“See! ” Ellie shrieked, gesturing to me with her popsicle off which flew a massive chunk of purple ice that plopped on the shag (yes, shag) carpet a foot away from Brock’s motorcycle boots. “Uncle Slim’s girlfriend wants to watch Tangled! ”


I didn’t exactly say that but then again, she was probably five and five year old girls heard what they wanted to hear. In fact, lots of fifty-five year old girls heard what they wanted to hear.

Fern rushed to the ice on the floor with her dishtowel while Laura scolded, “Ellie! Careful with that popsicle.”

“Do we have to watch Tangled? Do we? Do we? ” Dylan (or Grady) whined.

“Dylan, pipe down. We’re not watching anything. We’re going home and getting cleaned up for bed.”

“I don’t wanna go to bed!” Dylan and Ellie shouted in unison.

At this point, the front door opened and a tall, beer-gutted older man with dark hair shot with not a small amount of silver and silvery-gray eyes strolled in shouting, “Jesus H. Christ!

What’s the commotion?”

“Grandpa!” Ellie and Dylan screamed, Ellie tossing the popsicle aside only for it to land with a plop on Brock’s couch in her haste to scramble off said couch and race Dylan to hug the older gentleman’s legs. But when they did this, with the velocity and force they hit him, he went back two paces before they successfully latched on. Luckily, disaster was averted and he kept his feet.

I was rooted to the spot looking at a man whose somewhat withered good looks stated firmly he was Brock’s father as I felt the slap of attitude hit the room and heard Brock mutter under his breath, “Fuck.”

For once, the mood in the room didn’t come from Brock. When my head woodenly turned in the direction from whence it emanated I saw it was coming from Fern.

“Tell me he is not here,” she hissed.

Uh-oh.

“Mom –” Brock started.

“Slim, tell me… he… is not… here, ” she somewhat repeated with scary mini-pauses and equally scary emphasis.

Brock’s arm gave me a squeeze, my head tipped dazedly back to look up to him and when I caught his eyes, he immediately informed me, “This is why I’m never fuckin’ home.”

Well, that answered one question. If Brock was never home he didn’t need a fabulous pad.

“Heya, Laurie, honey, heya, Slim, heya Grady,” Brock’s father greeted with smiles.

“Hey Grandpa,” Grady returned.

“Hey there, Dad,” Laura said hesitantly, her manner watchful.

Brock’s father’s look became cautious when he muttered, “Hey Fern.”

“Cob,” she bit off, clearly deciding not to go with the option of leaping forward and scratching out his eyes as this would scar her grandchildren for life but I could tell she was hanging onto that control by a thread.

Then Brock’s father’s gaze hit me, his head tipped to the side and his eyes flashed back and forth between his son and me about seven times before said, “Uh… hey there, little lady.”

“Dad, this is Tess,” Brock introduced.

“She’s Uncle Slim’s girlfriend!” Ellie shouted, her fingers curled into Cob Lucas’s pants, her back arched at an impossible angle, her grape popsicle-stained mouth smiling huge up at her grandfather.

He looked down at her, put a big hand gentle on her head and asked softly, “Is she, my Ellie?”

“Yeah!” Ellie cried. “And she wears pretty shoes and she’s gonna watch Tangled with me right now! ”

Cob’s eyes came to me, they were curious, searching even but, like he looked at Fern, hesitant as he muttered, “That’s fantastic, sweetheart.”


Into this conversation, Fern asked acidly, “There a reason you’re here, Cob?”

“Well, actually,” his eyes moved from Fern to Brock to me and back again, “yeah.”

“I’ll bet there is,” she mumbled bitingly.

I caught sight of Laura bugging her eyes out at Brock and with that I decided to take action.

I slid out from under Brock’s arm then leaned and carefully took the dishtowel out of Fern’s hand. Then I walked to the couch and grabbed the bag of snickerdoodles at the same time I swiped up the popsicle and announced, “All right kids, in this bag are bakery fresh snickerdoodles I made at my shop for your uncle. Whoever gets to the kitchen and gets their hands and mouths clean gets a cookie. Who’s with me?”

Dylan and Ellie instantly abandoned their grandfather and raced to the kitchen, Ellie hindered by here clickety-clack, plastic, little girl high heels nearly taking a header twice.

Grady got to his feet eyeing the bag and his mother, clearly weighing cookies versus hanging with the adults in a tense situation and, not surprisingly, cookies won out so he sauntered after his brother and sister. I followed them and didn’t look back as I was confronted with a kitchen Fern obviously just cleaned and shut the swinging door behind me.

Then I set about hiding nine of the dozen snickerdoodles (Brock’s favorite) and setting out the other three at the same time supervising cleaning up three tired, wound up kids.

When they were clean and sitting at Brock’s scarred, wooden kitchen table eating cookies and sucking back milk from glasses I’d poured, Grady, the oldest (my guess, Ellie around four or five, Dylan around six or seven and Grady around eight or nine) informed me,

“Grandma isn’t Grandpa’s biggest fan.”

Hmm. How did I respond to that?

“Well, sometimes things get complicated with adults,” I told him lamely.

Grady kept the information flowing. “Dad isn’t his biggest fan either. Dad says he’s a douchebag.”

I pressed my lips together to stop the giggle escaping then I said, “Douchebag isn’t a really nice word but, that said, your father is entitled to his opinion.”

Grady kept speaking. “Uncle Slim puts up with him but I think he does it for Mom and Aunt Jill ‘cause they like ‘im but Uncle Levi thinks he’s a douchebag too. I heard him and Uncle Slim talkin’ when Uncle Slim told Uncle Levi to cool it about Grandpa because it was bothering Aunt Jill but Uncle Levi said that Grandpa never paid child report and he had a bunch of girlfriends other than Grandma so he didn’t owe him anything and neither did Aunt Jill.”

