Margot worked in town and made the most actual income, so she covered most of the monthly bills. Phoebe provided the place to live and paid for the care of the animals. Everybody covered their own personal expenses. They were one of the various versions of a Gen Z family, trying to make it work in a world where all the systems supporting home, labor, and health were broken.
Just then Gremlin trotted into the room. They’d installed doggie doors in the side and back doors, so he came and went at will during the day. Gremlin also got lunch when they did. He was a working dog, and though his herds were small, he got his cardio in every day and needed plenty of calories.
Lunch was his favorite because he got real meat and vegetables rather than kibble.
He woofed quietly, and Phoebe laughed. “Okay, okay. Everybody’s nagging me today. Let’s have lunch.”
~oOo~
“Don’t tell Marg about that call this morning, okay?” Phoebe stabbed her fork into her gumbo. She had not yet told Vin about her Patreon, and she wasn’t sure she would. She was already sorry she’d told him about Becca’s call.
Vin stopped chewing and stared at her. “Why?”
“Because she’ll make a bigger deal of it than it is. Becca is on my side, and I’m going to take her advice today and reach out to everybody who matters. Uberbitch can try to hurt me, but she won’t succeed.” Those words felt a bit bigger than she could hold, but she was determined to make them true.
Dropping his sopping bread into his mainly empty gumbo bowl, Vin did some more judgmental staring before he finally said, “If she’s got enough weight behind her, maybe not getting her way will just escalate her. Eventually, it’s not gonna matter she’s being ridiculous. If she’s a big enough deal, she can hurt you—and it’s not just you, Bee. It’s us. We’re a squad, right? You go, I go. Might be you’ll need help from Marg’s boss.”
“Tyrone P. Miller, Attorney at Law? He works out of a storefront in Checotah, Vin. Literally next to the laundromat. If I need legal help against Mrs. Oil Baron Uberbitch, I don’t think a guy who fixes speeding tickets and does bankruptcies and probate on fly-specked old farms is gonna be a help.”
“You’re makin’ my case for me, Bee.”
Phoebe’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth creaked. God, she did not want to talk about this shit! But if she tried to shut it down, Vin would find ways to push and prod until she caved and he got the discussion he wanted.
She took a breath and explained, “No, your case was about telling Margot, and there’s nothing she can do to help if that woman really goes after me—us. What Marg will do is run around with her hair on fire, thinking she’s got to fix a problem she didn’t make and she can’t fix. And I’ll get the blast from that directly in the face. She already thinks I’m half as capable as I actually am, no matter how much I prove what I can do. The last thing I need is for her to get anything she can interpret as evidence that she’s right.”
With a sigh, she pushed her half-finished lunch away. She loved her best friend most of all, but Margot was a bossy mother hen as well—a lifelong tendency that had been turbocharged after Phoebe had come home from the Army dented.
“If I have to, I’ll kiss some uberbitch ass, okay? I’m sure the chance to humiliate me will satisfy her. I will handle it and make sure she doesn’t become a problem. I promise.”
“I don’t want you to have to kiss that woman’s ass.”
“And I don’t want to do it. So let’s just wait and see, okay?”
More meaningful staring. “Alright,” Vin finally conceded. “Just be careful, right?”
“Just as careful as I ever am,” she told him.
He chuckled and went back to sopping up the last of his gumbo.
Fuck, it was like she lived with a new set of parents—and, like her original set, they were just as fucked-up as she was.
~oOo~
That night, after the animals were all tucked in, the chores and jobs all completed, and a good dinner of pork chops, fried apples, and fresh bread was consumed, Vin, Margot, and Phoebe were settled into the living room continuing their rewatch of Peaky Blinders.
Vin had zonked out in his chair about halfway through the second episode of the night, but Margot and Phoebe were fully invested.
Margot had a major crush on Tommy. Phoebe thought he was a bit too pretty to be worthy of a crush. She had a real soft spot for Arthur, actually. But Polly was her favorite character by a mile.
Phoebe sat on the floor in front of the old sofa, framed by Margot’s legs as her friend sat behind her, brushing her hair. As they watched Polly stand before a hangman’s noose, trying to be brave, Phoebe huffed. It didn’t matter that it was fiction, it didn’t matter that she knew how it all turned out—she was worried for Polly and angry at Tommy all over again.
“I don’t know how you can forgive Tommy for what he does to everybody. I don’t care what his reasons are. Family should come first.”
“In his mind, family is coming first,” Margot asserted. “Everything he does is for the family.”
“No, everything he does is for himself. He just assumes the family will come along with him. He’s the one with the grand ambitions. Arthur and the rest would have been happy to stay in Small Heath.”
Margot only grunted as she began braiding Phoebe’s hair. They’d had this disagreement the first time they’d watched the show as well, so Phoebe could interpret the grunt. Margot thought Aunt Polly was just as ambitious as Tommy.
“You just think Cillian Murphy is hot.”
“No, I think Tommy Shelby is hot. Cillian Murphy is cute. It’s all in the attitude. Since you’re into hot outlaws now, I’d think you’d come around to Team Tommy.”
Phoebe pulled away and turned to look behind her. “That was bitchy.”
Margot’s forehead bunched up. “Why? Are you not into a hot outlaw? Pretty sure a Brazen Bull counts.”
“I’m not into a Brazen Bull.”
“Pfft. He slept over! Twice! How long have we lived together? That’s the first time since we have that you’ve had a boy over long enough for breakfast, honey. You like him. A lot. I know I played bad cop when he had dinner with us, but I think I actually like him, too. Preliminarily speaking. He really leaned in helping you out. And Snorey McSnoreson over there says he made a good impression. Also, he’s definitely hot. So he plays in the deep end. Maybe that’s only a problem if he drags you in with him.”
Now Phoebe drew her brow in. “You’d be okay if I brought an outlaw into our lives? You?”
Her best friend shrugged. “Look. All the time at work, I see banks and big companies fucking over little farmers, old ladies, and young people just trying to get by, and I see all that fucking-over is totally legal. If some regular folks band together to get some back, maybe that’s not a bad thing, no matter how illegal it is. My granny used to say all the time she’d shoot a Fed on sight if one tried to get onto her property. She’d trust a Brazen Bull over a government agent a million times out of a million.”
Margot’s great-grandmother, the one person in her family she’d been truly close to, had been a citizen of Choctaw Nation. She’d come by her suspicion of the government honestly. Practically genetically.