Chapter Four #2
“Grandma Lisle was not exactly the bake cookies and knit cozy socks sort of grandmother,” Dallas explained for the benefit of the Patricks. “She was more the pull yourself up by your bootstraps, rub some dirt on it, and handle yourself like I did kind of grandmother.”
“Cuddly,” Raleigh murmured.
“Terrifying,” Cat replied with a laugh.
“Well, apparently, she liked a little genealogy herself.” Helena laughed.
“That’s how I ended up finding out about Cowboy Point.
And the fact that Dad had a different family.
You can find anything in public records, if you know how to look.
When I went to our mother, pretty nervously if I’m honest, I thought that I was going to rip her whole world apart. But it turned out she already knew.”
“It was kind of a relief and kind of messed up, the way she tells it,” Raleigh said, still sounding protective.
“There were some family meetings,” Finn added then. “Emotions were high.”
“How would you know?” Helena asked him, pointedly.
That got a smile out of Cat, and the two women looked at each other in an oblique sort of way that Tennessee couldn’t say he liked—because it felt like trouble—but he was pretty sure was foreshadowing a good sisterly friendship to come.
“Our mother wanted to leave things alone,” Helena continued after a moment. “Let sleeping dogs lie, I believe she said. Repeatedly.”
“Sounds like she knows who she married,” Dallas said, with a laugh.
Across the table, Raleigh nodded his agreement.
“I decided that sleeping dogs could wake up, maybe, and anyway, I’ve never personally met a dog that stayed asleep that long.
” Helena shrugged. “So I came out here. And I really only intended to stay for a weekend. I got a hotel room down in Marietta and I thought I would just drive up here, poke around, kind of see where we all came from, and take off.” Her expression turned rueful.
“I don’t know what happened. The next thing I knew, I was renting a cottage on the hill below the Lodge and outfitting a food truck so I could make it a coffee cart. ”
“While also spying on us,” Cat said, but in what seemed like a big contrast to the night they’d all gathered at the house, she was smiling.
Helena smiled too. “You can learn a lot about a person by the coffee drink they order. Both when they’re alone and when they’re ordering in front of other people. It’s not always the same order.”
“She’s talking to you.” Cat lifted her brows at Dallas. “Mr. I only allow black coffee to cross my brooding, masculine lips, except when I’m drinking pumpkin spice lattes instead.”
“I choose to celebrate fall,” Dallas replied, with great dignity. “If you didn’t hate and fear joy, you would do the same.”
“Anyway,” Helena said, still smiling. “That’s how we all got here.”
“That’s how you got here,” Finn corrected her, gently enough. “I don’t think Raleigh and I would have bothered, if I’m honest. We spent more time with Dad growing up. So there was less motivation to dig into his past.”
Tennessee and Dallas nodded at that. “Understood,” Tennessee said, with a rusty laugh.
“I decided I was taking off and joining the military when I was ten,” Dallas agreed. “I didn’t care which branch, just as long as it got me away from here.”
From him, he didn’t say. Because he didn’t have to say it.
The brothers all nodded, and shared a long look. They got it. Their sisters had been younger. Safer. It had been different for them. There was a particular agony in growing up and trying to become a man when your primary example was exactly the kind of man you didn’t want to become. Ever.
“But once Mom started making noises about coming…” Raleigh shook his head, and despite his lazy posture, there was something stubborn—and, again, protective—in the way he firmed his jaw.
“We didn’t know what the reception would be like on your all’s side.
We couldn’t have her doing that alone. You know, in case it got weird. ”
“Now it’s really weird,” Cat said, grinning.
She leaned in, putting her elbows on the table.
“But here’s my question. Or first, a summary of who we are.
” She inclined her head across the table.
“Tennessee, the oldest, the least fun, definitely needs a life.” She moved to the side of him with another nod.
“Dallas, possibly limited in ways he refuses to admit, may or may not ever open that bed-and-breakfast—”
“I’m on track to open the bed-and-breakfast next fall, thank you very much, fueled entirely by pumpkin spice lattes,” Dallas interjected. Loftily.
He did not speak to his limitations, or Cat’s perception of them.
But then, Tennessee couldn’t really argue about his description either.
And normally he would hear something like that and think that he had a life, it was just one Cat couldn’t understand, because his supported hers and all that usual older brother shit.
