That made it worse.
I wiped my eyes. Took a breath. Wiped them again. ”You're right," I managed. "Bears are very serious."
"So why were you laughing?"
"Because your daddy is the funniest man alive."
"He's not funny. He makes bad jokes."
"He really does."
She studied me for another moment, clearly unsatisfied with this explanation, then decided I wasn't worth pursuing and went back to organizing the sockets. I sat against the tractor wheel and let the last of it work through me and grinned at the barn ceiling and thought about Clay's face when I brought this up at dinner.
Mom appeared in the barn doorway just after five.
She was wearing the blue dress, which meant company. Mom wore the blue dress for birthdays, holidays, and people she wastrying to impress, which was nobody, which meant she was up to something.
"Sunday dinner's nearly ready," she said. "You two need to clean up."
Maisie was off the floor before Mom finished the sentence. "Grammy Lou, did you make the rolls?"
"I made the rolls."
"The good ones? With the butter on top?"
"Is there another kind?"
Maisie grabbed her horse off the workbench — the horse went everywhere, even into the barn during tractor surgery — and headed for the door. She stopped beside Mom and looked up at her.
"Grammy Lou?"
"Yes, baby?"
"Can you teach me how to fight a bear?"
Mom looked at me. I shook my head.Don't ask.
"Go wash your hands, sweetheart," Momma said. Maisie ran.
I cleaned up at the barn sink. Scrubbed the grease off my hands and forearms, ran wet fingers through my hair, pulled on a clean shirt from the hook by the door. The hook had a clean shirt on it because Mom put one there every Sunday morning. I'd never asked her to. She just did. That was Mom.
I crossed the yard to the main house, and the kitchen was loud the way it always was on Sundays. Wyatt was at the counter carving the roast while Ivy handed him the platter. Maggie was arguing with Sophia about something that involved hand gestures. Jack was setting the table. Liam and Stephanie were uncorking wine with the coordinated ease of two people who'd been doing this together long enough to stop talking about it. Dad was in his chair at the head with a beer and the settled expression of a man who'd long ago accepted that his housewould be full and noisy and that this was the price of everything he'd built.
Clay was at the stove stirring gravy with Maisie on his hip. Callie was beside him, stealing a taste, and he pulled the spoon away, and she swatted his arm and Maisie said "Daddy, Mommy's not sharing" and Callie said "Daddy's not sharing withme" and the three of them had the easy, overlapping rhythm of a family that had been a family long before the paperwork made it official.
I walked past Clay toward the table. Stopped. Didn't look at him.
"Heard you've been teaching Callie bear safety," I said. Deadpan. Eyes forward.
The silence was beautiful.
Callie's face went from neutral to crimson in about half a second. Her mouth opened. Closed. She pressed both hands over her eyes and made a sound like she was trying to disappear through the kitchen floor. Clay — Clay, the bastard — didn't miss a beat. The grin that spread across his face was the biggest, most shameless, shit-eating grin I'd ever seen on a grown man. He looked like he'd won a championship all over again.
"Someone's got to keep the family safe," he said.
"From bears," I said.
"From bears."
