her brood, taking in the chaos that surrounds her. But she doesn’t look the least bit put-out by it.
I hold my palm out toward the sky. “I think it’s stopping.”
“The weather app said it would only last a few minutes.” One of her younger boys falls down hard, and his cheek skids in the damp grass. He whimpers a little, but she doesn’t make a fuss over it. She cups her hand around her mouth and whispers to me, “If I don’t notice he fell, he won’t either.” She grins. “Mom trick,” she adds with a wink.
“Good to know.” I look from one to another of her rambunctious children. “How do you do all this? And keep your sanity?”
She shrugs. “Jake actually does a lot of it. The older ones are in school all day. The little ones nap.” She shrugs again. “It works out.” She looks at me. “Have you ever wanted kids?”
“I’ve never really thought about it,” I admit. Charles and I agreed that we would wait to have children, and that day never came. I never missed it. Not really.
“Well, Ethan has Mitchell,” she says slyly, like she’s inviting me to have a conversation about Mitchell.
I nod. “Yes, he does.”
She grins at me. “Pop has seen Ethan leaving your cabin every morning this week,” she says. “He can’t keep a secret to save his life.” She holds up a hand when I start to protest. “Don’t worry. Ethan knows he approves of you.”
“What?” Mr. Jacobson approves of me? Did I hear that correctly?
She looks a little uncertain. “I’ve overstepped,” she adds, her eyes suddenly wary.
“No, no, that’s not it.” I just didn’t know that Ethan needs for Mr. Jacobson to approve me to be in his life. “I didn’t know about that. That he approves.” Or disapproves, for that matter.
“It’s not like that,” she rushes to say.
“Then what’s it like?”
“It’s just… Ethan doesn’t have very many people on his team. But Pop is definitely Team Ethan.” She takes a breath, but then she rushes on to say, “Pop has known your grandmother since they were young. They still talk sometimes.”
Suddenly, it all becomes clear. “So that’s what this is about,” I say. “Gran has been talking.”
“I don’t know.” She looks down into her baby’s face and says in a childlike voice, “Mommy messed this all up.”
“I think I might love him,” I admit suddenly. The words just spill out of me. I instantly regret that I didn’t say them to Ethan first. I wish I could grab them in the air and bring them back to my lips, but they’re already out there.
“Nobody deserves to be loved more than Ethan.” She looks down at her watch. “I’m actually surprised they’re not back yet. I hope everything went okay at the fire station.”
“Knowing how the people in this town operate, I sincerely doubt it.”
But then we see the lights of Mr. Jacobson’s truck as it comes slowly toward us down the lane.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Katie says softly.
Mr. Jacobson gets out and Jake and Ethan climb out of their side right after. Jake lets out a heavy sigh, and Ethan winks at me right before they start to unload the pans, which I guess the meat was in, from the back of the truck.
“Take that one home with you,” Mr. Jacobson says, with a nod toward the one in Ethan’s arms.
Ethan looks down at it. “Are you sure? There’s still a lot in here.”
“There’s just as much in this one,” Jake says. “We’re going to be eating ribs for days.”
“Wait,” Katie says. “Why do you have leftovers? You never have leftovers.”
Jake grins at her. “You should have seen him. Pop walked around and jerked full plates out of people’s hands, and he even yanked a rib bone out of one guy’s mouth, I swear, and then he told us to load it all back up.”
“Then he told them all that God don’t like ugly, and we left,” Ethan adds, but he’s grinning too. He stands there with the pan hitched against his hip. “They didn’t want my kind there,” he says. But he doesn’t look torn up about it. He looks fine. He looks happy, in fact. He realizes I’m standing there just staring at him and he walks over to kiss me.
“Are you okay?” I ask him quietly.
“Fine,” he says, that grin still on his face.
“So Pop showed his tail pretty good,” Jake continues. “We should be good for the next year or so on public displays