But tonight all he could think about when it came to needing a life was that smile Matilda had aimed at him outside. And how it was still sitting deep in his belly, like a shot of very good whiskey.
Tennessee didn’t have the slightest idea what he intended to do about that.
Cat waved her hand, still in the middle of her summary.
“And me, the youngest. Got married almost a year and a half ago, going to school, planning to become a nurse one day. But here’s the question.
How do we, with so little to go on when it comes to any kind of happy family situation, make sure that we’re the happiest? As we promised?”
“Board games?” Raleigh contributed blandly.
And maybe that wasn’t funny, in the grand scheme of things. But it was so ridiculous, and so not what this group seemed likely to do at any point. Plus it was delivered in that lazy drawl of his.
Whatever the reason, they all burst out laughing.
Even Tennessee.
And they all had the same goddamned laugh, which they clearly all noted at the same time—because they laughed even harder.
“I don’t know,” Finn said when the laughter died down a little. “Seems like this is a good start.”
There was a group consultation over what food to order where they found, to no one’s great surprise, that they all liked the same kind of pizza.
So it was easy to go and get a few pies, and some side salads so folks could feel virtuous, and when Tennessee made noises about chipping in some money when Finn announced he’d pay tonight, Finn waved him off.
“This is going to be a weekly thing. You can pick it up next time.” Then he looked at his brother. “And then we can start down the line chronologically, so everyone can contribute to this family-building experience we’re having here.”
“Sir, yes sir,” Raleigh drawled at his older brother, with a smirk.
Tennessee went up to the counter with Finn and waited as Finn gave Indy Bennett the table’s order. Then the two of them stood there a minute, looking back at the younger four.
“Raleigh’s not actually shiftless,” Finn said after a moment. “He does like to act like it, though.”
Tennessee considered. “Dallas probably would do the same if he could. But the military beat it out of him.”
They ordered another round of drinks that Tennessee carried over to the table.
And when he came back, he stood with Finn a while and filled him in on the Cowboy Point lore he thought any sort of newcomer or interested visitor should know.
Like the miners who refused to leave Cowboy Point, the ones who went back down to Marietta, and the really crusty ones who hightailed it out deeper into the mountains, leaving their stamp on the area in markedly different ways.
He was talking about the age-old Lisle family feud with the Careys that Cat had personally ended by marrying Wilder Carey when Kitty Bennett came bustling out from the kitchen with her auburn hair piled on top of her head, holding two huge pizzas.
“Hear anything about that new restaurant?” Tennessee asked her as she slid the pies onto the counter. Beside him, Finn seemed to stiffen.
Kitty wiped her hands on her apron. “College friends, apparently.”
“I heard that part.”
“Four women, according to the rumor I heard,” Kitty told him. “Maybe one of them a local? But that’s unclear.”
“As long as they’re still going for that full farm-to-table, high-end shit,” Tennessee replied.
“Exactly.” Kitty smiled then, and the smile took over her whole face. “So absolutely no competition for you or me, friend. Delighted to be able to support this new venture wholeheartedly.”
“One hundred percent my take,” Tennessee agreed with a laugh.
Kitty rushed off back into the kitchen, where, knowing her, she was already plotting out a new set of recipes.
She liked to switch up the special pizzas weekly—even in winter—and they were always shocking combinations of ingredients that tasted fantastic together when most folks were sure they couldn’t.
Tennessee didn’t make that kind of food. His regulars wanted staples and they wanted consistency, and that was what he delivered. Day in and day out, with some special hours and dishes in the summer.
That was why he liked Kitty. They both knew their place, and the role of their kitchen in the community, and they delivered.
Tennessee picked up one of the pies on its tray and was surprised to find Finn still standing stiffly there beside him. Looking a lot like he’d seen some kind of ghost.
“You all right?” he asked his new brother.
“Never better,” Finn said, seeming to come back to life with a jolt. He smiled. “I think I just realized how hungry I am.”
He picked up the second pie and headed back to the table, and by the time Tennessee made it back to his seat, he’d forgotten that strange expression on Finn’s face. Maybe not haunted, really. Maybe more like he’d been sucker punched.
But it got swept away because the rest of the evening—despite the built-in weirdness of meeting your own grown siblings, though it felt less weird by the minute—was actually pretty great.