He barked once, always participating in our conversations, then huffed.
I hitched my chin toward the barn. “Go on, help Baylor and Corgan. Get going.”
Another bark and Logan darted off toward the barn again.
Baylor watched the whole thing and shook his head, laughing as he gave another wave.
I climbed in the backseat of the Explorer and slammed the door. “Are we gonna be there late tonight?”
“Better not be,” Dad grunted. “Got a call from some guy earlier today who wants to meet up with me for a chat tomorrow morning. You know anything about that?”
Austin caught my eye in the rearview mirror as I thought. “No. Did he say what it was about?”
Dad grumbled a non-response, which meant no. We were a pair, him and I. Elaina had exclaimed many times about how the men in the family didn’t know how to open their mouths when they talked. We all mumbled and jumbled our words together and expected everyone around us to read our minds.
I wondered if married life had changed that with my older brother, JR. I hadn’t seen him in a year and a half, but he and his wife were coming for the wedding tomorrow afternoon. It would be nice to catch up. They’d moved to a little farmstead outside Calgary after they got married. Her family was out that way, and she wanted to be closer to them.
Austin made the short drive to Jasper’s most popular and prestigious lodge where the dinner was being held. The sun was low in the sky, hidden behind the great peaks of Pyramid Mountains in the distance. I helped Dad from the vehicle, despite his objection, and Austin handed him his cane.
We’d spent the afternoon doing multiple run-throughs of the ceremony, so I knew he was tired. The wedding would take place on a quiet section of our land. There was a ridge and a trickling stream that ran off the Athabasca River where Elaina had always dreamed of getting married as a little girl. Tomorrow she would make her dreams come true with Austin.
I was happy for them both but had been dealing with the heavy weight of jealousy ever since she’d announced their wedding a year ago. I was the youngest of my siblings. The baby. More than anything, I wanted a family of my own someday, but responsibility took precedence.
My brother had married a woman ten years his junior. She was pregnant with his first child and due in the fall. I told him forty-one wasn’t too young to have kids. He disagreed. Elaina had no interest in children. She was Jasper Elementary’s kindergarten teacher, and she said she got enough of them at work.
I had my own dreams, which included a husband and a farm full of little rug-rats running around. Dad laughed when I told him. Elaina had smacked his shoulder and lectured him about being gay in the twenty-first century and how it didn’t mean I couldn’t have those things like everyone else. Dad stumbled over apologies for a month. He’d always done his best to be accepting of my sexuality—even though some people in town weren’t.
Instead of marriage and children, I got the stables and the old man to take care of. It occupied every hour of my day, and finding an honest husband had shifted so far down the list, I couldn’t see it. The more years that passed, the further away my dreams fell. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. I was trying to be okay with that.
Once we’d practiced the wedding stuff to death this afternoon, everyone had gone home for a bit with plans to meet up at the lodge for dinner. A fancy dinner that required fancy clothes. I wiggled my toes in the confining dress shoes as we made our way inside. I was going to end up with blisters by the time this whole thing was over. How could people wear this stuff every day? I missed my boots and jeans.
In the lobby, my sister and a large group of her friends—bridesmaids—were gathered near an enormous stone fireplace. Elaina caught us coming in and hustled over, her floral dress swishing around her knees, her heels clicking on the stone floor. The smile on her face was blinding.
She shared my same dark blond hair color and amber eyes. Unlike me, Elaine was tiny. My six-foot-one frame dwarfed her five-foot-four. She kissed Austin full on the mouth before sizing me up, a hand