12. Reed
reed
I should have skipped dinner tonight. I knew my family would have questions, but I wasn’t prepared for the unsettling looks they’re giving me. In Jovie’s case, the looks come with a high-pitched whining sound like a mosquito trapped in a tent.
I showed up late, which I hate doing, but I hoped I could avoid some of this. As if in some kinder, less meddlesome universe, they might have burned off their obnoxiousness before I got here. Clearly, they saved it up for me.
We’re sitting around my parents’ dining table, everyone filling their plates and working their jaws. They’ve bombarded me with questions and commentary, and I haven’t got a word in yet.
“Your girlfriend is so pretty, Uncle Reed.” Jovie’s got a dollop of ketchup on one side of her mouth already, and a bite of burger tucked into the other cheek like a hamster. “I bet her hair is really soft.”
I bet it is, too. Which I will never say to my little niece.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, please.” Luke passes her a paper napkin and gestures at her face. She pouts but wipes the smear away.
“I’m still waiting to hear the origin story behind you two.” Nathan’s got a glint in his eyes like a kid about to run screaming through the aisles of a candy store. “And I’d like to voice my grievance that you never told us about her. It took outside pressure for you to admit it.”
“I second that.” Lucy raises a hand like we’re in a town hall meeting. Or possibly her classroom. “You kept it from us for weeks.” She pauses, staring laser beams at my face. “Months?”
I say nothing. She can wonder.
“Maybe it’s been years, and they’re already married.” Jovie giggles over her burger. Then her expression shifts, and she glares at me. “I wanted to be a flower girl.”
“They’re not married, nugget.” Graham doesn’t look up from methodically adding condiments to his burger in the same order he always does. “He’s not that much of a brick wall.”
That’s the nicest compliment they’ve sent my way all evening.
“How could you have kept her secret for so long?” Lucy wants to know.
Keeping Rose secret for one date let alone several is the most unrealistic snag in our dating story. Except possibly why she would want to date me in the first place. Thankfully, no one’s brought that up yet. My money’s on Nathan blurting it out before the night is over.
“I would have climbed the courthouse bell tower and shouted it down Maple Street.” Nathan pauses with his burger halfway to his mouth, probably to avoid getting scolded for talking with his mouth full, too. “When I fall in love, everyone’s going to know.”
“I don’t think there was ever any doubt of that.” Graham passes Jovie another napkin from her other side. She scrubs it over her face like she thinks she’ll miss part of the conversation if she takes her time. “We know everything about your life as it is.”
“You are a sharer, son.” Dad chimes in with his usual amusement.
“Learn from my wisdom, young Padawan.” Nathan takes a big bite of burger, chews obnoxiously, and swallows, managing to smile at me like a maniac the whole time. “I’ll take you under my wing. I’ll have you sharing all your innermost thoughts in twenty-four hours.”
“That’s a losing bet,” Luke says.
“Can we just eat please?” I snarl. Naturally, every last one of them laughs.
“All right, let’s not interrogate your brother at the dinner table,” Mom says. “Otherwise, he might never bring Rose along with him. And we all want that, don’t we?”
Her eyes sparkle at me even as she lifts an eyebrow in silent dare.
It was a jerk move to cut off her invitation to Rose, but I couldn’t make that decision in an instant.
Not when Rose’s presence would take what little peace I find in these dinners and shake it like an Etch-a-Sketch.
I grumble about the weekly chaos, but at least it’s familiar.
Rose being here would add one more layer of uncertainty to an already unpredictable part of my week.
I chew my burger, glowering at my plate.
When she teased me that she might feel right at home with my family, something in my chest leapt in approval.
She would fit in like she was made for us.
No doubt in my mind. I both regretted I’d already shot down the invitation and feared letting it play out.
The more I consider it, the more I suspect I would like having Rose Etch-a-Sketch my life. Just take everything I am and throw it in the air to see where it lands. I wouldn’t even mind picking up the pieces.
Luke nudges Jovie with his elbow. “How much progress did you make on the hammer today, peanut?”
Someone convinced Luke to have Bridger Hardware sponsor a float for the Fourth Fest parade.
They also convinced him to drive Dad’s classic Ford truck, pulling a trailer holding a larger-than-life hammer pinata to represent the store.
They further managed to convince the rest of us that we need to ride on the float as a family and toss out candy during the parade.
Incidentally, all of those convincing someones were Jovie.
