“Maybe I’ll just . . .” he said, clearly uncomfortable.
“No, no,” Mrs. Easter said. “You stay and sit. If I need to be carried or have questions about farm supplies, I’ll need you right here.”
Well, that was odd—and it felt like Mrs. Easter had an ulterior motive, but neither of us seemed inclined to question an injured old woman. Michael sighed and sat down next to the old woman, and my mother’s annoyance was practically tangible. There would be no holding off the barrage of questions later.
“Lottie, that tea sounds lovely,” Mrs. Easter said. Besides the knee, she seemed completely fine. She looked between Michael and me, a little smile pulling at her lips. “You know,” she said. “I remember you both from when you were small.” Mrs. Easter didn’t seem too affected by her fall, and I thought maybe she was actually enjoying the extra attention.
“You do?” I laughed, taking a seat beside her. I remembered her a little bit, but wondered what exactly she remembered about me, the serious Tanner sister, as a child.
“Oh yes, dear,” Mrs. Easter said. “I don’t know if you remember that I used to run a daycare up at my house when I lived in the big place at the top of the hill. Very informal, of course, nothing fancy. But I always loved being around the little ones. And there was a time, Addie, when you were my little helper.”
I had a vague memory of being in that big house when I’d been little. I’d thought it was a kind of fairytale castle—lots of rooms and stairs and wide open wood floors, plus the biggest widest porch I’d ever seen. I had a warm recollection of being happy there.
“And you always helped me with the babies. You were a good helper too, since you had two younger sisters and lots of practice with them. You were a big help with Michael here.”
Michael cleared his throat as if this news was somehow embarrassing.
I laughed, trying to imagine the well-built man across from me as a baby. “Really?”
“Oh yes, dear. I wondered back then if the two of you wouldn’t be the end of this silly feud right there. When you were near, Michael was happy and calm—and he was the fussiest of fussy babies, let me tell you.”
“Wonderful,” Michael said under his breath.
“Oh, I loved having the two of you around. So sweet, always laughing together, even though you were so much older, Addison.”
I cringed. Even as a little kid, I was practically a spinster.
My sister appeared at the curb, pulling her car to a stop and then stepping out, one hand adjusting her bouncy brown ponytail. She smiled at me through the window, and a little surge of relief ran through me.
“Here’s Paige,” I said, happy to see my sister coming through the door and eager for a change of subject.
Paige looked between Michael and me with a question written on her face, but she was in doctor mode, so didn’t ask questions except of Mrs. Easter and about the fall. A few minutes later, she had her patched up, had given her a prescription for an anti-inflammatory, and had scheduled her a follow-up appointment for Tuesday.
And just as suddenly as the odd little meeting of old daycare companions had begun, it was over.
“Uh, I guess I’ll see you,” Michael said, standing.
He might have been a Tucker, but he sure was pretty to look at, all muscles and golden-red hair with those deep blue eyes and a tiny cleft in his perfect square chin. But still, he was a Tucker, through and through.
“I won’t expect to see you back in here,” Mom said, coming to stand in front of him, arms crossed.
“Mom,” I hissed, appalled. We could feud without saying rude things, I thought.
“No need to worry, ma’am. My uncle would kill me if he knew I’d set foot in here,” Michael assured her, his face hardening. “Glad to see you got the place put back in order though.”
“If you’re referring to that stunt your cousins pulled, you should know it took two days to get all the furniture off the ceiling and the plaster repairs up there cost a fortune,” Mom’s voice had turned to ice.
Paige pressed her lips together hard, trying not to laugh. I hadn’t seen it in person, but Paige had sent me photos of the cafe turned literally upside down. I still didn’t know how the Tuckers had managed to fasten all the furniture to the ceiling like that. It was a feat. If it hadn’t been so costly to repair, it would have been pretty funny.
“Well, it looks all right now. I’ll see you around,” Michael said, clearly enjoying Mom’s distress. Jerk.
“Better not,” I said, not wanting my mother to have a heart attack here on the spot.
“A lot of silliness,” Mrs. Easter chimed in. “And time for it to end.”
Mom let out a little “hmph,” spun on her heel, and returned to her spot behind the counter.
The feud had gone on so long, I doubted it was ever going to end. But as I watched Michael head out the door and break back into a jog, a little part of me wanted it to.
Employee of the Month
Michael
“Can you stack that feed?” I called back to Virgil, my cousin—who also happened to be my employee.
“Stack it yourself, asshole.” Virgil was not winning employee of the month this month. Or this century. He and his brother Emmett were bent over the register counter, heads together, with a pad of paper between them and an aura of no-fucking-good wafting off them like thick morning fog.
I dropped a heavy hand on Virgil’s shoulder, pulling him to face me. I had at least thirty pounds on the guy, who was barely twenty-one, and his brother was a year older and about three inches shorter. “Listen up, Virge. I’m not ‘asshole’ around here. I’m the boss, and if you want to keep pulling the deposit that’s keeping you in Half-Cat Whiskey and cheap beer, you’d do well to remember that.”
Virgil didn’t look the least bit chastised.
“Same goes for you, Emmett.”
His brother had the intelligence to nod his head, as if he agreed with me.
I would have liked to get some actual employees in here, but my father made some kind of deal with his brother Victor before he died, and these guys had been handed down to me along with ownership of the store. There’d been a time when I’d had plans for this place, when I could envision it becoming something I was excited about running, owning. But that was when I thought I’d be going to college and coming back for it, maybe getting a few years of pro soccer under my belt and my wild dreams out of my system.
“What the hell are you two cackling about over here anyway?” I asked, already regretting the question as a wicked smile overtook Virgil’s face.
“Remember the moose?”
Simple question, really. And for most people, a question like this would trigger an obvious memory, if they did, in fact, have a moose-related memory. Sadly, I had about thirteen moose-related memories, and none of them were good.
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to be drawn too far into a conversation that generally ended with me agreeing to put the bucket on the heavy-duty tractor on my back lot and close my eyes to whatever happened next.
“This time, we’re gonna set him inside the Muffin Tin.” Virgil’s voice got high and squeaky with excitement, and Emmett nodded his agreement, rubbing his hands together. Emmett did a lot of nodding, and not a lot of speaking. That was probably thanks to the lisp he’d always had, for which he’d been relentlessly teased as a kid. Now he let Virgil do all the talking, which was a shame, because Virgil’s brain usually caught up to his mouth about three days later.