On Thanksgiving morning, muffled giggles woke Grace. She raised her head to squint at her alarm clock, then let it fall back onto her pillow with a groan. When the giggles came again, she rolled out of bed and staggered across her room.
Fourteen-year-old Lucas was sprawled on the love seat and twelve-year-old Matthew on the air mattress they’d slept on, pushed out of their own beds by the invasion of older McKenna siblings and their broods. With TV banned at home it was natural for the boys to want to squeeze in as much viewing pleasure as possible, but seriously?
“It’s barely five a.m.,” Grace said.
Her brothers exchanged a guilty look. “Sorry,” Lucas said.
“We turned the volume way down,” Matthew added.
Grace had intended to order them to keep it down and crawl back in bed, but the sight of them clutched at her heart. Finances had forced their mother to take a job in Dumas when Matthew was only three, so oversight of these two and Jeremiah—now in his first year of college—had fallen to Grace. They were her boys and her partners in crime, the four of them delighting in finding ways to circumvent their father’s strict rules, especially regarding music, electronics, and junk food. Jeremiah, Lucas, and Matthew were the biggest of the reasons Grace had moved back to Texas. There were times she’d been nearly sick with missing them.
And yet, she’d been able to hand her own baby to strangers and walk away almost without a backward glance.
Grace closed her eyes against the familiar twist of guilt and dread. Telling Hank about their daughter was the equivalent of turning the secret loose to run where it would. One word to Korby, and they might as well put a birth announcement in the Earnest Herald. Grace would have to confess all to her family before that happened—and that would be the end of sleepovers with her brothers.
She grabbed a fuzzy throw from the rocking chair, nudged herself a space beside Lucas, and was enveloped in the scent of stinky boy feet.
God, she was going to miss them.
* * *
Thanksgiving had always been Hank’s favorite holiday. For whatever reason, it was the single day of the year his parents had seemed to declare a cease-fire. Christmas was a minefield of unmet expectations and the inevitable explosions that followed. Birthdays were worse. Easter was during calving and generally slipped past without fanfare. But even they couldn’t screw up Thanksgiving.
While Melanie made pancakes and their dad fried bacon, Hank and his mother would sit at the kitchen table shelling pecans for pralines—her only culinary specialty. They’d all eat breakfast in the living room to watch the Macy’s parade, and then, while his mom made the pralines, the rest of them would hurry through the chores and get cleaned up for dinner at the Jacobs ranch.
Hank could practically taste the brown sugar melting on his tongue as he and Melanie huddled in the back seat of the pickup, sneaking warm candy from a paper bag while their parents pretended not to notice.
There would be dozens of people crammed into Miz Iris’s house. Thundering herds of kids and dogs overflowing onto the back lawn and enough food to founder on, with bundles of leftovers shoved into their hands as they left for home, just like every other dinner at the Jacobs ranch.
But Thanksgiving morning was special—the few hours of every year Hank had been able to count on feeling like he was part of his own family. Now they didn’t even have that.
The stars had barely faded when he arrived at the ranch. He shushed the dogs as they raced from the barn to greet him, suffering the curse of sad puppy eyes when he refused to let them follow him into a house lit only by a dim glow from the kitchen. He expected to find Bing tiptoeing around to avoid waking Johnny while she made her famous caramel rolls. Instead, it was his dad who turned from the coffee maker to hold up a warning finger. Hank raised questioning eyebrows. Johnny tilted his head toward the living room. Easing forward, Hank peered over the bar to see Bing curled under a blanket, sound asleep on the couch.
His dad had gone back to staring at the dripping coffee as if he might stick a straw into the carafe rather than wait until it filled. He still looked terrible, but he appeared to be functioning better.
Hank toed off his boots and moved silently into the kitchen, close enough to his father to whisper, “Was she up all night?”
“Pretty much. She finally dozed off at four.”
Hank narrowed his eyes in surprise. “You stayed up with her?”
“My shoulder was aching. Feels better sitting in the recliner.” The coffee maker beeped, and Johnny snatched the pot. He grabbed a mug from the wooden rack on the counter, poured it full and pushed it toward Hank. “I don’t imagine you got any sleep either with all the texts.”
Damn. His dad had seen… “Did she tell you why?”
“Yeah.” Johnny poured a second mug, held the too-hot coffee under his nose and inhaled as if he could snort the caffeine. “She told me a lot of stuff.”
Shock flashed over Hank, first cold, then hot. How could Bing give him up like that? He waited for…what? Sympathy? Disgust? But his dad’s face remained carefully blank as he took a first cautious sip.
Okay, then. They weren’t going to talk about it. Fine with Hank. He angled past his dad and checked in the fridge. The promised pan of unbaked caramel rolls was on the bottom shelf. He pulled off the plastic wrap and set them on the counter to rise. Then he stirred a couple spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and took it to the kitchen table. Johnny stayed where he was, leaning on the counter. With Bing sleeping, they had a perfect excuse to drink in silence.
