His shake of the head was barely a movement.
I still caught it.
Therefore, I announced, “Right! Dinner! Everyone sit. Cade, at the head, please. I’m at the foot. You boys and Celeste, you get your pick.”
Bohannan and his sons took their beers, Celeste worked at my side to finish then dish up food and take it to the table, and we all settled.
We passed around platters and bowls.
I caught some looks being exchanged and declared, “I have a rule. You eat what you like in my house. If you don’t like it, and you’re still hungry when the meal is done, I’ll make something else.”
I nearly burst out laughing when, upon those words, Jesse scraped the asparagus off his plate back to the platter it had been presented on.
“Bro, you gotta consume green things,” Jason admonished.
“I do, shamrock shakes when it’s St. Patrick’s Day,” Jesse retorted.
I couldn’t bite back that laugh.
“I like asparagus, Ms. Larue,” Celeste piped in.
I glanced at Bohannan.
Another sigh, this one louder.
I looked back at Celeste. “Honey, please, I’m Delphine.”
She glanced at her dad.
He inclined his head.
She smiled at me.
“Delphine.”
That wasn’t Celeste. Jason was calling me.
I turned to him and lifted my brows.
He was pointing at the polenta on his plate with his fork.
“What’s this?”
I was about to answer when Jesse, mouth full of polenta, answered for me.
“It’s boss, man.”
“Polenta,” I said quickly in order to get it in.
“Cool,” Jason muttered, and bent to his food.
I looked at Bohannan, who was watching me.
My clitoris contracted.
My mouth opened.
“So, I’ve had a think on things, and I like it here. I’ll probably be staying. And when I do, I’m running for the school board. I have a feeling my campaign will be successful. Anyone have any ideas about how our education system in Misted Pines can be improved?”
There was complete silence at the table.
And then Celeste, Jason, and even Jesse exploded with laughter.
Bohannan’s beard twitched before he looked down to his plate and started eating.
Twelve
The First
I was in my reading nook when I saw his shadow cross the window.
I wasn’t surprised.
In fact, I was ready.
I set my book aside, got up, and in my thick socks and warm, knitted loungewear, I padded to the back doors in the living room.
I opened one.
Bohannan slid in.
There was a lamp on the kitchen counter lit, a small one. The glow was golden but didn’t extend very far.
Without a word, Bohannan went to my armchair and sat on the arm.
I closed the door and stood at it.
His shoulders were slouched, his neck partly bent, but he turned his head to me.
“We got things to talk about.”
To communicate I agreed, I moved to the arm of the couch, which was caddy-corner to him, and sat.
“Beer? Bourbon? Whisky? Vodka? Other?” I offered.
“I only drink beer. My dad was an alcoholic.”
Boy.
That was forthcoming.
“So do you want a beer?”
“I don’t drink it when I need it. I drink it whenever.”
“Right.”
He straightened, both his hands coming up, and he swiped them over the sleekness of his pulled-back hair.
He dropped them to his thighs.
“She was a man’s woman,” he declared.
We had a lot to talk about, I figured.
Though what he was saying, I did not understand, I was simply glad he was finally conversing (we could just say that Jason and I carried the dinner conversation, with some interjections from Celeste—Jesse had again started to brood, and more pieces had fallen, declaring that Bohannan, naturally, was just not a talker).
“I’m not following.”
“Grace, my ex. Their mom.”
Interesting place to start.
“Okay,” I said encouragingly.
“She was good when she had three boys to spoil her. She was not so good when we accidentally got pregnant eleven years down the line, and it was a girl.”
I sat straighter.
He didn’t miss it.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I…does that…I don’t know, um…does that mean—?”
He put me out of my current misery by adding to it.
“That, when me and Jess and Jace fell in love with Celeste and acted like it, she lost her shit and eventually said it was either her or my daughter, and I picked my daughter, and that’s why she’s not around? Yeah. That’s what it means.”
“She…gave you an ultimatum…about your daughter?”
“It wasn’t laid out like that. It was laid out like we spoil her. Or something. When, okay, maybe there was some of that, but it wasn’t a lot. It wasn’t unhealthy. Though, we’d done it unhealthy, what we gave to Grace. She was spoiled rotten. In the end, putrid with it. I thought she’d have her tantrum and get her shit together. She didn’t. She left. Seein’ as I’m good at finding things, I found her. When I did, she communicated that, unless things changed to her specifications, this being we sent Celeste away to attend school, she would decline to return. I declined to pack my daughter off to school because her mother is a bitch. That was five years ago. Celeste was eleven. The boys were twenty-two. Grace hasn’t been back since. No calls. No cards. She could always hold a mean grudge, but this shit is something else.”
It truly was.
Something else.
“And Celeste was young, but not so young she didn’t sense why her mother was gone,” I remarked, carefully concealing (I hoped) the revulsion I felt for his ex in my tone.
“No love there. Not Celeste. She’s all about love. I mean Grace. She was never that kind of mom where she got into mom things. I didn’t think that was weird. Not every mom is gonna be supermom from start to finish. She got in her groove though. She adored the boys.”
At least there was that.
“She didn’t want to be pregnant, not the first time, and the fact we made twins didn’t help. Absolutely she didn’t want it the second. But she was sure it would be a boy, so she thought, after we got through the bottles and diapers and potty training, and we got him to school, she’d have her life back. Like she did with the boys. Not that she did bottles or diapers or any of that shit. It made me sad for her. She missed out.”
She missed out.
My heart squeezed.
“She’d also have someone else to kiss her ass, like we all did. Even with the ultrasound telling us it was a girl, Grace refused to believe it. Said it was an error. Said we’d see when he was here. I thought she was scared of havin’ a kid she didn’t know how to raise, since we were through a lot of it with the boys. Celeste came out, shit went south immediately.”
I kind of wanted him to stop talking again.
Though, the pistachio velvet couch was explained.
“Although I appreciate you sharing this, Bohannan, I’m not certain why you are.”