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Wynonna gives me a weird frown. “The Rogers idiots aren’t my favorite people.”
“No one claimed they were.”
Wynonna glances at her kids nearby. Ralph Junior is talking about how far away the sun is located. Esther replies the sun is made of cheddar cheese and the moon is bologna. While he tries to correct her, Esther gets the same ornery expression her mom often wears.
“Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks,” Wynonna tells me.
“I’m aware.”
“Will you be here or spending time with your loving sisters?”
“Why do you gotta be a cranky witch about stuff?”
Wynonna snickers despite her disliking my sisters nearly as much as I do.
“It’s just how I was raised,” she explains before shooing her hair from her face as the autumn wind picks up. “The Rogers family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. They think it’s a dumb holiday. Larry once told me that shit. I hadn’t even been talking to him, but he bullied his way into my conversation at the store.”
“Okay.”
Wynonna grins wider at how I refuse to engage with her when she gets going.
“Why don’t you invite Irina and the weirdo over to dinner? Everyone will be around. We’ll see how your woman and Rogers’s daughter do with our people. Then, if they don’t piss me off, I’ll invite them to my fun shit.”
“I don’t want you to make Irina jump through hoops.”
“I already invited her to the fun shit, but you were like, ‘No, you have to take her weirdo friend.’ This is me compromising.”
“Rogers’s daughter is really messed up. You need to be nice, or Irina will get upset.”
“What sort of upset are we talking about here?”
“Irina has a big heart for certain people.”
“Does her big heart have space for you?” Wynonna asks, stirring up trouble.
“You manage to love your redneck and his kids. Why wouldn’t Irina be able to love both Fiona and me?”
“Look, I’m not heartless.”
“Uh-huh.”
Wynonna scowls at my unimpressed mutter. “I don’t want to pick on Fiona Rogers. She’s got issues, and that’s sad. I would totally cry for her except she’s got Todd Rogers’s blood running through her veins. No one with that claim has ever been anything more than a menace.”
“Well, I don’t remember ever meeting a girl member of their family.”
“I did. Todd had another daughter. I forget her name. Something with Beth in it. She rolled into town years ago and started hitting up all the bars.”
“Was this back when you were desperately seeking a man?”
I chuckle at how Wynonna glares at me. “Yes, asshole, it was. So, I ran into her a few times. She was a grade A cunt, and I don’t call just anyone that.”
“I’ve heard you call like a dozen women that over the years.”
“Yes, a dozen very cunty women,” Wynonna insists. “Beth-Bitch was another one. She kept teasing men until they’d fight each other. She’d sit back and laugh like a hyena. The bitch looked like the prom queen, but she laughed like a cartoon villain. I was extremely thrilled when I heard through the grapevine that she died years ago. The world’s a better place because she tried to swim in the ocean at night.”
“That seems like a fake death. Like how I’d kill you if I wanted it to look like an accident.”
“You’d never kill me. I’m your first love.”
