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Before I’d fully processed my mother’s admission, an older woman with familiar kind eyes and a head of perfectly shellacked curls approached me with her hand extended. “Been a while since we saw one another, so I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m…”
“Emmaline Proud,” I said, drawing the name from some hidden recess of my brain.
Her pleased smile was almost girlish. “Amos said you wouldn’t forget. You probably heard that he and I got married a little while back? I’m Emmaline Proud Nutter now. No hyphen.”
“Of course.” I was pretty sure I’d sent a fruit basket or some flowers, and it suddenly occurred to me how very inadequate that was. “Uh… Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. We didn’t do a real big ceremony or anything. You might notice we’re not as young as your average newlyweds,” she confided.
“Not at all,” I lied.
“But we’re happy. Amos was my first beau, once upon a time, you see. We weren’t right for each other then, but it’s funny how time changes folks in some ways and not others.” She grinned. “Anyway, I know how busy you are back in Chicago—Amos brags on you and your accomplishments all the time—but it means the world to him that you came to spend Thanksgiving here, Junior. And that means the world to me.”
“Oh.” I felt my face heating, both at the idea of Amos “bragging on” me and at her genuine gratitude for me coming back. Suddenly, it was hard to remember exactly why I’d stayed away. “It’s not really a big deal.”
“It is,” she insisted. “You know how much family means to Amos, but you in particular have always been special to him. He thinks of you as his own son, especially since—” A shadow crossed her face, and she placed a comforting hand on my arm. “All of us in town were all real sad to hear about your father.”
I wondered, for a bewildered moment, if they’d somehow erroneously heard that my father had passed away, rather than the more pathetic truth—that he’d chosen instead to sleep his way across Middle Tennessee before finally being rewarded by falling in love with the grown daughter of an obscenely wealthy country music star. By the time my mother had sued him for spousal and child support, he’d already remarried into a bottomless pit of money.
For years, every time I heard “The Ballad of Whiskey Bend” on the radio, I silently thanked Rusty Jennings for helping get my mom and me out of Licking Thicket. Because of the Jennings fortune and my father’s court-ordered willingness to share it with us, I’d been sent to an elite boarding school in Illinois, which had changed the trajectory of my life.
“Thank you, but my father lives on a fifty-four-acre luxury estate in Franklin,” I told her. “He rubs elbows with famous people and eats hundred-dollar bills for brunch. I’m sure he’s doing fine.” I didn’t like my own testy tone, so I tried to mitigate it with a return of my smile. “I appreciate the support, though.”
“No need to thank me. What else is family for? Now that I’m Amos’s, you’re mine,” she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Something about the simple statement got to me, and I cleared my throat. “Well. I suppose I should get inside and find out what this ‘Biddin’ thing is all about, huh?”
Emmaline wrapped her thin arm around my elbow and drew me through the autumn sunshine toward the house. “Oh, you’ll find it all very self-explanatory. In fact, it might be best if you don’t overthink it,” she advised.
But Emmaline had no idea who she was dealing with. Overthinking was my specialty.
Once I’d been shown to my room—the same bunk room with sturdy wooden beds and flannel duvets where I’d had many a “cousin sleepover” back in the day—and dropped off my bag, I immediately headed downstairs to the kitchen. As expected, I found that was where most of the younger members of my family had congregated over coffee and store-bought sugar cookies, while the older folks were probably sitting in the parlor.
“Okay, be real,” I said to the group at large, sliding my ass onto a stool by the scarred butcher-block island. “What’s this auction thing about? Because Uncle Amos mentioned castration in the same breath that he told me to dress up, and I admit to some concerns.”
My cousin Savannah laughed as she fetched a mug from an open shelf and set it in front of me. “It’s exactly like Amos explained—a bachelor auction, kinda. Coffee?”
I nodded, and she turned to fetch the pot.
“Not only bachelors anymore, though,” her brother Fletcher interjected. “Remember how LaTonya got her wife to volunteer? And Nic did it for three years running, and they wouldn’t appreciate being called a bachelor.”
There was a lot of information to unpack in this.
