My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,22

so this spring was her very first kidding season. “And then Josh just reached his arm in, all the way to his elbow and—”

I held up my hand. “I’m trying to eat here so I’m going to stop you right there.” Next she’d be talking about the placenta, and I’d dealt with enough goat placentas to know it wasn’t a good topic for mealtime conversation.

We’d come to Groovy’s Tacos, one of our favorite lunch places, during Mia’s break between classes today. Despite the name, no one came to Groovy’s for the tacos. If you wanted those you went to Rita’s Taqueria down the street. The giant burritos were the star attraction at Groovy’s, made to order with your choice of ingredients, and wrapped in a fluffy flour tortilla still warm from the griddle.

“Oh, right.” Mia looked down at her own burrito, which she’d barely touched because she’d been so caught up in her goat birthing story. “Sorry.”

We both taught at Bowman, the local university—Mia as a full-time soon-to-be assistant professor in the math department, and me as a part-time lecturer in the college of forestry and agriculture. I only taught one class—on forest insects and diseases—as a side gig to go with my full-time job as a resources specialist with the state parks and wildlife department. As part of the deal, my students got to do their field work at Gettinger State Park, the thousand-acre forest just north of town, and I got to use the university’s lab space to do my research for parks and wildlife.

“But I’m glad you’re excited about it,” I added, so she wouldn’t think I was annoyed. “It is pretty cool seeing a new kid come into the world.”

After a bit of a bumpy start, Mia and my brother seemed really happy, which was a huge load off my mind. I’d been rooting for them to get together almost since the moment I’d first met her, after she’d moved to Crowder last fall.

My brother had been through some stuff back in college that had left him sort of closed off afterward. After our parents had retired to Maine and Josh had taken over the farm, he’d withdrawn from the world a little too much for my liking. For the last several years, he’d mostly kept to himself except for a small, trusted circle of people that included me, our aunt Birdie, and his best friend Wyatt.

Shit, now I was thinking about Wyatt, which I’d been trying not to do.

I hadn’t heard a peep from him since I’d slipped out of his apartment Sunday in the early morning hours after staying up half the night watching him sleep. He hadn’t really needed me to stay, but I’d enjoyed being close to him too much to leave. Wyatt didn’t often let his guard down that much, and it was hard to walk away when he was like that.

I could never fully walk away from Wyatt, even when he was being an ass. The two of us were tethered by years of friendship, not to mention our loyalty to my brother. Watching Josh retreat his way into a case of agoraphobia had drawn me and Wyatt even closer together the last few years as we’d confided our worries to each other and teamed up to help my brother as best we could.

But now Josh was doing a lot better—seeing a therapist and willingly venturing out into public again—thanks in large part to Mia. He didn’t need us as much, which meant Wyatt and I didn’t need to see each other as much to commiserate and strategize ways to save Josh from himself. Maybe it would be better if we just kept on that way. Maybe with a little more distance between us, I could finally move on and let go. Stop hoping for something that was never going to happen.

Yeah, right.

I realized Mia had started talking again and snapped myself back to the present, trying to look like I’d been listening.

“Josh let me name her. She’s the first generation of kids who’ll be named after female scientists. So I chose a mathematician, of course.”

“Well?” I asked, when she didn’t elaborate. “What’s the name?” My brother had a long-standing tradition of naming all his does after novelists, but he’d run through so many names by now that he’d needed to pick a new theme.

“Emmy, after Emmy Noether, the most creative abstract algebraist of modern times. I’ve got a whole list ready to go for this year’s kidding season. Ada