opening her eyes. “Unca Beau on. Unca Beau.”
With a self-satisfied expression, my mom started the video playing again.
She sighed. “I love this performance.”
“It feels like a lifetime ago. Where is everybody? It is today, right?”
“She needed a nap and I sent everyone on errands.” She set the remote down. “Have you eaten?”
“Isn’t there going to be a barbeque?”
“Pshh.” My mom waved and stood. “I have a pot pie in the oven.”
I followed her into the kitchen and my stomach growled.
“Have you talked to your brother?”
She asked as I lowered onto a barstool at the butcher block island. “You’re gonna have to narrow that down.”
“Jackson? Have you talked to Jackson?”
“He’s going to ask me to be his best man, isn’t he? It makes sense he’d ask his best-looking brother.” Jackson and I were close when we were younger, but he hadn’t lived here for all of his adult life. He’d been traveling the world as a cinematographer.
My mom ignored my comment. “He’s going to ask you to perform at his wedding. He mentioned it to me yesterday. He wanted to test the waters to see how you might respond.”
“Did you tell him no?”
“I said I would broach the subject and report back.”
“Since when did Jackson have to go through you to ask me something?”
“Since Rachel showed up.”
Fair enough. “I don’t play anymore.”
“It’s up to you. But you know how supportive your brother always was.”
“Wow. I’m thirty-two and still getting guilt-tripped.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
Every time Dolly Briggs said that she was “just sayin’” there was guilt to be had.
“He drove you all over the state, and even into Nashville when your father and I couldn’t get away.”
Jackson had done a lot of the heavy lifting early in my short-lived career. I’d started playing bars and honky-tonks when I was twelve. My parents were obviously busy with the farm and raising nine kids, but since Jackson was older than me, as soon as he got his license, he’d drive me wherever my gigs were.
“I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I can ask.”
She pulled a chicken pot pie from the oven and as my fork sank into the crispy outer layer my mouth watered. I had just put the first bite of heaven in my mouth when my mom slipped in, “I heard you had some visitors down at the firehouse today.”
I did not for a second think that the timing of her statement was by chance.
She’d waited for my guard to drop from her home cooking and then pounced. I nodded, still chewing my bite. Growing up it had always been a joke that mom had eyes in the back of her head because somehow, someway, she’d always known everything that was going on with all nine of her kids.
As a kid, I was fairly certain that she was like Lord Varys in Game of Thrones, and she had a bunch of little birds singing to her, telling her all the goings-on with my brothers, sister and me. A spy network, if you will. I’d assumed that as we became adults that her spying days would come to an end. I’d assumed wrong.
She leaned her hip against the counter and crossed her arms. “What did Rachel have to say?”
“She apologized and tried to explain herself.”
“Oh, did she?” Her brows lifted causing a wrinkle to appear in her forehead, as her expression hardened.
“I thought you felt sorry for her.” I took another bite. Three more and the sucker would be gone.
“That was yesterday,” she said matter-of-factly. “Today, she had the nerve to show up at your job with muffins.”
It seemed her birds were singing the wrong tunes. “Rachel didn’t bring the muffins, Sasha did.”
“Oh!” My mom’s face lit up. That’s nice of her to bake you muffins.”
“I don’t think she baked them. And they weren’t for me.” Her brows lifted again and I could see that she was getting the wrong idea and nipped it in the bud. “Mrs. Nelson baked them and asked her to bring them for the bake sale.”
“Isn’t that next week?”
“Yep.”
“Hmm…” My mom seemed to be considering that when she asked. “Well, was it nice seeing her again? I heard you two went for a drive.”
Wow. Whoever was feeding her info was doing a poor job of it. “I dropped her off at her car. She was too tipsy to drive it home from the church yesterday.”
“Tipsy? Were they serving alcohol?”
“She brought her own, apparently.” Tami Lynn had mentioned to me that she’d seen her spiking her drink in the hallway before