“Granddad.” I’ve accosted him in his favorite rocker on the front porch. “My friend Easton is coming over tonight to help me with some work stuff. Don’t give him a hard time. It’s not a date.”
I’m secretly afraid that my extremely grumpy grandfather will actually get a shotgun out at some point and deal damage to one of the assholes who has passed through my life this year. I try to tell him as little as possible, but somehow—probably because we live in the world’s biggest game of telephone, also known as the town of Rush Creek—he always seems to find out.
Like for example, when Nan—who owns Rush Creek bakery—fixed me up with her nephew and he took me geocaching. That part was bad enough, but then it turned out that Nan’s nephew was massively socially anxious and had asked his auntie for help. Through the whole (already painful) date, Nan was text-feeding her nephew his lines.
Nan is friends with my Aunt Meryl, who found out about the weird Cyr-Nan-o date and mentioned it to my grandfather, who offered to “have a talk” with Nan’s nephew, which I assumed meant break both his kneecaps.
Before that, there was Mack Gault, who I actually kind of liked, until it turned out that he was a semi-retired porn star who wanted to restart his career. His idea was that we could film ourselves getting it on and he could use it as part of his portfolio, to show he still had what it took. I guess the good news is that he went about it in a totally above-board way, asking me to sign a release before he started the cameras, which gave me a chance to tell him he could shove his cameras up his (admittedly very fine) ass.
My grandfather somehow got wind of that, too, and offered to break Mack Gault’s kneecaps, which I assumed meant tear him limb from limb and bury the parts on opposite sides of our large ranch.
I assume the women I’ve dated would be subject to the same outraged treatment—like the one who accidentally told me the wrong time, so I showed up to discover she’d double booked me with another date—but miraculously, that particular story didn’t reach my grandfather’s ears.
“Easton’s one of the Wilder boys, isn’t he?” my grandfather asks, adjusting the angle of his rocking chair to catch the last of the late afternoon sun. “The one that dated that girl who made your middle school life hell?”
“Britney Ambrose,” I agree.
Britney was the worst of the girls who made me feel like something someone had dragged in on their shoe. Easton’s choosing her had, for obvious reasons, rubbed me the wrong way. So, in our early twenties, just when he and I might have outgrown our trash-talking habit and become something like friends for real, I found the perfect reason to keep him at arm’s length. Where he’s stayed until now.
My granddad’s wiry eyebrows draw together. “He’s also the one they call the panty melter.”
“Jesus, Granddad,” I say. “How do you know about that?”
I know my granddad has crossed paths with all the Wilders at one time or another, but I wouldn’t have guessed he’d know Easton from any of his brothers—least of all by his reputation.
“Isn’t much I don’t know,” my grandfather says, tipping his cowboy hat a little farther back on his head.
I wonder if he knows that Bear Warden has come to town. If so, I sincerely hope he doesn’t know that I’ve sprung a crush on him. That I’ve asked Easton to help me “woo him,” by which I really mean get close enough to him to win his heart. Or at least his undivided attention, a few dates, and some mountain man nookie.
“Just watch out for Easton,” my grandfather says. “Once a panty melter, always a panty melter. Even if this isn’t a date, he might still try to melt your panties.”
There is nothing grosser than hearing your grandfather say “panty.” In an effort to stave off any further panty mentions, I change the subject. “Hey. Did Aunt Meryl talk to you about your birthday party?”
“She did.” He squints at me, all leathery rancher skin and spun-sugar old-man hair. Eyes still sharp and a little mean. “Said you needed a guest list and to know what I wanted to eat.”
“That’s right.”
“No pasta and potato salads,” he says.
“Yep, know that.”
“No Guinness, no whatever those porter-things are. Look like coffee, taste like phlegm.”
“Already off the table.”
“I don’t want to invite people just because they invited us to something. I’m too old for that bullshit. And no birthday cake. Pies.”
“How about pies for you to eat, and a birthday cake because everyone else will want to see you blow your candles out?”
“The party’s not for everyone else, is it?”
I don’t try to debate it with him. I’ve spent a lifetime of meeting his stubborn with my stubborn, so I know my best bet is to just quietly serve cake alongside his precious pies.
He shrugs. “I told Aunt Meryl no birthday cake, too. Figured if I told you both, more chance one of you would listen.”
“Or we’d gang up on you and ignore you,” I offer.
He flattens his mouth before a smile can creep out, then jabs a finger in my direction.
“And I want the boys there.”
My hand, reaching for my phone to take notes, stills. “The boys.”
“Your brothers.”
The mention of my brothers, as always, makes my stomach hurt.
“We can invite them,” I say slowly, “but I don’t know that you should get your hopes up that they’ll show up.”
“Buncha stubborn, proud…”
He’s getting himself riled up. “We can ask,” I repeat. “I’ll reach out to them.”
I grew up surrounded by my brothers, the runt of a rowdy otherwise-all-male litter, fighting for my survival but also always knowing I was loved. Then my family fell apart, in stages and degrees, and my brothers all fled Rush Creek at the earliest opportunity available to them.
Part of me is still hurt at getting left behind.
And all of me is sure none of my brothers are gonna show up for my grandfather’s birthday party.
“You tell them I said to get their asses out here.”
“Sure, Granddad. I’ll do that.”
“I’m not gonna live forever, you know. I’m eighty-fucking-five. And when I go, I want you to have family.”
“I have Aunt Meryl.”
“Aunt Meryl,” he scoffs. “And her twenty-two cats in her falling-down house. No. I want you to have family that can take care of you.”
“I don’t need taking care of. And I have the Wilders.”
“They’re not family,” he says. “They can fire you.”
Okay, technically, that’s true. And sometimes it does bother me. I’m not a Wilder, and I never will be, so no matter how much they try to make me feel like one of the family, I’m just… not.
For some reason, I think of Easton, age nine, pressing flat stones into my palm. The weight holding me to earth so I wouldn’t fly apart into a million pieces.
“We had another offer to buy,” my granddad says.
“Yeah? What is it this time?”
“Uranium mining company.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You thinking about it?”
“No fucking way.”
Our family has lived for a hundred years on this land, sprawling grasslands separated by scrub and occasional windbreaks. Ranch barns and outbuildings squat here and there, beside a pond or two, the southern edge hemmed by a river, the whole territory capped with a ranch house I’ve heard called “charming.”
We haven’t run the ranch as a working ranch in years, not since we sold off the last of our cattle and horses to pay my granddad’s medical bills after he had heart surgery almost a decade ago. Since then, he’s kept us going by renting out the stables, barns, outbuildings, and kennels, letting local companies park trailers and run businesses on the land, leasing water rights, and allowing small-scale mining of gemstones in exchange for a share of profits.
My grandfather’s entertained plenty of offers to sell… but he never goes through with it. Usually that’s because the offer’s from a company that would destroy the land.
But sometimes the offer’s just “not good enough,” and I’m sure it’s because he still believes one of his grandkids will want the land. He knows I don’t. As much as I love it, I’ve spent enough of my adult life hassling with it. But I’m pretty sure he’s still convinced my brothers are coming back. And that when they do, they’ll want the ranch.
I think he’s delusional, but that’s a fight I’m not gonna pick with an eighty-five-year-old grouch.
Luckily, I’m saved from further discussions of birthday parties, uranium mining, or panties by the sound of a car taking the final bend in our long driveway. Easton’s red Jeep comes into view.
“On the other hand, maybe you should date him,” my granddad says. “That’s a nice car.”