“Okay,” Charlie said as he came in. “Law says we can pick his colors; he’s not fussy. We should get the list from the kids soon, knowing Harper.”
He smiled fondly, his love for his niece, Harper Charlotte, who was named after him and was a mini-Charlie, clear as day.
A week later, as I finished painting Law’s room a foresty green, I felt satisfaction that I hadn’t in a while. Sure, cleaning the Inn was rewarding, but the monotony in that was different. Painting calmed my brain somewhat, and that was always nice.
I remembered being little, maybe around Marlie’s age, and painting a big barn wall with my older cousins. I’d loved it back then, and the memory surfacing now didn’t really surprise me.
I put the roller on the tray and went to the window. All you could see here was the trees. It was comforting. It looked nothing like my childhood home, the fields we’d been surrounded with had made everything flat.
The Yellow House, as we’d started to call it, was like a nest in the woods. If there’d been a gap in the trees, I could’ve seen my cabin from Law’s window. Only a patch of woods and the small clearing around the pond behind the cabin separated the buildings.
Again, my mind went back to Utah. I wondered what my siblings were doing.
I wondered where I’d be and what I would be doing if my youngest brother, Rudy, hadn’t outed me. Even at ten years old, that boy was vicious, always looking to please the elders no matter at what cost.
I could see our paternal grandfather in him to a degree that chilled me to the bone.
The others between us, Clara, Amos, and Sariah, were less… that. They weren’t like me, either, but they weren’t as bad as Rudy who was, no surprise there, Grandpa’s favorite.
“You okay?” Uncle Teague asked from the doorway.
Of course he’d see my posture for what it was, even without seeing my face.
“Yeah. I was just thinking about my siblings.”
His big boots clomped closer, his bigger, comforting body radiating heat to my side and back. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” he offered simply.
I huffed out a breath. “Thanks.” What else was there to say?
I’d found my family here. Both blood and not, they all accepted me in a way I’d never been accepted in Utah.
“Did you finish the kids’ rooms?” I asked to change the subject.
With another squeeze of my shoulder, Uncle Teague nodded and smiled. “Yep. The new beds and stuff should arrive tomorrow. I’ll start on the family room’s floor tomorrow as well.”
“Gramps doesn’t need you?” Uncle Teague worked at the little sawmill operation my gramps had. They cut and sold a lot of firewood this time of the year.
“I’ll work there through the weekend. Charlie will be busy here with you anyway, so it’s gonna be fine.”
“Oh, okay.” I turned to pick up the roller tray. “As long as you also take time off, you know. You’re not as young as you used to be, Uncle Teague.”
When he gasped dramatically and took a step closer to me, I brandished the roller as a means of defending myself.
Charlie called for him somewhere in the house, and he pointed at me, squinting. “I’ll get you yet for your disrespect, young whippersnapper!”
Just as he left the room, I called after him, “I’m pretty sure not even Gramps uses the word ‘whippersnapper’ anymore!”
Snickering, I started to clean up.
“What about Christmas?” I asked Charlie one morning as we sat at the Inn having breakfast together.
“What do you mean?” He cut into a hashbrown with the side of his fork, then shoveled into his mouth.
“I mean they’re coming here right before Christmas, right? There’s no time for them to get a tree and decorations and everything while they settle in. I doubt they’ll be bringing all their old decorations either, more like the most important ones?”
Charlie frowned in thought. “I think so. I spoke with Caitlyn the other day and she said they were doing a really drastic culling of things they own all in all.”
