After his brother’s gone, Stanton looks at the truck another minute, shaking his head.
Then we walk around the house through the side door, into the large, bright kitchen. Butcher-block counters, white cabinets, and sage-colored walls make for a warm but simple room. On the wall there’s an antique clock and a framed crocheted piece that reads: Home Is Where the Heart Is.
Stanton’s mother is a beautiful woman, thin, tall, and younger looking than I’d imagined. Her honey-colored hair is tied up, a few strands swinging as she scrubs a black pot in the large sink. Her nose is tiny, her chin the point of her heart-shaped face. When she hears us come in and looks our way, I realize Stanton and Marshall must have their father’s eyes—their mother’s are warm brown.
Her smile is large and wide and she doesn’t bother to dry her hands as she engulfs her son in a hug. Stanton lifts her off her feet and spins her around. “Hey, Momma.”
When she squeals, he sets her down and she leans back. “Let me look at you.” She brushes his forehead, his jaw, and his shoulder lovingly. Then she steps back. “You look good. Tired but good.”
“It was a long drive.”
Stanton gestures to me. “Momma, this is my . . . this is Sofia.”
Before I can extend my hand, Mrs. Shaw wraps surprisingly strong arms around me. “It’s so nice to meet you, Sofia. Stanton’s talked about you—what a talented lawyer you are, how well you two work together.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Shaw, it’s great to meet you too. I’m so happy to be here.”
And what hits me straight between the eyes is, I truly am happy. Seeing where he grew up, meeting the people who made him into the man he is now, fills me with a joy. A sweet excitement that has my feet tapping and a permanent smile on my lips.
“Call me Momma, everyone does. You call me Mrs. Shaw, I won’t even look.”
“Okay.”
She shoos us to the table. “Sit down, sit down, y’all must be starvin’.”
“And so it begins,” Stanton whispers, his breath on the back of my neck giving me goose bumps.
As his mother cracks and scrambles eggs, Stanton asks about his father.
“Up in the north field,” she explains. “For the rest of the day and then some. Mendin’ the fence that was taken out in the last storm.”
Within fifteen minutes there are plates of eggs, bacon, and warm biscuits with butter. “This is delicious, Mrs.— Momma,” I correct myself with an awkward chuckle.
“Thank you, Sofia.”
“Now you’ve done it.” Stanton grins, his mouth full of biscuit. “She’s gonna be stuffin’ your face the whole time we’re here. You’ve heard the freshmen fifteen? Be prepared for the Shaw twenty.”
“Oh my word!” From down the back stairs, into the kitchen skips Stanton’s sister, Mary, Marshall’s twin. With shoulder length blond hair, and her mother’s sherry colored eyes, there’s no doubt she’s part of the Shaw clan.
Being the youngest with three brothers myself, I feel an immediate kinship with her.
She leans down and kisses Stanton’s cheek, teasing, “I’m gonna start callin’ you the Grey Ghost, ’cause you played football, and you’re never here jus’ like a ghost, and ’cause you’re gettin’ gray in your whiskers.”
Stanton pinches her chin sweetly, then rubs his jaw. “There’s no gray in my whiskers.”
“Not yet,” Mary agrees. “You just wait until Presley’s my age—she’ll have you grayer than Daddy.”
Mary introduces herself, then immediately professes her love for my nail polish. And my lipstick. And my silver sleeveless top and black slacks.
“Momma,” she whines. “Can we go shoppin’? Please?”
Stanton’s mother starts to clear the table. “Do you still have last week’s allowance?”
“No, I spent it at the movies.”
She gives Mary a shrug. “There’s your answer, then.”
“I’m goin’ to Haddie’s,” she announces with a pout.
“Not until you feed those calves in the weanin’ paddock, you’re not.”
Mary opens her mouth to complain . . . then bites her lip hopefully. “Unless . . . the best big brother in the whole world would do it for me?”
“Your brother just got home,” Mrs. Shaw admonishes. “He’s barely eaten; give the man a minute to rest.”
She folds her hands and gives him the Sherman eyes.
His mouth twitches. And he cocks his head toward the door. “Go on, then, I’ll feed the calves for you.”
Mary throws herself at Stanton with a squeal. “Thank you!” Then in a blur she’s out the door. “Bye, Sofia!”
After the table is cleared and the dishes are drying, Stanton, his mother, and I finish our coffees.
“After I set Sofia up in my room,” Stanton says, “I’m going to drive over Jenn’s.”
