Epilogue
"Are you done?" I demanded, voice low, gaze downward, snapping the ends off the green beans in the Mallick house.
Here, and nearly nowhere else in her life, Helen Mallick stuck to traditional roles.
The women gathered in the giant kitchen, slaving away to prepare a huge Sunday dinner while the men did, well, we didn't even know.
Pretended to watch the kids who were likely running amuck wholly unsupervised judging by the nearly constant sound of screams, belly laughs, and OooOohs like someone was getting into trouble.
Not a single one of the Mallick women seemed fazed by this troubling chorus, each of them raising litters of kids, likely deaf to the sounds of children at play by now.
"Done?" Lea, Shane's wife, asked, dark brow quirked up.
"We've barely gotten started. Fee hasn't prattled off a stream of sexual euphemisms. Peyton hasn't asked for details about what positions you guys tried while you had the bum leg.
Helen hasn't asked about if you planned on having babies.
And Dusty hasn't implored for all of us to leave you alone, to be nice, to mind our business.
You've got a big bowl of green beans to be snapping. And we have a lot of work to do."
Jamie's arm went around my lower back, giving me a reassuring squeeze, but knowing better than to try to play interference, to interrupt what had seemingly become a family tradition.
And since none of the other Rivers brothers seemed anywhere near ready to settle down and find new women to drag into the fold, I was the last chance for a while to get a good, solid, embarrassing ribbing in.
They put everything they had into it.
I felt feverish with a blush by the time we finally starting carrying bowls of hot food into the giant dining room.
"You survive?" Kingston asked, snagging me before I could make another trip back into the kitchen, dragging me down a hall and into the empty living room since the Mallick men and children didn't need a second invitation to the table.
"Barely," I grumbled, letting him pull me to his chest, wrapping his arms around me, breathing in his woodsy, sawdusty scent. "I can't unhear the things I have heard tonight," I told his neck.
"If it makes you feel any better, I was cornered by Charlie and all the Mallick guys demanding to know my intentions toward you."
"No way," I said, shaking my head, barely able to picture that, to imagine them all caring that much about me to want to make sure that the men in my life had honorable intentions.
My own father had barely ever greeted any of my ex-boyfriends.
It would have never crossed his mind to question them.
"Yep," he agreed, running his hand down my back, one of his hands grabbing my ass for a second before moving back up. "And then Shane informed me that if I hurt you, my kneecaps will pay for it."
"He did not say that," I objected, pulling back far enough to look up at him.
"He said it. And, what's more, he meant it. So, I better be good to you, huh?" he asked, squeezing me tighter.
"Ew," a disgusted voice grumbled as they moved past. From the back, it was impossible to tell which Mallick kid it was. "The adults in this family are gross," he added, making his way into the dining room.
"Someday," I said, turning back to Kingston, "maybe we can disgust our very own children."
The smile he gave me made my heart squeeze in my chest.
I wanted to tell him right then and there.
That I felt it.
That I had felt it for a long time.
Even if the world would tell us it was too soon to say it even if we did feel it.
But Helen called us to dinner.
And honorary members of the family or not, you did not make Helen Mallick call you a second time.
So, I kept it to myself.
Kingston - 2 months
"He picked the hottest day of the goddamn month to drag us out here," Nixon grumbled, stabbing the shovel into the ground, preparing the hole for a new fence post.
He wasn't exactly wrong.
All of us were miserable.
Spring had been a fake-out of a season, tripping over itself to catapult us directly into summer. The sun smirked down from the sky, burning skin, making a sweat pool down our backs and chests as we dug, mixed concrete, attached fencing.
"Oh, what are you bitching about?" Rush asked, unraveling the next few yards of galvanized fencing across the ground. "You weren't the one he had on the roof in a rainstorm to try to figure out where the leaks were coming from. I was a goddamn lightning rod up there."
Helen won the bet.
As if there was ever any doubt.
We were officially living together, though we did flip-flop between houses. Depending, a lot of time, on the weather. If the rain slapped or the wind whipped, the farmhouse dripped or cold air screamed through the ancient windows.
