Chapter 33
Bodie
Gibson Family Group Text [Minus Bodie]
Colter:
Reminder: tonight = Maddoxes + Gibsons. At Bodie’s house.
Fletcher:
Burgers, baked beans, and awkward history on the side.
Dean:
Let’s all aim for civilized.
Gunner:
Civilized? You mean like “no fistfights until dessert?”
Blair:
Please. If somebody mouths off, Uncle Dee will handle it with sequins and side-eye.
Uncle Dee:
Darling, I’ve already steamed the mango linen. Sequins are backup.
Everly:
So y’all are really eating potato salad with people who hate us?
Colter:
Not all of them. Emmaline’s cousins Roxie and Ben are fine, I think.
Oakleigh:
Wait, are these the same Maddoxes people have been hissing about since I was a toddler?
Blair:
Yup. Marla and Karen = hiss. Roxie and Ben = decent. Tonight = the decent ones.
Oakleigh:
So, like… meeting the friendly Slytherins.
Grandma Elsie:
Baby, just smile and let them talk. They’ll tell on themselves faster than you can.
Alia:
Wish I was there with popcorn. Somebody film it.
Hutton:
Yes, please. I want play-by-play texts.
Dean:
There will be no filming. This is supposed to build bridges.
Fletcher:
Bridges that will be on fire by sundown.
Dad:
Enough. Everyone’s on their best behavior tonight. Bodie and Emmaline asked for this. We respect it.
Blair:
Fine. But if one of them tries something?
Grandma Elsie:
I’ve got the spoon.
Uncle Dee:
And I’ve got the okra. Between us, consider it handled.
Oakleigh:
Honestly, this sounds better than movie night.
I told myself it was just a cookout. Burgers, paper plates, too many opinions about the right way to stack a cheeseburger.
But my heart was tapping a little fast while I set the lighter to the charcoal and waited for the gray to bloom.
September air had finally remembered how to be reasonable—warm without feeling like a wet blanket—but I still wiped my palms on a dish towel like I was about to brief a crowd at the community center.
I trusted my side of the guest list. Gibsons were loud and competitive and occasionally prone to utensil-related assault by Grandma Elsie’s spoon, but they were predictable.
We’d razz. We’d eat. Someone would take cornhole too seriously.
Then we’d hug and fuss and send people home with leftovers they hadn’t asked for.
The wildcard was Emmaline’s family. The ones here tonight weren’t the troublemakers; Marla and Karen had pointedly not been invited.
Still, I didn’t know these folks the way I knew my own.
And Emmaline had pinned a quiet kind of hope on tonight.
I didn’t want her to be disappointed. She’d had far too much of that in her life.
“Too hot.” Fletcher leaned over my shoulder like he’d been deputized. “You’re going to scorch the first round.”
“Back up,” I said. “If anyone’s burning burgers around here, it’s you. Where’s your spatula?”
He held it up like a doctor brandishing a surgical instrument. “Present.”
“Then go flip something.”
He laughed, shot me a middle finger with a wink, and moved off to harass Dean, who was already at the picnic table reorganizing the condiments into a system that made sense only to him.
Blair and Elena arrived with a stack of bowls and the magic ability to conjure serving spoons we hadn’t owned an hour ago.
Gunner dragged the cornhole boards into the strip of side yard where the grass ran flat, Oakleigh trotting behind him with the chalkboard for scoring and the certainty she’d beat any adult stupid enough to challenge her.
I checked the time, breathed out, and asked myself for the fifth time if we had enough ice.
Then the screen door creaked, and Emmaline stepped out balancing a tray of sliced tomatoes and onions, cheeks a touch pink from the kitchen. I swear the ground under my feet settled a fraction when I saw her. The dishtowel in my fist loosened.
“You’ve got that look.” She smiled a little as she set the tray down by the buns.
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re doing crowd control at a block party.”
I slid my hand over hers on the edge of the tray and kissed her knuckles. “Old habit. You sure you want this circus in our yard?”
“I want the people who show up.” Her eyes flicked to the driveway like she could conjure them faster. “And if it goes weird, we’ll feed everybody, thank them for coming, and blame you for running out of napkins.”
“That last part is likely,” I said. “But it won’t go weird.”
She nodded, a small swallow, and we both listened. Tires on gravel. Voices. Then the door opened again and the first wave of guests hit.