His mother stiffens slightly. Then she nods and sips from her cup. Stanton worries his bottom lip with his teeth. “It would’ve been nice to have a heads-up about this weddin’ situation. A phone call . . .”
Mrs. Shaw looks her son in the eyes. “That’s between you and Jenny, wasn’t my place to tell you. Unless it has to do with Presley, her business is her business.”
Stanton seems satisfied with that. A few minutes later, we grab our bags from the car and head out to Stanton’s old room. “Out” because his room is in one of the outbuildings, the top floor of the barn. Heated, sharing a bathroom with the identical bedroom on the other side, wood paneling, hardwood floor, posters and trophies galore—it’s a teenage boy’s dream.
“My brother Carter and I built these rooms one summer,” Stanton tells me, eyes dancing around the room. “My father told us if we finished them right, we could move out here—so we did.”
It’s then that I notice the pictures on the nightstand—a dashingly young Stanton in a football uniform, with his arm around a tiny Jenny in a cheerleader uniform, and a school portrait of his daughter, wearing a red sweater over a white-collared blouse, her two front teeth endearingly missing.
“Why didn’t Marshall and Mary move out here when you and your brother moved out?”
He nods, anticipating the question. “After Jenny got pregnant, my mother wouldn’t let either of them. She thought Presley was conceived here and she didn’t want any more early grandkids.”
With a chuckle, I ask, “Was she conceived here?”
“Nope.”
• • •
About a half hour later, I’m unpacked and ready to get some work done on Stanton’s queen-sized bed. Since we crossed the Mississippi state line and entered the “friends without benefits” zone, Stanton offered to stay in his brother’s old room. He walks out of the bathroom and he’s changed his clothes. He’s now wearing a pair of jeans, leather boots, a white T-shirt, and a brown cowboy hat. The shirt hugs his arms perfectly, accenting the tight ridges of his biceps. And his jeans mold his ass, his flat stomach, and best of all those strong thighs, in a way that has my mouth watering.
I close my mouth, but he catches me staring. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
I smirk. “Don’t need to, I can just tear an advertisement with the Marlboro Man out of a magazine—you look just like him.”
He throws his head back a
nd laughs. I watch the bob of his Adam’s apple—something so sexy, manly about it—making me want to pull that T-shirt off, push the jeans down, and let him fuck me with his boots on.
“You’ll be okay here for a few hours?”
I throw my hair up in a ponytail while he watches my every move. “Of course. I have emails to return. Oh, I just need the Wi-Fi password.”
He looks concerned. “We don’t have Wi-Fi, Sofia.”
“What? What do you mean, you don’t have Wi-Fi? How can you not have Wi-Fi!”
“We’ve got radar—to track the weather.”
“Radar?” I scream. Then I pick up my laptop and hold it above my head, walking around the room, searching for a signal. How am I supposed to research? Read my emails? I feel so primitive—so cut off.
Like Sigourney Weaver in outer space—no one can hear me scream.
“I’m in hell! You’ve brought me to dead-zone hell! How could you do this to me? What kind of—”
“Sofia.” He says it gently, like a breeze, but it catches my attention and cuts off my rant.
He holds up a small black rectangle, then tosses it to me. I catch it in one hand.
Portable Wi-Fi.
“Thank you.”
He winks. Then glances at my feet—still in patent leather high heels. “You didn’t happen to bring boots with you, did you?”
“Of course I brought boots.” I open his closet and take out a pair of Gucci knee-high black leather boots with three-inch heels.
He lets out a long, disappointed sigh. “All right, here’s what we’ll do. After I get back, we’ll go into town to the co-op and get you a pair of decent boots.”
And I just can’t resist.
“Really, you just said that? Into town? Can Half-Pint and Mary come too, Pa?” I dissolve into a fit of giggles.
“Keep laughin’, smartass. Let’s see how funny it is when your designer shoes are covered in horseshit and mud.”
I rub my lips together, sobering. “That wouldn’t be funny.”
“It’d be a little funny.” With a smile he reaches out and traces my cheek with his thumb, then across my lower lip.
And the action is so intimate—sweet—I almost forget why I’m here.
But then I remember.
I’m Goose. The sidekick. Santa’s little helper.
I clap my hands together. “So, last minute advice: Talk to her, not at her—no woman likes getting yelled at. Ask her how things went wrong, what she thinks she can get from James Dean that she’s not getting from you. Then, tell her how you’ll make whatever changes you have to, to give her what she needs.”
He nods pensively.