to the ground in front of Burt in a feathery, clucky flutter. Burt let out a nervous whimper. Toni Morrison landed next to her bird sister with a cackle that had the dog slinking backward. The chickens advanced on him with a dead-eyed agenda of mayhem.
“Burt, come here before you get your eyes pecked out,” Nick called.
The lion-size dog gave his humans and the safety of the deck the side-eye. Riley could practically hear him calculating whether he could make it.
“Come on, buddy,” she encouraged, slapping her hands to her thighs.
Burt backed toward them one paw at a time, not taking his eyes off the potential enemy. But it was all for naught. Without warning, both birds pounced. Burt yelped. Feathers flew. Chickens squawked. And suddenly they were off, Burt in the lead, galloping around the yard, ducking under Daisy’s belly as the chickens gave chase.
The chicken in Blossom’s arms flopped to the ground and joined in. “Aren’t they just the cutest things?” Blossom said to no one in particular.
Daisy let out a plaintive moo as the chicken strutted up her back, pecking as it went.
Roger charged out onto the deck. “See?” he said, gesturing wildly at his beloved cow. “They’re torturing my sweet Daisy. I told you she wouldn’t like ’em.”
“They’re just getting used to each other,” Blossom insisted, watching her new feathery progeny with maternal delight. “You know, I was watching homesteading videos on the YouTube, and some people let their chickens in the house.”
Roger stomped off the deck to shoo the chicken away from Daisy. “No freaking way, Bloss. If Daisy can’t come inside to watch football with me, your demon brood ain’t allowed to crap all over the carpet.”
“It smells like Burt’s cabbage aftermath in here,” Nick observed as they returned to the kitchen, leaving Riley’s parents outside to argue. The emotionally scarred Burt belly-crawled under the table and whimpered until Janet deigned to join him and pick the feathers of his enemies from his fur.
“I see you met KFC,” Wander observed. The girls were all drawing at the table now. River had added several pairs of stick figure legs to Nick’s drawing.
“Nick was ruthlessly attacked and barely survived,” Gabe said. “I, however, did not receive injury.”
“He threw a chicken at me,” Nick complained.
Riley dampened a fresh hand towel and pressed it to the trio of scratches on Nick’s face. “Poor baby.”
“Am I gonna end up with bird rabies or something?” he asked.
“Probably,” she teased. “Let’s go bandage you up.” She ushered him into the tiny powder room crammed under the stairs and opened the vanity.
He sat down on the toilet lid. “What the hell is that?” he demanded as she unscrewed the lid of a jar filled with green goop. “It smells almost as bad as dinner.”
“Mom’s first aid balm. If you’re a brave boy, I’ll give you a lollipop after.”
His hands settled on her hips. “I love you.”
Riley paused her ministrations and met those gorgeous blue-green eyes. “Where did that come from?”
He shrugged. “Probably my near-death-by-poultry experience.”
Her lips curved. “I love you too.”
“Yeah, but enough to stick with me even though you now know I’m maybe slightly concerned about cartoon sea witches and backyard chickens?”
“Maybe even more.”
“What dumb shit are you afraid of?” he asked as she smoothed a layer of the goop over his abraded cheek.
“Hmm. Definitely gorillas. Mrs. Penny. And I guess not mattering.”
“Gorillas are scary as shit, and Mrs. Penny is goddamn terrifying,” he said, reaching up to grasp her wrist. “And you really fucking matter to me, Riley.”
Her heart did that awkward flip-flop it always did when Nick Santiago got sneaky sweet on her. “Wow. That near-death experience must have really rattled you,” she said lightly as she tore open a bandage.
“Chickens are stupid,” Nick muttered.
“You were very heroic fighting off poultry like that.”
“We’re stopping on the way home, and I’m getting two hundred nuggets.”