Apparently, Grady had a mind like a sponge though he got one thing wrong. Child report I was guessing was child support and I was also guessing having a father that didn’t pay it and played around on your Mom was not good.

“I like Grandpa!” Ellie piped up.

“Of course you do, honey,” I said, smiling at her from my place leaning against the counter.

“I put up with him like Uncle Slim,” Grady announced.

“Grady’s gonna be Uncle Slim when he grows up,” Dylan, sporting a milk mustache, shared.

Grady did not challenge this information. Instead, he declared proudly, “He played first base and I play first base. He played linebacker and I play linebacker. His job is scary, Mom says, but he does it to keep kids like me safe so that’s what I’m gonna do too. When I get old, I’m gonna keep kids safe.”

I was feeling warm and gushy again.

“That’s a fantastic goal, Grady,” I said quietly.

“Do you got kids?” Dylan asked.


“No, honey, I don’t have any kids.”

“That’s good. When you marry Uncle Slim, you can be Mom to Rex and Joel,” Grady offered and I blinked.

“Sorry, honey, who?”

“Rex and Joel, Uncle Slim’s kids, our cousins,” Grady told me, my body went completely still including my heart and lungs, the warm gushiness evaporated and Grady kept talking.

“Aunt Olivia used to be married to Uncle Slim and Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Jill, Uncle Fritz and Uncle Levi aren’t her biggest fans. I’m really not allowed to say the word Mom calls her. Dad too. And Uncle Levi said if he saw her again, he’d break her neck.”

I stared at him.

“She has a pinchy face,” Ellie added to the conversation, making her own scrunchy face that stated clearly she felt the same about Aunt Olivia as everyone else did.

“She never brings snickerdoodles to the family reunions,” Dylan put in then sucked back more milk before he musingly went on, “Or anything.”

“She wouldn’t think about snickerdoodles. She doesn’t care about snickerdoodles. Mom says she only cares about looking good and that’s why she’s always gettin’ her nails done,”

Grady authoritatively told Dylan.

“She has pretty nails,” Ellie told me. “I like her nail polish even though it’s almost always red. She should try pink.”

Although I was nowhere near processing the information they’d provided me, Grady kept spouting it. “She brings Rex and Joel to the family reunion every year and she stays and Mom says she stays even though she’s not family anymore just to show off her fancy outfits and be a wet blanket. I can’t say why Uncle Levi said she does it because most of the words are bad.”

Uncle Levi clearly had a mouth much like his brother.

And Brock Lucas had an ex-wife and two sons. A pinchy-faced ex-wife who had a perma-manicure and two sons.

This, I did not know. This, a thing you shared. This, I did not know what to do with.

To be fair, I had known Brock as Brock for three days.

Still.

“Can I be your flower girl when you marry Uncle Slim?” Ellie asked.

Again, my body, lungs and heart went completely still then the latter two started pumping and when they did this, they did it hard.

Damn! Now how did I answer that?

I decided on honesty.

“Right now we’re just seeing each other, Ellie, but I’ll keep a line open to you if it looks like it’s getting serious,” I promised and she giggled.

Then she placed her order. “Okay, but I want my dress to be pink.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told her and she grinned at me.

She had a milk mustache too.

I grinned back.

The door swung open and people flooded through starting with Laura and ending with Fern, Brock sandwiched in the middle. He came direct to me, eyes on my face and my eyes slid away. Fern went direct to the table to gather glasses. Laura started herding kids.

“All right, kiddos,” Laura started, snatching a towel from a rack, “wipe off those milk mustaches and inspect Uncle Slim’s living room for your stuff. We’re packed up and in the car in five minutes. March!”

Grady grabbed the towel, swiped his face, tossed it vaguely in his mother’s direction and raced out. Dylan followed suit. Ellie skipped to her mother like she had all the time in the world to tiptoe through the tulips, rubbed the towel across her face once mostly smearing milk and not lapping it up then she skipped out.

“So sorry about crashing your date, Tess,” Laura said, pushing the towel back on the rack.

“We were just driving by, saw Slim’s truck and bike and that’s unusual so we took our shot.

We’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

“Not a problem,” I told her on a smile, feeling Brock leaning into the counter with a hip, the front of his body facing my side but I kept my eyes glued to his sister at the table.

Laura smiled back and stated, “I’ll have to bring the kids to your bakery. They’ll love it.

I’ve been in a couple times but never with the kids, just to pick things up. Ellie talks about your pink cupcakes all the time.”

“Give me a warning call and I’ll batten down the hatches,” I quipped and her smile got bigger as Brock’s body got closer and when I say this, I mean his arm circled my ribcage, he turned me so that now I was leaning one hip against the counter and the rest of me was pressed back against him.

Laura’s eyes dropped to his arm, they warmed then she looked back at my face and was grinning like a madwoman again.

At this point, Fern dampened the mood by proclaiming, “Slim, I hope that doesn’t happen often.”

I turned my head to see her at the sink. She had rinsed the glasses and loaded a rickety dishwasher which might, though I wasn’t certain, have been the first of its kind, and she was currently shutting its door.

“Mom, we’ll talk about it later,” Brock said in a warning tone.

She turned and tipped her head back to look at her son. “Does it happen often?”

“Did I say we’ll talk about it later?” Brock asked.

“Simple question, Slim,” she returned and he sighed.

“If you mean does he stop by? Not often. But he does it. If you mean does he ask for money? No. Not anymore,” he answered.