Roxie came first with a casserole wrapped in a faded dish towel, smile bright and sure.
She hugged Emmaline like she meant it, no hesitation, and my heart unknotted another notch.
Ben followed with a jug of sweet tea in each hand and a grin that could sell you a truck you already owned.
Two aunts—great aunts?—set pies on the table like they were precious newborns.
An uncle in a ball cap shook my hand with a grip that was firm without being a challenge.
Three younger cousins bee-lined for the cornhole boards until Oakleigh snapped her fingers like a coach and assigned teams.
“House rules?” the tallest cousin asked, already palming a beanbag.
“Mine,” Oakleigh announced. “They’re fair. They’re merciless. And they’re posted on the chalkboard.”
Ben wandered over. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.” She wrote BEN: 0 before a single throw.
“Don’t you boys crowd that grill,” Grandma Elsie commanded from the lawn chair she’d claimed under the maple. The spoon lay across her lap like a ceremonial baton. “I will not have anybody singeing off eyebrows on my watch.”
“That a new rule?” Dean asked.
“It is when you’re around,” she smirked.
“I brought slaw,” Elena said to a Maddox aunt with glasses on a beaded chain. “And the pepper jelly. It’s not scary, I promise.”
“Bless you.” The aunt peered into the jar like a jeweler. “I’ll put it next to the crackers so the savages don’t mix it with the ketchup.”
“Savages?” Gunner said, offended from twenty feet away.
“If the spoon fits,” Grandma Elsie said.
Uncle Dee arrived like a little parade of one—linen shirt the color of ripe mango, bracelets chiming softly when he raised both hands.
“Who authorized this mid-century picnic aesthetic?” he demanded, delighted.
“We’re doing burgers and not a lick of sequins?
I brought pickled okra to make up for it. ”
“For the table.” Blair grabbed the jar. “Uncle Dee, bless you.”
He kissed her cheek, kissed Elena’s, kissed Elsie’s forehead and got the spoon for crowding, then tapped my shoulder with two fingers like a conductor calling for tempo. “Chief Gibson. Your coals are perfect. Commit.”
“Yes, sir.” I solemnly laid the first line of patties down, surrendering the spatula to Fletcher when he hovered too close to be safe.
Uncle Dee drifted toward Emmaline, and I didn’t try to hear what he said.
I didn’t need to. He cupped her face in his palms for a heartbeat, and her smile went soft and deep.
Dad took up a place at the edge of the porch, refilling the tea like it was his sole job on earth.
People found him the way they always do—without a sign—Maddox uncles telling him about the road up near the bend.
Dad listened, nodding, a steadying rock with a pitcher in his hand.
Fletcher flipped burgers like a machine.
Colter and Oakleigh teamed up at cornhole against Ben and a cousin with an unfortunate throwing stance; Gunner tried to coach and got benched by an eleven-year-old.
“Chief!” Ben lifted a hand like he was hailing a cab. “Does a bag that grazes the board, hits the ground, then comes back count if I’m very charming about it?”
“No,” I said. “That’s not how physics works.”
“Justice,” Oakleigh proclaimed, chalking another hash under her team.
The first pass at the table was a chorus of please move, excuse me, do not take the last tomato and then the quiet that comes when people finally take a bite.
Grandma Elsie went first, because of course, and thumped the spoon against Dean’s knuckles when he reached across her for pickles.
One Maddox aunt—Viv, if I’d remembered the photo Emmaline had showed me—declared her strawberry pie “life-altering.” Another—Loretta—countered that her lemon icebox pie had won blue ribbons when such things still meant something.
Uncle Dee offered to judge, and Grandma Elsie accepted the appointment on the condition that she retained veto power.
Viv narrowed her eyes and smiled like she enjoyed a fair fight.
I was at the tea when I overheard Roxie speaking to Loretta, who was doctoring a burger like it required credentials.
“We sent our letters for Wesley last week. Ray turned his in on Monday. Ben cornered the preacher at the post office to make sure there was a copy on stationery.”
Loretta harrumphed. “Board doesn’t need church paper to do the right thing.”
“They need something to put their hands on,” Roxie insisted. “We put it there. He was seventeen. He’s kept his head down. He took every class they’d let him take. It’s time.”
The handle of the tea jug was cool under my fingers.
I still hadn’t mentioned the letter from the Department of Corrections to Emmaline.
We both knew the hearing was coming already.