Johnny finished first, draining his mug and setting it by the sink. “Mind if I come and feed the calves with you? I’d like to get a good look at them.”
“Uh, sure.” Hank slugged the last of his coffee and rose. “I’ll feed the horses while you get dressed.”
Before he left, he unearthed a stubby pencil from the pile of odds and ends on the bar and scratched a note on the back of a feed store flyer.
Doing chores. Text if you need me.
It was still half an hour before sunrise when they pulled onto the highway, the edges and colors of the landscape muted. As they accelerated, Johnny cocked his head. “The front end isn’t vibrating anymore.”
“I hope not. I’ve replaced damn near the whole thing.”
Johnny frowned. “How’d you get to be such a good mechanic? You sure as hell didn’t learn it from me.”
“Cole,” Hank said.
“Ah. I guess that’s why you were constantly trying to organize my tools.”
“Yep.” Try being the operative word.
As usual, the calves were mobbed at the gate. The dogs bailed off the flatbed and flew at the herd.
“You’d better not let—” Johnny began.
Hank cut him off with a shrill whistle. Both dogs dropped to their bellies.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Johnny said.
Hank refrained from taking the open shot, but it was not easy. He hustled out to unchain the gate from the new latch before he changed his mind.
“When did you put that on?” his dad demanded when he got back in the pickup.
“Yesterday. It’s gonna be a while before that arm of yours is good for much, so I’ve been making the place more user-friendly.”
“Oh.” Johnny paused, then added, “Thanks.”
Hank did a double take. “Uh…you’re welcome.”
He pulled the pickup through and went back to shut the gate behind them, flip on the feeder motor, then jump back into the cab as the hopper started doling out piles of cake while Hank drove in a slow, wide circle.
Johnny leaned forward to squint at the dashboard counter in disbelief. “You got that thing working?”
“It just needed rewiring.”
“Huh.”
When they were done feeding, Johnny hopped out and got the gate one-handed, looking amazed at how well it worked. Hank couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or proud, so he turned on the radio. No market reports on the holiday, so the station played classic country instead—the real old twangers. They drove on down to the pasture to feed the mother cows—another gate Hank had rerigged so Johnny could manage it—and were back at the house as the sun crawled above the horizon, setting the countryside aglow.
Before Hank could escape, Johnny said, “Wait.”
Hank paused, one foot out the door.
“You were only hired through Saturday.” Johnny braced his palm on his knee, obviously working up to something. “I’d like you to stay on.”
Whoa. Hank wasn’t expecting that. “For how long?”
“We can take it a week at a time, see how it goes.”
A week. An hour. A minute. Hank had gotten used to tackling life in small increments. But living and working in close proximity with his dad? That could get interesting. Then again, Hank didn’t have a whole lot to lose. With a standing offer at Sanchez Trucking, he could walk away from the ranch any time he felt the need. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Johnny shoved the door open and slid out, detouring to fetch something from his pickup while Hank walked inside. The glorious smell of baking bread filled the air. Bing was freshly showered and dressed in jeans and a blouse the color of the sky outside the window, her eyes brighter than he’d dared hope.
“Chores all done?” she asked.
He nodded. “What did you two talk about last night?”
“Oh, this and that. Why?”
“He offered me a job.”
Johnny came inside, too slow with the door to keep the dogs from pushing past his legs.
Bing squatted to rub both of their heads, then lifted her eyebrows at Johnny. “Sounds like it’s been an interesting morning.”
“Yep.” He hefted a paper bag that clattered when he set it on the table. “Miz Iris gave me these a couple weeks ago. They’re off her trees.”
Hank peeled open the crumpled top, and his gut did a funny little twist as he scooped up a handful of pecans. “Have you ever made pralines?” he asked Bing.
“No, but I’m willing to try if you’ve got a recipe.”
“In here.” Johnny moved to reach into the cupboard beside her. Hank got a weird pang, seeing them standing so close, looking so domestic. Almost like…
Johnny handed her the ancient cookbook and stepped away. “It was my mother’s. And it must be pretty simple.”
“If Mom couldn’t ruin them?” Hank concluded.
His dad grinned at him. Actually grinned, the two them sharing an inside joke.
So many things weren’t the same. His mother had moved to California with her new husband. Melanie was off in Oregon with that asshole, Wyatt. But Bing had given Hank a real smile on Thanksgiving morning, and he’d spent a whole hour alone with his dad and come away better for it instead of worse.
Who knew? Thanksgiving might still be that magical day they couldn’t screw up.
Hank shucked his coat and went to turn on the television so they didn’t miss any of the parade. If they were gonna do this, they might as well do it up right.