Chapter 25 #2
“It’s crazy because I had this horrible feeling that day. Like I knew.” I inhaled a shaky breath. “I should’ve said something.”
“Did you have family nearby when it happened?”
“Yeah.” Terry, Kip. “But they had to deal with the fallout and their grief.”
“But Ava, that’s what family is for. All the love, the shared memories, that’s what helps you through it.”
I wiped my face and sat up. It wasn’t my first time hearing that.
Nina stared at me, probably wondering why I was crying.
She didn’t understand the permanence of death.
She wouldn’t think of all the missed opportunities and plans we’d never make.
Birthdays, holidays, family trips … I wasn’t just grieving for him.
I mourned the loss of all the things we had planned.
That was why I had to buy Hidden Meadows. Our future was on its deathbed.
Bill gave me a sad sort of smile. He understood. This house and my ranch were the same.
I stood, shaking off a chill. “Hey, Bill? Mind if I make dinner tonight?”
Teaching Marley to fold corn husks pulled me out of my darkness. “Cooking is like meditation with a side of unfortunate cleanup,” I told her as she spread masa beside me.
“You should make Eli clean up,” she said. “That’s what my mom does. If you don’t cook, then you clean.” I sensed tension in her impression.
“Do you have siblings?”
“A younger sister.” She thumped a fist into the cornmeal, and all the guts oozed out.
“How much younger?”
“She’s twelve.”
“And you’re?”
“Always in the way.”
I frowned. “I meant, how old are you?”
“Seventeen.” She shoved the remains at me, then she grabbed another ball of masa.
“You know, I bet yours will taste the best,” I added pork and folded the soaked husk until it made a perfect package.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Pretend I’m doing a good job. I’m only helping so Eli doesn’t make me muck.”
I laid the wrapped tamale in the steamer basket. “Do you cook with your mom?”
“No.”
“Your Dad?”
She scoffed. “No.”
“Your grandma, or an uncle, or anyone?”
“No. Why?”
“How can you expect to know what you’ve never been taught?”
“It’s not like it’s hard. You just follow a stupid recipe. Claire makes stuff all the time.”
I assumed Claire was her younger sister. “Would you say you and your sister share everything in common?”
“Hell, no!”
“And there’s probably something you do well that Claire doesn’t?”
Marley sulked at the counter without an answer.
I moved her finished masa husk in front of me and added the pork.
“When I worked at my old ranch, we had a team. I didn’t do the banking because I’m horrible at accounting.
But I’m good with people, so I managed clients, tours, and events.
” Maybe my example was too obscure? “What I’m saying is, you don’t have to compare your value to other people’s skills. You have your own.”
“I’m not good with people. Or numbers. Or anything.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Well, obviously, you don’t know me.” She threw a masa ball onto the counter with enough force that it flattened itself, and probably stuck.
Before I could backtrack, she stormed off. I spent the next several tamales reworking my words, wondering how I could’ve handled that differently. Maybe I should just stick to my own business.
Nina thumped her cast into the corner of the cabinet as she rounded the island and sagged into me.
“What’s wrong, Crackerjack? You hungry?”
She responded with a long, drawn-out moan.
“Does your arm hurt?” I squatted, getting eye level with her. “Oh, what’s this?” On her cast was a very odd line drawing of … “Is that a bear?”
“No! It’s a monkey!” She jerked her arm away.
“Oh.” I cocked my head, trying to imagine it from another angle. “Did Eli draw that?”
Another grunt.
“Can I draw something on your cast?”
“No!” She flattened herself onto the floor, right where I needed to stand, and whined into the tile.
Definitely taking a bath tonight.
Steam rose from the platter of tamales at the center of Bill’s long kitchen table, alongside rice, salad, and five place settings. I waited for everyone to pick a spot before positioning Nina and me at the end of the bench by Bill. One plate remained unclaimed. “Where’s Eli?”
Bill rescued Nina’s water cup as she rearranged herself. “He’s changing the oil in my truck. He said not to wait.”
Refusing to ponder on that, I turned to Marley. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’ll have a beer.”
“Nice try, kid,” Bill countered. “Get her a soda.”
I set a can at her spot with a smile, then wiggled in next to Nina. As soon as my butt hit the bench, exhaustion caught up with me.
Bill used the tongs to serve himself. “Thanks for cooking, Ava. This smells great.”
“It was a joint effort, so thank Marley, too.”
His tamale hovered in the tongs over his plate. Second thoughts, perhaps? Was it poor form to kick your host under the table? “I assure you, they are as good as they smell. I had one while they were cooling.”
The moment passed, Bill plated his tamale, and Marley didn’t storm off. I served us last, enjoying the sound of clinking forks on plates as everyone tried my mom’s old recipe.
Still no Eli.
I cut Nina’s tamale into little pieces so it would cool. She grunted at her plate.
“Nina, I don’t know what that means. Use your words.”
Instead of words, she threw her fork, sending Masa chunks everywhere. Then, before I could clean the mess, she pushed at her plate, which knocked over her cup and flooded the table with ice water. Tears followed–hers, not mine, though the urge bubbled.
“I’m sorry,” I told the collective stares as I mopped up the lake with my napkin. The pitch of Nina’s whining made my skin crawl. “I’m going to take her downstairs.”
She screamed and beat my shoulder with her cast the whole trek to the den. “No! I want dinner!” I winced with every swing. Snot bubbled from her nose. “I want dinner!”
Frustration rose like the tide. Her arm probably hurt. No doubt she was overtired. We hit the bottom step, crossed the creamy carpet, and I bumped our door open with my hip. “Nina, please stop hitting me.”
“Nooo!”
When her rough cast smacked into my ear, I dumped her on her bed. “Ow! Stop it! You’re making me crazy!”
She cried harder, and I bolted back to the den, slamming the bedroom door behind me.
I can’t do this. It was the first time the thought reared its ugly head in months.
I rubbed at my ear. Exhaustion consumed me.
But I didn’t get to go to bed. I had to be Mom.
Make it better. Bath her. Do her bedtime.
I sagged into the couch, burying my face in the upholstery. The weight of the past few weeks pressed down on me–a year’s worth of discarded horseshoes and splintering fence posts.
I’d done it all wrong.
If I’d only stayed at Hidden Meadows, none of this would have happened. All the moving around. Nina’s broken arm. Steven.
“Everything alright?”
I whipped around to find Eli at the foot of the stairs. In his coveralls. “Seriously?”
“What?”
Like he didn’t know he was a walking sex ad. “What are you doing under a truck? You have two broken ribs!”
In two long strides, he was in front of me, covering my mouth with his warm palm. “Can you not yell that, please?”
I pried his hand away. “The doctor said six weeks!” Anger should have occupied all my neuron receptors, but his solid presence made my knees weak, and those firm forearms burned themselves into my retinas for later.
His eyes veered to the moaning wall behind me. “Is she okay?”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know.”
“Are you okay? Do you need anything? A beer? A shot?”
The intensity of his concern gutted me. I was the villain here. We didn’t deserve shots.
“You want me to go sit with her?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did you eat? Want me to bring your plate down?”
“No! Can you just go away?”
His scrutiny wouldn’t find a needle in my hot mess because I’m pretty sure I’d lost it. “Fine,” he said. “But if you need me …” The rest hung between us. No additional words needed because I could still hear them, loud and clear.
“… Anywhere, anytime.”