Cody
Wyatt was getting on my nerves. No matter what subject I brought up, he spun the conversation back to Dr. Caroline Winchester, a girl that Wyatt knew from high school and apparently had always had a little thing for, but stayed clear of because she was Sheriff Winchester’s only daughter. He’d run into her earlier this week and he’d been distracted ever since. Spending the afternoon with him was like being out with a song or a movie that played on repeat. We were out running errands for our dad. Picking up grub for both us and the livestock. Dad had armed us with a big ol’ list. We had to make multiple stops to get it all done.
The ranch was noisy lately. Everyone but Sarah was home. I was guessing that Bill and my megastar sister-in-law, Kat, were in Montana for the duration. They hadn’t sold their apartment in New York, but they were living in her old house and building a big house on a plot of land that our dad gave them for a wedding present a few years back. They’d been working on it for a year now and in the interim, surprise, another baby. Kat was months away from giving me a second niece. A year ago, Wyatt moved back into the house with me and Dad.
Sarah hadn’t been home much in the last few years, so you would think that it would be pretty manly up in our house. Only, for the second time in his life, my father was head over heels for a girl named Molly, his first granddaughter. As much as Molly was with her parents, she was with us. Our entire house was covered in pink castles, purple dinosaurs, and superhero capes. There were little shiny dress shoes, sparkly sneakers, and cowboy boots with hearts stored in a shoe tree at our front door. Wyatt could mimic the voices of at least ten current cartoon characters and all of us knew their names. That little girl with her baby blues and red pigtails had a gaggle of hulking cowboys wrapped around her finger, and she knew it too.
Normally, Wyatt would have been trying to convince me to buy Molly treats and toys at every stop, but not today. Today, he was a one-trick pony, all Caroline, all the time. Every conversation went a little like this one we had in the cab of my truck pulling out of the Walmart parking lot.
“Do you want to stop for lunch?” I asked.
Distracted, he responded, “Hmm? Oh... um... lunch…” He trailed off.
“Yes, lunch. Would you like to get some?”
“What?” It was literally like he didn’t know he’d just said the word.
“Lunch!”
“Oh, totally.” He nodded but I still wasn’t sure he’d computed the idea. Then he said, “When we were teenagers, no one ever really sat with Caroline in the cafeteria.”
Sigh. I ignored the current digression into the world of Caroline Winchester. “Wanna grab a bite quick at Mickey D’s or should we drive over to the Conway Cafe and get real food?”
“She was always smart, like super smart. People just didn’t know how to socialize with her.”
I opened my mouth to complain but then thought better of it. Sometimes a woman just clouded your mind, fogged you all up and there was nothing you could think about but her. He couldn’t help the way he was caught up about Caroline any more than I could’ve shaken Jamison from my mind a few years back. It literally took me a good year to not go to bed and wake up thinking about her, the shimmer of her smile, her quick wit and unparalleled rhyming skills, the slope of her neck, peak of her nipple, and all her sounds. I could still get hard thinking about the sounds she made when I was inside her. Even now, more than three years later, I compared every woman I met to her. Something about Jamison Hildebrand was always with me. So, instead of berating my brother, I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, turned the wheel left, and said, “Let’s go to the cafe. We can pick up a pie.”
The Conway Cafe was a local joint owned by Hazel, a woman in her sixties who thought she was everyone’s aunt, particularly when it came to us Morgan boys since we’d lost our momma. At least one of us boys or the women we loved barreled through Hazel’s door every day. The cafe itself wasn’t much to speak of. Just a hole in the wall, a mishmash of chairs and tables, and a soda shop-style counter, which was where Wyatt and I decided to sit. Or rather, that’s where I sat and Wyatt followed my lead because, as already noted, he wasn’t in his right mind.
As usual, Hazel was working the counter. I gave her a big smile. Wyatt vaguely acknowledged her presence.
Pinching my cheek like I was a boy, not a man, she said, “Two of the handsomest cowboys in town at my counter. How lucky am I?”
