Zeke looked up at his mother. “Most of your scenarios have to do with you stealing things or being a sex worker. Have you ever realized that?”
His mother arched a brow. “I don’t think I actually murdered anyone or anything. You boys aren’t quite that bad. But I definitely did something that requires periodic pain and mental anguish.”
Zander chuckled as he folded their grandmother’s tablecloth back into a neat square. “He’s dislocated his shoulder before. You know it’s nothing permanent.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at her middle son. “All the call said was that he’d fallen off another roof.”
“I wasn’t on the roof,” Zeke said. He rotated his sore shoulder. Dammit, that hurt. “I was on scaffolding near a tall ceiling.”
“Why are you always falling off of things?”
“Because I love the TLC from Michael and getting to see your smiling face,” he told her.
“Ezekiel, if you’re not going to be more careful, you need to at least get a partner to work with regularly.”
“I’m fine.” He actually was feeling like a dumbass. He didn’t fall off of things all the time. But he did climb on things that weren’t entirely steady and jump off of things that he probably shouldn’t from time to time.
Ignoring his mother, he looked at Charlie. “What do you mean she hasn’t been in here to eat?”
Just before Michael had showed up to help relocate his shoulder, Charlie had mentioned to Zeke that she hadn’t seen Jill since the penguins had showed up five days ago. Zeke had successfully kept his family from going to the penguin enclosure even though they all knew that the birds had arrived in town.
He was pretty proud of that. The Landrys weren’t the best listeners, but he’d laid out a very compelling argument about why they needed to steer clear of the penguin enclosure. He also accentuated it with warnings like, “you don’t want to have to pay more on your taxes this year, do you?”
He was the family’s accountant. He didn’t do it for anyone without the last name Landry, but he did do the books for all of his cousins and brothers and his grandma’s business. From personal to business taxes, everyone trusted him to get the numbers to add up right.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t take off a couple of deductions though. Of course, he wouldn’t do that, but it was a great threat. None of them had a clue about how to do their taxes, nor did they want to. He’d been doing them since he was sixteen and had taught himself how to fill out the forms.
When he’d first started, it had been a great way to make some extra spending money, but when he got older and realized how much he should have been charging them, he’d jacked their rates up right away.
“I mean she hasn’t been in here to eat,” Charlie said. “That doesn’t mean she hasn’t eaten at all, of course.”
That crazy chick was surviving on peanut butter and jelly a week after being exposed to Ellie and Cora’s cooking?
Okay, cereal, yogurt, peanut butter and jelly. He’d restocked the milk and yogurt yesterday.
Somehow she’d been using his refrigerator and going in and out of his back door and yet he hadn’t run into her since the penguin enclosure. He was trying to give her space so he hadn’t gone back there. She’d made it very clear that she didn’t want to date him, so he was hoping if he respected her boundaries, when they did run into one another, she might hang around for a while.
So far, that hadn’t happened.
As far as he could tell, everything in Autre was the same as it had been before Jillian Morris had showed up.
Except that he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“Here you go.” His mother set something down on the table next to his elbow.
Zeke looked over. It was his sock. The one he’d left in Jill’s motel room.
He looked up at his mom. “Where did you get that?”
“Ellie gave it to me. Is it yours? I figured I’d wash it with your other stuff and if it was Zander’s you’d tell me.”
Huh. He didn’t think he’d realized how much his mother did actually do his laundry.
He glanced toward the bar. His grandmother and Cora were both moving behind the long, scarred wooden length, waiting on their lunch crowd. He looked up at Michael. “Thanks for helping.”
“You want a shot for pain?”
“Naw. I’ll get some stuff from Cora.”
“You’ll be…fine…then.”
Michael probably didn’t want to actually endorse the use of Cora’s interventions, but he couldn’t deny they were effective.
Zeke wouldn’t use any of Cora’s stuff until tonight. For one thing, this shoulder popped in and out routinely. This wasn’t anything major. For another, Cora’s stuff would knock him on his ass and he definitely shouldn’t be climbing on anything when he used it. He’d learned, as had everyone in Autre, not to ask what was in the stuff Cora gave them. His grandmother’s best friend had been making salves, creams, and potions for as long as he could remember. She had everything from bug repellents to natural cleaning solutions to painkillers. They all trusted her and used according to her directions and everyone was happy.
He shifted back from the table and stood. He pivoted to his mother. “I’m okay.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “But thanks for worrying.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and shook her head and said, “Maybe I was a pirate.”
Zeke, Zander, and Michael all laughed at that. “Your stories all tend to involve elaborate costumes too,” Zander teased.
“I don’t think they were considered ‘costumes’ back when we were dominating the open seas, pillaging and plunderin’,” Elizabeth said. But her mouth was twitching.
“Right. And I’m sure there were no murderers in a pack of pirates,” Michael said with a nod.
“Not the group I ran around with. We were in it for the gold and the rum,” Elizabeth said.
Zeke laughed. “Now that I can believe. You still love shiny things.”
“And rum,” Elizabeth agreed. She reached up and patted Zeke’s cheek. “I love you too. I’d like you to stay in one piece.”
“As long as I’ve got Zander and Michael and Cora, I’m fine,” Zeke told her.
Elizabeth couldn’t argue with that. She’d been very grateful, out loud and often, to have so many other people helping keep track of her boys.
“And I love you too,” Zeke told her.
“I know.”
Zeke headed for the bar, and Ellie and Cora.
“You gonna live?” Ellie asked him as she poured beer into a mug from the tap.
“Yep. And it just proves once again that I’m tougher than cement.”
Ellie snorted. “Or the times you hit it with your head when you were younger shook loose any sense of pain or fear.”
“Cora, you got something for me?” he asked his grandmother’s partner and best friend.
Cora smiled and reached into the front pockets of the apron she wore. She pulled out a glass jar of some kind of yellow cream and a bottle of brown powder. “Put the cream on your sore muscles. The powder goes in hot water and drink before bed.”