Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
“Some of the kindest people in life are often those we never know.”
—excerpt from the unpublished memoir,
Darling, I Must Say by Gloria Hayes
That evening, after surviving the wedding shopping and excruciating long lunch that followed, I headed over to my sister’s house.
At least once a month, Mom and I had dinner at Mae’s house, a sprawling one-story estate complete with a nine-foot stuffed moose in the great room.
The moose came with the house. In the back, a big red barn housed an elite home gym.
Add in the swimming pool and several acres of land, and it was a pretty nice place to be.
In the backyard, I waltzed over to Chris, Mae’s husband, where he stood manning the barbecue at the edge of the large pergola-covered patio off the back of their house.
From afar, Chris might seem intimidating, as a former NFL tight end coming in at six feet five inches and at least 240lb.
But he was all golden retriever on the inside.
How he ended up with my grump of a sister was still unclear.
“Hey.” He grinned. “Glad you could make it. Where’s your mom?”
“She has book club tonight. She sent a watermelon in her place.” I glanced around but Mae was nowhere in sight. “Is it just me or has Mae seemed extra… extra lately?”
He smirked. “She’s cute when she’s grumpy, isn’t she?”
“I swear you’ve been hit too many times on the head.”
“Two things can be true at once.” He grinned and I grinned back.
Chris was impossible not to like. He radiated charm. While Mae was all this-is-serious attitude, Chris liked to have fun. They evened each other out. Both were firstborns and would do anything for their families. They happened to have very different ideas of what that looked like.
“Joking aside, I think with the move and all the changes…” He frowned. “It’s getting to her.”
“Daddy!” a little voice screeched from the patio door. My niece, Lulu, short for Louisa, pumped her pudgy three-year-old legs, practically flying across the patio to her father.
Until she saw me.
“Eye-bis!” she screamed and pumped her legs even harder, her bright red hair streaking through the air. This girl did everything with her whole heart. She threw herself at me and I hefted her up on my hip.
Lulu was the coolest person I knew. Ate what she wanted. Took naps when she wanted. Said whatever she was thinking. Had her father wrapped around her finger. Drove her mother crazy. She was my favorite person in the world.
She put both her hands on my cheeks, her blue eyes serious. “Eye-bis, can you hide me?”
This likely had something to do with the chocolate frosting and yellow cake crumbs all over her face, her hands, in her hair, and marching down her shirt. The same hands that had just touched my face.
“Uh-oh.” Chris gave his daughter a stern look. “Did you get into the cake?”
“Nah-uh, Daddy.” She shook her head, sending a spray of cake bits all over me. “I didn’t do nothing.”
He tapped her nose. “I think we’re going to have that talk about the difference between the truth and a lie again.”
“Louisa Madeline Sterns,” my sister called from across the lawn, her face almost as red as her hair. In her hands, a bakery box.
“Hide me, Eye-bis,” Lulu whispered.
“Come on.” I hustled to the nearest oak tree about ten feet away and tucked Lulu behind it. “Stay. Be quiet.”
She slapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
Hiding my smile, I strolled away. Before my niece came along, I’d never given much thought to having kids of my own, but now I was sort of excited by the idea.
Kids were fun. Of course, I knew they weren’t always that way.
For example, I had been a horrid teenager, practically a walking advertisement for the pros of parental abandonment with how hard I made life on all of us, including myself.
But one day, I wanted to have a family. A husband, kids, maybe a dog. Part of Aidan’s charm was that he had all the qualities I’d want in a husband—smart, good job, steady, responsible, people respected him. For a girl with a father no one respected, it was a siren call.
I wandered back over to Chris just as Mae arrived.
“Where is she?” Mae glared at me. “I know you know.”
“Hi, Mae. I’m great, thank you for asking. How are you?”
Mae tapped her foot impatiently. “Well, let’s see. The cake I bought for dessert has somehow been attacked by an as-yet unidentified culprit, but all signs point to one little girl who is about to get in big trouble.”
“I didn’t do it,” the tree yelled.
“See?” Mae waved a hand in the direction of the tree.
“Mae, sweetie, that’s a tree. They don’t talk.”
The tree giggled.
“You are such a bad influence.” Her eyes snapped with anger. Even for Mae this reaction was over the top.
“It’s a cake; she didn’t rob a bank.” I nudged her shoulder. “I don’t want to say calm down but if the shoe fits—”
“Do you have a death wish?” Chris asked.
Just then, Ali burst through the patio door. She stopped abruptly and then jumped forward when Theo, her husband, ran into her. “Excuse me, but what’s with the Mae-and-Iris-are-having-a-fight vibe?”
“That’s because,” Chris said, closing the lid to the barbecue, “Mae and Iris are having a fight.”
Ali marched over to us. “There is no fighting. It’s Saturday barbecue, and…” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “… I have brought guests.”
On cue, Abe appeared on the patio, hands tucked in the pockets of his navy gym shorts, smiling uncertainly.
“I was done with this discussion anyway,” I said drily.
“Fine,” Mae said. How she could infuse so much annoyance in a single word was a talent she wasn’t given enough credit for. “Now, where is my daughter?”
“I is hiding,” the tree shouted.
Mae shot me a look and stalked past me. Inside, I smiled smugly.
“Everything okay?” Abe appeared in front of us.
“Never better. I am starving, though. Where is the food, people?” Ali yelled and hopped off to find it.
Abe and I stood shoulder to shoulder, watching Mae march toward the tree line.
I side-eyed him. With his shorts and plain blue t-shirt, he dressed like any other guy on a Saturday afternoon.
But I was struck how it clashed with his tattoos.
Like he was two different people but somehow had managed to get both to co-exist. I wished I could figure out how to do that so effortlessly.
“Welcome to our family barbecue,” I said. “For our after-dinner entertainment, my sister and I will mud wrestle to see who’s more dominant.”
“Anyone taking bets on that?”
“I’m a sure thing. She might have an inch or two on me, but I’m scrappy.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he murmured, amusement lacing his words. Mae had now found Lulu and was currently crouched down in front of her saying something that was making the poor kid squirm. “Any chance you know what happened to that chocolate cake Mae is mad about?”
“Me? Of course not.”
As we watched, Lulu scraped her hand over her shirt, leaving a dark strip of chocolate frosting in its wake. “Well, it was either her or you.”
I turned toward him. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“My awesome powers of observation. Also, this.” With a finger, he gently swiped at my cheek. There was a weird little hitch in my heartbeat, like the stutter of a boat motor before it fully kicked on, at the contact. “Might be this frosting on your face.”
“Oh.”
He smiled, his eyes full of humor and radiating a warmth that made it impossible not to smile back. Suddenly, and maybe for the first time, I was glad Abe was the one who was taking me to this wedding.