part of me was tired of taking other people’s warnings as rules. I was done having my mind made up for me by someone else.
Joan had an unforgiving view of the world if she could be angry at Tiffany for being a victim. I wasn’t about to take her word about Ben. And Dylan…I didn’t know enough about him to know his worldview, other than that he was both kind and controlling. I’d never known the two qualities to live in sync like that.
Perhaps Joan and Dylan weren’t looking past the tattoos. Perhaps they were caught up in some black-and-white idea that I wasn’t interested in. Maybe Ben had never given them tomatoes.
I found the old man sitting in front of a fire inside the half-built shell of his brick oven.
“You’ve made a lot of progress,” I said. Through the unfinished top of the oven I could see a cast-iron skillet over a crackling fire.
“Just about done, but I got impatient,” he said. “Thanks for what you finished the other day.”
“No problem. I didn’t want that cement to go to waste. What are you making?”
“Here,” he said, pulling out the pan. Inside, bubbling in oil, were little yellow plants. “Zucchini flowers.” He set the pan down in the grass and pulled off the mitts he’d used to protect his hands.
“My ex used to make ’em,” he said. “She was part Mexican. Fucking amazing cook.”
With a metal fork he grabbed one of the flowers and put it down on a piece of napkin he had with him, and the white paper immediately went clear with grease.
“Want to try it?”
I nodded and took the napkin, still so hot I shifted the little flower from hand to hand so my fingers didn’t burn.
He lifted the other flower out and put it down on his knee.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.
“Nah.” He held out his palms and I could see the thick calluses on all his fingers. Three fingers on his left hand reminded me of Smith’s hand. They looked like they’d been broken and not set properly.
I blew on the flower and then finally bit into it. It was stuffed with a little bit of cheese, and as I pulled the flower away a long string of it came down and scorched my chin. My tongue was singed.
“Ouch. Ow. Wow.”
“Tenderfoot,” he muttered and tossed his flower into his mouth. He chewed contemplatively. “Not quite.”
I finished mine. It was cheesy and fried, which made it pretty damn great. “That was delicious.”
“My ex’s was better,” he muttered.
From a bowl beside his chair he pulled out jalapeño peppers he’d sliced in half, added them to the still-bubbling oil, and put the whole thing back in the fireplace.
“Are you going to just eat those?”
“Fried peppers? No, I’m going to make cornbread. My wife used to put peppers in hers.”
“You’re a really good cook,” I said. He was thinking about his wife and he seemed sad, staring into that half-finished oven. I wished I knew some way to comfort him. Leach away some of this loss he was so clearly feeling.
He shook his head. “Well, I can’t drink, I can’t smoke. Don’t ride no more. Friends are in jail or dead. This is what I got left.”
“You don’t have any family?”
He pursed his lips, staring into the fire as if trying to remember, and then he shook his head. “Nah. My old lady left years ago. Went west to her sister’s.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, responding more to the grief he couldn’t quite hide under those words.
He shrugged. “It’s done business, I suppose.”
“You don’t have any kids?” I asked. I rubbed at some dirt on my elbow, carefully not watching him. I wanted someone—Dylan or Ben—to tell me that they were related, that Ben was Dylan’s father. Otherwise, I didn’t know why Dylan wanted Ben watched.
“Why are you being so nosey?” he asked.
“I can’t drink, can’t smoke. This is all I’ve got left,” I joked. He smiled into the fire.
“No. No family.” He reached into the kiln with his fork to poke at the peppers.
That killed my theory that Dylan was his son. I’d been so sure.
“You took off your scarf.”
I resisted the impulse to hide the bruises with my hands. “I don’t think I was fooling anyone.”
“No,” he agreed. “Your daddy do that? The bruises.”
“Husband.”
“No shit. I thought you’re too young for that kind of stupidity.”
“That kind of stupidity is made for the young.”
It felt oddly crowded around this fire. Like we had all our ghosts with us.