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“What’s the story with Junior Nutter, Hunter?” Selma spread dough into pie plates with gnarled fingers and trimmed the edges with the ease of long practice. “You paid two thousand dollars so you could dress him up like a feathered Chippendale and bring him to the Stuffin’?”
My paring knife slipped against the apple in my hand, and I nearly nicked my palm. “I bought him to help me renovate the event barn. The costume was just…” I coughed. “Fun.”
Selma snorted so hard, the bedazzled pilgrim hats on her sweatshirt danced. “You’re telling me you bid on him to do renovations? Psssht. Nonsense. Boy doesn’t look like he ever buckled on a tool belt. Now, if you were lookin’ for a Nutter who can get the job done, you shoulda bid on a strapping kid like his cousin Skip. He worked a shift at the Thrifty Nickel with me one time, and that boy can haul. Hoo-ee, but I wish I had someone like that around.”
Alana and I exchanged a glance, then looked at Pete, who’d wrestled on the state all-star team in high school and was now a roofer. He was currently sitting silently beside his grandmother, munching a sliver of raw pie crust his grandmother had trimmed off. “You’ve got Pete.” I pointed my paring knife in his direction. “He’s strong.”
“Nah. Pete’s a good boy, but he wouldn’t know which end of a hammer to pick up if I didn’t keep a close eye on him. Isn’t that right, Pete?” She patted Pete’s knee with firm affection, and Pete rolled his eyes. “Besides, if I’m hiring out a job, I want me a young man who’s gonna give me some eye candy.” She wiggled her gray eyebrows meaningfully.
Alana and I exchanged another look. Selma was eighty if she was a day, so young could mean a lot of things.
“Now, if you were looking for eye candy, Hunter,” Selma went on matter-of-factly, “you made a decent choice ’cause those Nutter boys are as cute as they come. Real flexible too. That’s why they always make such a good showing at the apple bobbin’ festival every fall. I always say Johnsons are best for Lickin’, but nobody bobs like a Nutter.”
The mental image this produced made me squeeze my apple so tightly that the damn thing shot out of my hand and rolled across the kitchen floor.
“Uh. Oops.” My cheeks went hot, and I refused to meet Alana’s eyes. “Slippery little things. Let me just…” I grabbed my fallen apple and brought it to the sink to rinse it.
“That’s such an interesting observation, Aunt Selma,” Alana said with overblown innocence. “I wonder what Jacksons are best at.”
Selma’s brow lowered, and her eyes narrowed. “You puttin’ me on, girly? On this, the day of our family’s triumph?” Her small shoulders straightened, and she spoke with terrible dignity. “Jacksons are made and meant for the Stuffin’, and don’t you forget it.”
This time, the apple and my knife both hit the inside of the sink with a clatter that had my mom looking up in concern from the cookies she was frosting.
“Maybe you better put down the sharp objects, baby,” she said. “In fact, why don’t you sit down and tell us all about—”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “Fine.” I focused my gaze on the bowl of sliced apples I’d been assembling. “But could we please talk about something that’s not the Bobbin’ or the Lickin’ or the… the Stuffin’?”
“I had no idea festivals made Hunter so tetchy,” Pete whispered to his grandmother loud enough for the whole kitchen to hear.
I changed my mind about my family being the best and briefly considered putting myself up for adoption.
“Back to your earlier point, Aunt Selma,” Alana cut in. “I don’t know if all Nutters are handsome, but some of ’em are strange as a three-dollar bill.”
“Thank you.” I nodded. “Yes.”
“I don’t mean Jun—Charlton,” she continued with an eye roll. “I was thinking of Elmer Nutter, the mechanic over in Dooberville. He bases the price of an oil change on what the ‘moon goddess is calling him’ to charge, so you never know how much it’ll be until you get there. I wanna know if the moon goddess is thinking to run a Black Friday sale.”
“Elmer’s probably just looking to make a quick buck, no moon goddess about it. He’s the kind of guy who’d steal his grandmother’s own pie crust right as she was getting ready to fill it.” I lifted an eyebrow at Pete, who was shoving dough into his gullet with abandon, and he froze. “Pretty rude, wouldn’t you agree?”
Pete grunted and tossed the last piece of dough he’d stolen back onto the table. I nodded in satisfaction. There were plenty of pie crusts, all stacked up between pieces of waxed paper, because my mom had gone with (gasp!) store-bought dough this year, but it was the principle of the thing.