Her face lights up, despite the splatter of condiments around her mouth. “So much! The frame is all done. You have to see it. And Granddad taught me how to use a sander!”
Luke cuts Dad a severe look. “Did he?”
Dad hefts a shrug, sheepish but not terribly apologetic. “She wore protective goggles.”
Luke is unimpressed by this info. Jovie goes to daycare sometimes and has a variety of camps she does over the summer, but she spends most of Luke’s work days with Mom and Dad now. It’s a good situation for everyone, even if it can test Luke’s patience from time to time.
“You learned to use one when you were eleven,” Dad says. “I just gave her a head start.”
“I learned to use a sander before you?” Jovie grins up at her dad, wiggling in her seat like she can’t help the celebration. “That’s so cool.”
Whatever frustration he felt at Dad jumping her ahead on the power tool permission scale dissolves into a look of absolute love. “I guess it is pretty cool.”
Exactly what I mean about her having all of us wrapped around her finger. The little stinker is impossible to resist.
“You know what would be even cooler?” Nathan asks. “If you put the hammer on a see saw so it moves up and down like it’s really hammering.”
Jovie shrieks, images of papier-máché covered hammers dancing in her head. “Can we? Can we?”
Luke and Dad exchange a look as if they’re figuring out how much time they have left to build this thing.
Graham’s gaze has drifted, no doubt mentally drafting the best lever system and how to offset the weight of the hammer’s head versus the handle.
Jovie’s bouncing in her seat, looking at each of them in turn to see who’ll crack first.
“I think we can.” Luke barely gets the words out before Jovie’s squealing and hugging him.
“Thank you, Daddy.” She’s practically fallen out of her chair to press her face against his chest. “This is going to be the best float ever.”
“No thanks for me?” Nathan fakes a sad face. “It was my idea.”
Jovie grins wildly at him across the table. “Thank you, Uncle Nathan.”
“You’re just trying to outdo whatever Irwin Outdoors comes up with.” Lucy aims her comment around me at Nathan.
“Uh, yeah. The guy’s married to the woman in charge of making it a knockout parade. Obviously, they’re going to do something big.”
“We should have planned floats for our school clubs.” Lucy’s attention rests on Graham now. “A papier-máché fountain pen for me, and a microscope for you. It’d be pretty fun.”
“There’s one big reason we didn’t.” He presses his glasses a quarter-inch higher on his nose.
Lucy’s shoulders sag. “Right. Funding.”
“You could plan a fundraiser for next year’s parade,” Mom says. “Get the kids involved in designing and building them. I bet they’d love it.”
“How much do you think floats would cost for the clubs?” I ask. “Ballpark estimate.”
“Depends on what they want to build,” Graham says. “Probably a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars each.”
If their clubs want to make floats next year, they will.
I’ll find a way to donate the funds anonymously.
Harry’s money could pay for floats for every club at Sunshine High without making a dent.
I’ve been carrying on his tradition of donating to the food bank and the local women’s shelter, but I don’t have a clue what else to do with it.
Having something on the horizon, even as simple as money for high school clubs, takes some of the weight off my chest.
We linger over dinner, and the sun is down by the time conversation breaks enough for us to start taking our plates into the kitchen.
Once everything’s in the dishwasher and the table’s cleared and cleaned, I head into the living room.
It would be smarter to just walk out the door and go home to my cabin, but I’m not a complete jerk.
Not always. This is family time, no matter how crazy they make me.
Of course, I’ve immediately got an audience when I sit back down.
Jovie climbs onto the arm of the couch next to me. She perches there like a little owl, all big-eyed curiosity as she stares. “Are you going to answer my texts about Rose?”
Huh. Deadly like an owl, too.
“He isn’t answering anyone’s texts about Rose,” Graham points out.
“But my questions are more fun than yours.”
“I could come up with some fun questions.” Nathan’s smirk deserves to be punched off.
“Try it and see how much you like my response.” I know exactly the kinds of things he’d ask, given the chance.
Nathan laughs, but Lucy nods in appreciation. “Protective hero. I like it.”
I glance away. I’m not protective. I just don’t like Nathan thinking along those lines about Rose. Or the guy at the coffee shop yesterday, whose face I would have happily beat in if he’d said one more smarmy thing to her. That’s not protectiveness. It’s…I can’t think of the right word.
I want them to respect her, that’s all. Under threat of pain, if necessary.