Chapter 7
SEVEN
The noise reaches me before I’m off the last stair. Laughter from a couple of directions, baby babble, a ball game turned up loud.
I stop in the foyer. To my left, the game’s on in the living room, and I can see it from here.
Noah’s on the couch with Maverick bouncing on his knee.
Ben’s beside him with one of his boys asleep against his chest, Elle tucked under Ben’s other arm holding the second.
Mack’s sprawled in the chair closest to the TV, and Beau, Ben and Elle’s Labradoodle, has claimed the rug.
Somebody scores, and Noah throws both of Maverick’s fists in the air.
The baby shrieks. Straight ahead, the front door and a driveway full of cars.
To my right is the dining room, and past it the kitchen, where I can hear Josie.
I head for the kitchen.
Paige is at the island, laptop open, Amelie on the stool beside her with her chin on her knees.
I rub the top of Amelie’s head on my way past, and she leans into it without looking up.
Paige is showing her how she cuts the show clips.
Trim here, caption there, the waveform bouncing along the bottom. Amelie hangs on every tap of the keys.
Josie’s at the stove, a wooden spoon in one hand, her hip cocked against the counter.
I cross to her and kiss the side of her head.
She tips it toward me, eyes never leaving the gravy.
Peyton’s next to her with Junie on her hip and Jace strapped into the highchair, spooning sweet potato into him that he’s wearing more than eating.
Junie throws both arms up when she sees me.
I take her, and she fists my collar and shoves it in her mouth.
“You’re putting too much salt in that,” Talisa says, stepping in at Josie’s elbow.
“I have been cooking this meal for thirty years.”
“And it has been too salty for thirty years.” Talisa takes the spoon out of Josie’s hand and tastes the gravy.
She reaches for the cream without asking, and Josie lets her.
Nick brought her back from Johannesburg to help with Mack and Amelie.
Ever since, she’s taken on the role of nanny to the triplets and helps out with the twins when Elle and Ben are in town.
“She’s right, you know,” I say.
Josie points the dish towel at me. “Nobody asked the singer.”
“Former singer. I talk for a living now.”
“God help us all,” Talisa mutters, and Josie laughs so hard she snorts.
I shift Junie onto my hip and reach past Josie to steal a piece of bread off the cutting board. She swats my hand without looking. I don’t move. I drop my mouth to her ear.
“Smells good.”
“The food or me?”
“Both.”
“I can hear you,” Paige calls from the island, not looking up from her screen. “Both of you. We can all hear you. There are children present.” Junie shrieks and slaps a wet hand against my jaw.
Talisa says something in Zulu that shakes her own shoulders. She holds the spoon up to my mouth, and I taste the gravy, keeping my opinion to myself. Josie grins into the pot, her cheeks gone pink.
Peyton catches my eye over Jace’s head and mouths thank you. I shake my head, and she goes back to the sweet potato.
“Grab the good plates,” Josie tells me. “We’ve got the Millers tonight, so we’re short.”
“I can’t. I’m holding precious cargo.” I bounce Junie lightly, making her laugh.
Josie rolls her eyes and takes the plates down. Her shirt rises above the apron tie, and I shield our granddaughter’s eyes.
“Easy there, Grandma,” I say, jokingly. “Don’t want to show our little miss Juniper the goods.”
The glare I receive is enough for me to back off. Juniper and I turn our backs on her not to be messed with Grandma.
The front door bangs open, and Quinn comes through first, loud, taking up the whole frame. Peyton lifts Junie off my hip on her way past. Justine’s behind Quinn with a casserole dish held flat in both hands.
“That better be the green bean thing,” Josie says.
“It’s the green bean thing.” Justine slides it onto the counter and ducks behind Quinn, who’s already got a hand in the breadbasket.
Josie smacks his knuckles. “You’re as bad as him.”
“Who do you think taught me?” Quinn grins around a mouthful of stolen sourdough, all jaw and confidence.
For a second, he’s pure Harrison. He used to spin a drumstick in the wings while his dad and I argued set lists.
Now he’s the lead singer in a very successful band and has a young bride by his side.
“Where’s your dad?” I ask.
“LA. He says, and I quote, his shoulder would rather be anywhere than on a plane.”
“Tell him I said he’s soft.” I had hoped after our last conversation, Harrison would head out here.
More so, Katelyn would force him. I know she’s having a hard time living so far away from her grandchildren.
The thing is, Harrison doesn’t want to move.
He loves the beach. The early morning waves, the long drives on his bike up and down the coast line, and the endless summer weather.