With the new help at the shop, Savea managed to cut back her hours a bit. I had tried to cut down mine as well, hiring someone to handle the administrative stuff I never had time to finish during my own workday.
We'd catch some food, take the dogs for a walk, then head over to the farmhouse where we had a temporary run set up for them to play around as we did projects inside.
The roof had been a main priority. Then undoing all the damage from it, skimming the walls, repainting.
We'd taken turns working the sanding machine to refinish the floors, then stained them a warm medium tone that set off the ancient, charming nail heads.
She'd once joked that the list of to-do projects at the house was as long as her leg.
I'd thought at the time that she had been exaggerating.
Until we really started spending some time there, getting wet, cold, squinting anytime we had to go into the bathroom because of the hideous porcelain color, struggling for elbow room in the kitchen if we were trying to cook meals together on the range that I was pretty sure pre-dated me.
I had been tip-toeing around bringing up something I had realized after only maybe a night staying there.
A major addition was called for.
We'd managed to get a queen-sized bed in the bedroom, but it had left almost no walking room.
The kitchen needed to expand outward. An actual dining room would be nice instead of the teensy eat-in kitchen.
A family room where our family could actually fit would be great.
And, well, if we were going to have any children, they would need rooms as well.
I didn't want to seem pushy, to make her feel like anything was wrong with a farm that meant a lot to her.
I also knew it would mean a bit of a difficult discussion to tell her that if or when we got around to doing an addition, that I planned to cover the costs. It only made sense. I had been saving up to buy my own place for a long while, had a nice nest egg sitting around that I would no longer need.
She was so used to handling everything by herself.
She'd been on her own from such a young age with no one to fall back on but similarly aged friends in similar financial situations.
She'd also, essentially, been carrying the full weight of the responsibilities of the store on her back for years as well.
She didn't know how to ask for help, or to accept it.
She'd thanked me four times when I had taken the trash to the street the first time.
With that level of independence, I figured, there was a certain level of pride in being able to do it all yourself. I didn't want her to think I was taking it away from her.
It was new, we were new, I reminded myself here and there.
It didn't feel new most of the time since we had known each other for ages, since so much had seemed to happen since the night she had shown up at my door.
And maybe a part of me was impatient, wanting everything to fall into place more quickly than the average person.
Because, well, I knew.
This was it.
She was it.
There wasn't a single question about that fact.
This was a forever kind of thing.
I just needed to let her come to the same conclusions on her own, in her own timeline.
Then we could discuss the heavier things.
"Hey, King!" she called, voice carrying from the back of the house where she stood on crumbling steps that made my stomach tense, wondering if this would be the time that they finally gave into the nearly nonexistent mortar and collapsed.
"Can you help me with the drinks?" she called.
She'd been mulling mint leaves all morning into homemade lemonade anticipating the heat, the grumbles from my brothers, the need to hydrate and feed them.
Though she was outsourcing the latter task to the local pizza place.
I turned back to find Atlas steadily working at yanking out the old fence post to allow Nixon to dig the next hole, then made my way across the field, shooting a smile at Paddy and Petunia who had this habit of sleeping with their noses touching even outside in their run.
"Ugh, goddamn it!" Savvy's voice hissed as I made it in the door, finding her frantically mopping up spilled liquid, sweat trickling down her temple.
"What happened?"
"This stupid kitchen happened," she informed me. "I turned. Just turned. Like a normal person. Not flailing around. And my elbow hit the pitcher and it spilled. I want a new kitchen," she added, turning to glance at me. "What do you think about that?"
"I think it's definitely a good idea."
"And a dining room," she added. "I mean, we are having your brothers for dinner and we don't technically have anywhere for them to sit and eat. It's ridiculous."
"They'll be fine, but I think a dining room would be a great addition too," I agreed, moving in, wrapping my arms around her, smiling when she grumbled it was too hot to be cute and cuddly.
"What do you think about me paying for it?" I asked, figuring this was as good a time as any to bring it up.
Her eyes flashed, a few feelings moving across them for a minute before they settled, surprisingly, on humor.
"Well, it is either that, or I will have to take Faye up on her offer to pay for it."