I rubbed my cheek and scrunched up my nose as she dropped her hand, but honestly, I wasn’t really bothered. Sometimes it was nice to be auntie-smothered, ya know?
“What can I get for you today, Cody my love?”
“Hmmm... I’m thinking a big fat burger. With bacon and Swiss. Yes. Ooooh... and fries please, extra crispy.”
“Bacon, Swiss, crispy, got it. And for your handsome hulk of a brother?” She turned to Wyatt.
He, of course, said nothing.
I smacked his hat off his head. “Earth to Wyatt. Hazel’s talking to you.”
Wyatt bent to grab his hat, and when he came back up, he had his charming smile plastered to his face. “Sorry, my mind is all over the place today.” No, his mind was in one place, only one—Caroline Winchester’s panties. He tipped the hat he’d just picked up. “Afternoon, Hazel.”
Hazel winked at me. “We already said our hellos, kiddo. I’m waiting on your order.” Only Hazel got away with calling a man as old as Wyatt kiddo.
“Umm... how about a burger with Swiss and bacon.”
I scoffed. Wyatt looked at me like, what are you laughing at?
Hazel said, “With crispy fries?”
Turning back to Hazel, Wyatt said, “Yeah, sounds good.”
Hazel strolled to the kitchen window, slapped the slip on the wheel for the cook, and hollered, “Double bacon and Swiss burgers with crispy fries.”
“You ordered the same thing?” Wyatt asked.
I nodded.
Realization dawning, Wyatt said, “Damn, I’m out of it, huh?” I assumed it was rhetorical but nodded anyway. “Sorry, bro.”
I shrugged. The bell on the door to Hazel’s cafe rang and I instinctively turned to see who was coming through. It was a blond boy, a toddler really, but he was a bruiser, bulky little thing, wearing overalls and a sky-blue t-shirt. In a town like Conway, we know each other's babies and this one was utterly unfamiliar. No one immediately entered the cafe behind him. He barreled forward, right up to the counter and huffed and puffed his way up onto the stool, belly first. He was cute, really.
On guard and worried that he might fall, I leaned toward him and said, “Hi. I’m Cody.”
He looked at me. Then he climbed higher so he was sitting on the counter. He was super agile for a toddler. “Cody is a stranger. No talking with strangers,” he said, smiling. Someone obviously loved him.
Hazel approached. “And who might we have here?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “No idea. He just came in on his own and climbed on up.”
Hazel laughed and bent a little so she was looking the child in the eye. “Well, where’s your mama, cutie?”
The boy pointed to the tray case in front of me. “Can I have a cookie, p-p-p-please?”
I smiled.
“I would, baby,” Hazel said. “But I gotta ask your mommy first. I don’t know what you’re allowed to eat.”
The bell behind me jingled again, and there was the clamoring of a nervous woman, panting, purse smacking into the glass and an exclamation, “Oh thank god, Flynn! You cannot run off like that!”
There was something familiar about her voice. Also, she was noisy so the whole place was looking. There was no real thought in my mind when I looked away from the boy toward his mama, but as my eyes found hers, my mouth fell open. It was Jamison. She didn’t look a day older but she did look more mature. If anything, she was more lovely. Her hair was still long but the style was a little different and she wasn’t dressed like the buckle bunny in my fantasies. She looked quieter, calmer, in jeans, a black t-shirt, and moccasins. She was carrying a big bag and a purse. That was a diaper bag. What was she doing here?
“James?” I asked. Then I looked back at the boy. Was this her son?
A petite brunette with a ponytail barreled in behind her, also a little frantic but more contained. “Did you find him?”
James nodded to the girl but her eyes were still locked on me. I stood. She put her hand up, signaling that I shouldn’t cross to her. Instead, she headed for me. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought you might be able to see it through my shirt. I smiled nervously.
“Hey,” she said, smiling at me like we’d just seen each other yesterday.