What did my formal notice matter? But maybe I was just avoiding putting myself in the complicated position of being both the arresting officer and her husband.
I took Emmaline a fresh tea without being asked. Up close, I could see the difference in her. Jaw unclenched. Shoulders not carrying a bag of bricks. She took the cup, fingers sliding over mine.
“You okay?” she asked, voice pitched for me alone.
“Yeah,” I said, and it was true enough for now. “You?”
Her smile turned quiet and deep. “I am.” She tipped her chin toward the yard. “Thank you for this.”
“You did this.”
“I asked. You said yes. And you made Fletcher not turn the grill into a brush fire.”
“That was a group effort,” I said.
She bumped my hip with her knee. “Stay?”
I leaned against the cooler beside her and let the picture sink into the part of me that would need it later.
Two families that weren’t supposed to mix, eating off the same picnic tables like they’d been doing it all along.
Dad at the edge of things, steady as a lighthouse.
Colter and Oakleigh moving like a pair, unspoken knowledge passing between them as she set her stance, and he nodded approval.
Uncle Dee, bright as a parade and sharp as a tailor’s chalk.
Ben losing spectacularly and making it a performance.
Roxie laughing with her head tipped back, pure and unworried.
A Maddox aunt passed by and smoothed a hand over Emmaline’s hair the way people do when they’ve done that since you were small.
Emmaline’s face softened for half a heartbeat, and I felt something click into place under my ribs.
Not everybody on that branch was shaped like Marla’s meanness or Karen’s sharp corners.
There were people here who loved my wife right.
She needed them like she needed oxygen. If we were building a real marriage, we had to build a space that could hold this.
“Chief!” Ben yelled, overly dramatic because he’d learned fast that the spoon respected theater. “We require adjudication. If a bag hovers near the hole and a stray gust—a minor miracle—tips it—”
“It doesn’t count if you blow on it,” Oakleigh announced, already marking NO in giant letters.
“Corruption,” Ben declared, hand to heart.
“Consequences,” she countered, and high-fived a six-year-old who’d defected to her team.
Dad drifted past and paused, eyes on my face the way only fathers get to look. “You look like you’re thinking too hard.”
“Probably,” I admitted.
He followed my glance toward Emmaline and then toward Roxie, who was hugging Viv for a pie victory that existed only because Uncle Dee said it did. “Looks like it’s going okay to me. Keep your shoulders down, son.”
I let them drop a fraction. “Yes, sir.”
He squeezed the back of my neck, brief and warm, and moved on.
By the time the sun brushed the ridgeline, the air had gone soft enough that even Dean stopped complaining about the lack of beer.
We walked plates to the trash, sorted the forks we’d inevitably lose, and convinced Gunner to let the kids win a round so we could shut the boards down before someone invented a midnight tournament.
Elsie announced a ceasefire at the pie table in the interest of digestion; Uncle Dee declared a second dessert to be spiritually mandatory and was overruled by Elena without a vote.
We walked people out in twos and threes.
I shook hands with men I didn’t know but recognized in Emmaline’s eyes.
“Thanks for having us,” one said, hat in his hands.
“Been a long time since we came over this way.” Another aunt touched my forearm and said only, “Good,” with a nod that weighed more than the word.
Roxie hugged Emmaline and then me, quick and fierce, and whispered something in Em’s ear that made her eyes shine.
Ben tried to sneak a last burger and got caught by Oakleigh, who sentenced him to a penalty lap while she counted too fast.
When the last taillights slid away, the quiet that settled felt like a quilt.
Emmaline pressed her cheek to my shoulder. “So?”
“So.” I let out the breath I’d been rationing since noon. “It went well.”
“It did.” Relief turned her voice to honey. “Thank you for trusting my people.”
“They’re your people. That’s enough for me.” I hesitated because the confession was mine to risk. “And I think some of them are on their way to being my people now, too.”
Her hand tightened over mine. “It’s a good beginning.”
“It is.” I tugged her into the circle of my arms, loving that she settled in with an easy sigh. “How about we head inside, finish loading the dishwasher, and then head upstairs for some second dessert?”
One brow arched. “Do you mean splitting that last piece of lemon icebox pie I saw you sneak into the fridge or…”
I grinned. “I mean…. I feel like it can be both.”
“Licking lemon pie filling off your abs. I’m in.”
I was still laughing as she towed me toward the house.