“Tell him yourself, old man.” Quinn drops onto a stool by the island, and Paige shows him whatever’s on her screen. Justine chats with Peyton and plays with Juniper.
Mack comes into the kitchen for water.
Paige doesn’t look up from her laptop. But her spine straightens, and she tucks her hair behind her ear. Mack fills his glass. His eyes find her over the rim. Neither one of them says a word.
“Afternoon, sir,” Mack says, suddenly very polite.
“Mack.” I let it sit. “Big game this week?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sir. He never called me sir in his life until he started looking at Paige like that. I let him sweat a second, then nod. He heads back to the game. From the island, Paige looks up, watches him go, and catches me watching her.
“Don’t,” she says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said it with your whole face, Dad.”
Across the kitchen, Josie catches my eye and gives the smallest shake of her head. Leave it. I leave it.
Nick lets himself in the side door, a manila folder in one hand, dressed in khakis and a polo.
“Ashford,” I say. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”
He holds out the folder. “Here. Before I forget and your wife has my head.”
I take it and flip it open. A check, made out to the Beaumont fall festival fund. The number on it makes my eyebrows climb.
“What is this, hush money?”
“It’s the boosters’ donation. And mine.” He pulls out a chair and sits. “Some of us write checks instead of building whole city blocks to feel important.”
“That hurt.”
“It was supposed to.”
Josie takes the check out of my hand and reads the number. She crosses the kitchen and kisses Nick on the cheek. “You’re my favorite. Tell the boosters I love them.”
“She says that to everyone who funds her,” I tell Nick.
“She means it more with me.” He says it easy, and Josie laughs and goes back to the stove.
“Festival’s the second Saturday,” Josie says, not turning around. “I’ve got you down for the dunk tank, Nick.”
“You do not.”
“I do. Liam’s doing the kissing booth.”
“I’m doing the what?”
“Joke,” she says. She doesn’t look at me when she says it, which tells me it is absolutely not a joke.
“Heard you’re a love expert now,” he says, catching the beer Quinn tosses him.
“Radio host.”
“Semantics. Mack played me ninety seconds of it in the truck. You told some poor woman to go have a conversation with her husband.”
“It was good advice.”
“It was a bumper sticker.” He twists the cap off and takes a pull, and the corner of his mouth goes up. “It was also, and I’ll deny saying it, not the worst thing I’ve ever heard you do.”
“Dinner,” Josie calls, then louder, because nobody in the living room has ears. “Dinner. Now. Before it goes cold.”
I go to round them up. The game’s gone to commercial. Ben’s got a baby on his chest and the remote balanced on the arm of the couch. Noah’s on the floor letting Maverick use him for furniture. Mack’s pretending he came in here for the football and not to sit one room from Paige.
“Food,” I tell them. Nobody moves. “Talisa cooked most of it.”
All three of them are up before I finish my sentence. My wife isn’t a bad cook, Talisa is just that much better.
Ben hands me the baby on his way past, no warning. I take Sonny. Or Jett. I take a baby.
Dinner is loud. We don’t all fit at the table, so we don’t try. Babies get passed hand to hand. Plates balance on knees. Talisa and Peyton run a relay between the highchairs.
I end up at the far end with Nick, both of us holding a twin so Elle and Ben can eat with two hands for once. Sonny, I think, is asleep against my shoulder, drooling a warm patch through my shirt. Nick’s got Jett gnawing on his knuckle.
Josie says grace before anyone can reach for a roll, the same five lines she’s said since we moved in together and became a family. Quinn keeps his eyes open the whole time and lifts a green bean off the serving dish. Amelie catches him.
“Quinn took a bean,” she says, the second Josie gets to amen.
“Snitch.” Quinn drops two more on her plate, and she grins and forgives him on the spot.
Junie makes a break from Peyton’s lap, gets three feet across the floor on a mission to nowhere, and Stevie Nicks corrals her back toward her parents.
Peyton’s into the triplets’ birthday before her plate’s even full. She wants the whole family, a theme, a separate cake for each of them so nobody fights over a slice.
“They’re turning one,” Noah says. “They won’t know the difference.”
“I’ll know the difference.”
“It’s tradition that each baby has their own smash cake,” Josie adds.
Noah lifts both hands off his fork and goes back to eating.
“So.” Quinn points his fork at me down the length of the table. “The Love Line. You giving out kissing tips now, old man?”
“Relationship advice.”
“To strangers,” Peyton says.
“Strangers who call-in. That’s the format.”
“My dad,” Noah says to Justine, deadpan, “tells people how to stay married. For a living. Now.”
“Somebody’s got to,” Josie says from the far end, and the whole table laughs, me included.