One Bride for Five Brothers

My dad’s mouth opens and closes mutely. He narrows his eyes at me.

“I'm not,” I repeat. “I wanted to talk to you about it, but… I'm not. It's not for me. I'm not going back. And I'm not going to Wyoming either.”

My dad raises his arms and then lets them fall, slapping his hands against his thighs.

“Well, this is a fine how do you do!”

I stare up at Stan, trying to read his expression. He squints into the dark, glancing away and then back toward me.

“When will you be leaving?” he asks my dad in a low voice.

“The truck will be here in a couple of days,” my dad finally shrugs. “Anita and I were planning on taking off tomorrow, but…”

“We've got a cabin,” Stan nods, looking off into the distance. “Back of the orchard. Nothing fancy. It’s part of the original homestead.”

“What are you saying?” my dad asks.

Stan looks at me, his gaze fierce and intense. Even though we've just met, I feel a certain loyalty to him, a certain protecti

on when he's around me.

“I agree about the house… the house you’re in. It's big. It's a lot to manage for Vanessa alone. But the cabin is small, practically just one room. You know anything about farm work?”

My dad leans on his walking stick, jamming the heel of his other hand between his eyes as though struck with a headache.

“She doesn't know anything about farming,” he sighs.

“I’ll figure it out,” I shrug.

“Vanessa, be reasonable!”

“Are you serious?” Stan asks me.

“Absolutely,” I nod.

“Vanessa!”

I walk over to my dad, kicking away leaves and trailing vines. I squeeze his arm and try to catch his eye.

“Dad, I want to do this,” I say sincerely. “I'm grown, now. I make decisions for myself. It'll be my new adventure, okay?”

He squints his eyes closed, shaking his head slowly.

“Your mother's going to kill me,” he finally says.

“She probably won't say a word about it,” I joke. After a few long seconds, he gives me a sad smile and then starts to walk away.

Chapter 7

Tim

Hank likes to whistle. He does this thing while we’re working that sometimes sounds nice, and sometimes irritates the shit out of me. He climbs the short ladder, pushing himself among the branches to soft some deadwood near the crown, his cheeks puffed out as he whistles some kind of old-fashioned opera or some bullshit like that.

“Pick up those branches, will you?” he complains, grunting as the chucks the deadwood out into the space between trees.

“I've got my own work to do. Pick up your own branches,” I counter.

“What? Flipping through catalogs? Don’t you have anything more useful to do?”