CHAPTER 17
Finn
Evander shrugs. “I just got the impression that she likes her privacy, is all. No social media presence to speak of, and that’s rare for a young woman these days. We’ll know more soon, but for now, she looks low risk.”
“I appreciate that, man.”
“Of course, but you could’ve done all this yourself. You’re the cyber genius.”
“You’re right. I could have. But I asked you to handle it so I can focus on other things.”
“Uh-huh. Other things like Emma Clark herself? Does she do something for you?”
“Actually, she does.” I back away from the fence and square off in front of my brother. “She does laundry. Dishes. She does scrubbing and tidying up and dusting, and she does a great job organizing Jasmine’s toys.”
“Sheee-it, bro.” Evander shakes his head. “I guess I touched a nerve.” He turns and walks back toward the compound.
Seriously?
You can’t even belch around this family without everyone discussing what you had for lunch.
A few minutes later, I make my way back, too.
As I clear a stand of large cottonwoods, I catch a glimpse of Jasmine and my father in his garden.
She’s wearing his old fishing hat that’s pinned with about thirty hooks and flies.
She’s perched on the remnants of an old retaining wall, her feet swinging in front of her as she laughs.
Even from this distance, I can see that her face is caked in dirt and that Dad is in the middle of telling her a whopper. His big gestures—the forward lean, the long arms swinging, the wide eyes—it’s all a dead giveaway.
Many men can tell a tall tale. Only Jamie MacLaine can spin a yarn with this much conviction when he knows it’s all a giant sack of horseshit. He can’t help himself.
I head their way, already catching a word here and there. It’s enough for me to know which story is on the menu today. It’s the one about the year of the unusually aggressive foot-long worms at Yosemite Ranch. The ones that were coming up through the toilets, bathtubs, and kitchen sink.
When my daughter lets go with an ear-splitting shriek, I take it as confirmation on the worm story. I shake my head and laugh.
True, the MacLaine boys have dug our share of earthworms to take fishing, but not around the house. Earthworm digging is best by the lake.
And I’ve never seen a foot-long worm. Not even in all my worldly travels have I witnessed such a freak of nature. I would have remembered.
Jabbing my hands down into my pockets, I walk over to them and realize that my mood has lifted. The “too clean” Emma might have introduced a complication into my life, but not a totally unwanted one. Who knows? I might get used to her company. I might enjoy living in a tidy environment.
Hell, I might even get her a gift. Maybe a new vacuum.
Or those pretty earrings I saw in town.
“Dad!” Jasmine’s face lights up when she sees me. “Grandpa’s telling me about the Great Worm Invasion of 2000!”
My father stretches his arms out with his palms facing. “Two feet long! I’ll never forget it. They were so big and strong that they gummed up the wheels of my truck. No one could drive for a week! Grandma was fit to be tied not being able to get into town to do her shopping.”
“Two feet, Dad?” I sigh. “They’ve grown since the last version. Next time they’ll be Anacondas.”
Dad scowls at me. “You must not have heard right. They’ve always been two feet. You don’t remember ’cause you were a kid back then, more interested in girls and trying to break your neck doing heaven knows what with your brothers.”
“Well, that part’s true,” I allow.
In fact, it occurs to me that this morning’s post-wedding abduction was just a natural extension of our rowdy boyhood.
In addition to the standard horse-riding accidents, sports injuries, and crashes involving dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, Cal once nearly hung himself jumping off a roof and then got swept away in a flash flood, both in the same week.
Evander survived several different kinds of snake bites, being run over by a lawnmower (just the wheels, not the blades), and getting head-butted by an elk.
Declan had cases of poison ivy so severe that he ended up in the emergency room. Also, he got the crap pounded out of him outside Carla’s Creamy Cone not once but three times, and every damn time it was by the same Travis boy for the same reason.
I remember our mother yelling at him. “Were the first two times not enough for you, son? I swear you’re the type who has to eat the whole cow before he’s convinced it’s beef!”
As for myself, between the ages of five and eighteen I broke a thumb, a wrist, an arm, a leg, and a clavicle.
Special K had all that plus a case of scarlet fever that almost killed him and a bear attack that cost him a pinky finger. We never saw how badly the bear was injured, but luckily, Declan and I found the finger, put it on ice, and got it to the hospital in time to be reattached.
Of course, a lot more happened to us during our Navy careers, and some of those stories are worth an occasional retelling at family gatherings—only the unclassified ones, of course. But nothing will ever compare to those magical days of our childhood.
We were boys living a charmed life, running loose on a thousand square miles of wilderness at a time when we were young, fearless, and as dumb as a dump truck full of rocks.
“What’cha doing besides reminiscing about worms?” I ask.
“Well, Jasmine has regaled me about the magical, mystical Emma who’s moved in with you two.” My father shoots me a grin. “The way she tells it, Emma is the best thing that’s happened to her since the Barbie movie came out.”
“She cleaned out the refrigerator,” I say.
Dad’s eyebrows shoot high on his forehead. “I hope you provided the girl with a hazmat suit and gas mask.”
“Funny.”
“Well, Emma sounds like a fearless warrior.”
“I gotta get back to her,” Jasmine says, sliding off the old retaining wall. “We’re doing my room together, Grandpa. We’re putting everything into piles labeled keep, memory, or donate. That’s how she’s got it organized.”
“Sensible, too.” Dad does the eyebrow thing again.
“Maybe we should get her a present,” Jasmine suggests. Her eyes are twinkling with an idea. “Like a welcome to your new home kind of present. Or just a present because I really like her.”
Oh, fuck.
“We can do that,” I tell her. I swallow. Dad catches it.
“Maybe the three of us can go out for ice cream later,” Jasmine suggests. “Or dinner and then ice cream!”
“Sure.”
But first, I’ll have to eat a big-ass slice of humble pie. I think about leaving Jasmine with my father while I go do that, but the coward in me wants my daughter there to give me a better shot at being forgiven. I’m lucky my kid is off-the-charts adorable.
“Let’s go and ask her,” I suggest.