carsick, you know.”
Erick was grateful that Lisa at least had the decency to look guilty about not bringing her daughters to their aunt’s house. Her sister? Not so much.
“I thought they were all coming,” Clover said, looking wounded. He could see the hurt in her eyes, hear it in the crack in her voice. “I made them the brownies they love and we have stuff for s’mores.”
“I can’t believe we forgot to tell you,” Kelly said. “That’s my fault. Anyway, you don’t have kids, Clo. Your house isn’t childproofed. I didn’t think you’d have anything for them to do.”
“Erick brought stuff to teach them how to make their own bird feeders,” Clover said. “We had planned for them to come. I really wanted to see them.”
“Aww...that’s so sweet of you,” Kelly said. “But you’ll see them at Christmas.”
“I was planning on spending Christmas with Erick and his daughter.”
“Oh,” Kelly said, looking the slightest bit sheepish—for once. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, you’ll see them eventually. Lots of pics online in the photo album. Hey, Mom. How are you?”
“Happy to have all my kids under one roof,” Val said, embracing Hunter and Kelly and smiling. “All my babies back together.”
“You sent me fifteen text messages in the past two days and you couldn’t have told me in one of those messages that you weren’t bringing the kids?” Clover asked. Kelly pulled away from her mother’s embrace.
“I just forgot, I swear,” Kelly said. “I didn’t think you’d care.”
“Why on earth would I not care?”
“Well, you’re not really a kid person,” Kelly said.
“I love my nieces and nephews. You know that.”
“Loving them and wanting them in your house full of breakable objects and poisonous plants are two very different things,” she said.
“The only toxic plants are up in my bedroom,” Clover said. “I don’t care if they break stuff. Nothing here is really valuable.”
“We’ll bring them next time, I promise,” Kelly said. “I just got so excited to meet your boyfriend I forgot to tell you. So what do you do, Erick?”
“I’m a contractor,” he said. “Mainly cedar, decks and siding. That sort of thing.”
“He owns his own business, too,” Clover said, and the pride in her voice made him stand up a little straighter.
“That’s great,” Kelly said. “I always thought it would be fun to run my own business.”
“Lots of work,” Erick said. “But Clover knows that better than I do. I work alone. She actually has employees, and since one of them is my daughter, I know how hard she works at it.”
“Too hard,” David said. “Working her life away.”
“I don’t work that much, Daddy,” Clover said.
“Gotta take time for yourself,” he said. “Family is just as important as work.”
“I took time for myself this week, and I enjoyed every minute of it,” Clover said.
“Running off with a man and leaving your phone behind isn’t exactly what I meant,” David said.
“But it’s exactly what I needed,” Clover said, and Erick could see how shaky that plastered-on smile of hers was. There was only one thing for it.
“Who wants wine?” Erick asked. He did.
Erick went into the kitchen and poured out seven glasses of wine—two whites and five reds. Lisa slipped in and picked up two glasses for her and her husband.
“Let me get these,” she said. “You only have two hands.”
“Thanks for the help,” Erick said.
Lisa glanced over her shoulder at the family talking in the living room.
“Word of advice,” Lisa whispered, leaning in close to him. “Get out while you can.”
“Too late,” he said. “I’m in too deep.”
“You have my sympathies,” she said, then mouthed the words, “Save yourself...” before putting on a fake too-wide smile and returning to the party. Apparently Lisa had about as much fun at these family gatherings as Clover did.
With that, she walked back into the breach, and Erick wondered if both glasses of wine were for her. For her sake, he hoped they were.
“Can I help in the kitchen with anything?” Val asked when Erick passed the wineglasses to everyone. He took a long deep drink of his red. Drinking might not be the best idea around this crowd but it would certainly help him put up with their sniping at each other.
“We’ve got it under control,” Erick said. “Turkey’s almost done. Everything else is warming in the oven.”
“It all smells wonderful,” Lisa said. “Thanks for having us. I wanted to host this year but then Hunter decided we needed to remodel the kitchen. Again.”
Erick sensed they were drifting into choppy waters.
“Your fault you won’t let me buy a bigger house,” Hunter said. “So we remodel. Gotta look good for the bigwigs, right?”
“You finally learn how to cook?” Kelly asked Clover.
“Erick did most of it,” Clover said behind her glass of chardonnay that she held in a white-knuckle grip.
“I admire a man who is good in the kitchen,” Kelly said. “Mike is useless.”
“Before the kid, I couldn’t boil water,” Erick said. “I had to learn fast after my divorce, and I got full custody of Ruthie. Kids have this weird obsession with eating real food multiple times a day.”
“Mr. Mom,” Hunter said, raising his wineglass in a mock toast. “Good for you.”
“Not Mr. Mom. Just Dad,” Erick said, putting on his most harmless smile. “Normal dad. That’s all.”
“Some men actually help around the house,” Kelly said, leaning against her brother’s arm. “Wild, right?”
“Sounds awful,” Hunter said, shuddering in horror. “I work until six every day. I’m not going to come home and cook and clean, too.”
“That’s what I’m for,” Lisa said with a too-bright smile. Her glass of red was already empty. “Plus dealing with contractors and decorators all the time...”
“Erick, do you think everything’s ready?” Clover asked.
“Let’s go check,” he said. “You all will excuse us?”
Soon as they were alone in the kitchen, Clover put her forehead against the center of his chest.
“You’re doing great,” he said, stroking her hair. “Better than I would be.”
“There’s not enough wine in all the world,” she whispered.
“We’re going to make it. I don’t know if Lisa is, but we will.”
“Everything okay in here?” Val asked from the kitchen doorway. Clover stood up straight immediately.
“Great, Mom. What’s up?”
“Came for a refill,” Val said as she picked up the red wine bottle and topped off her drink. She’d hardly made a dent in her first glass. She wasn’t there for a refill. She was spying on them.
“Well, dinner’s almost ready,” Clover said. “We’ll start bringing stuff out soon.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t meet your daughter, Erick,” Val said, not taking Clover’s hint. “I hope she’s not missing you too much.”
“She’s seventeen. A week away from me is a vacation for the both of us. But you’ll get to meet her eventually, I’m sure.”
“Seventeen. That’s a handful age,” Val said. “Does she wear you out?”
“Not so much anymore,” Erick said as he opened the oven door to check on the bread. All done. He put on oven mitts and pulled the pans out. “She got into a little trouble a while back, but working for Clover’s been great for her. Helped her channel her energy into something constructive.”
Clover picked up the sweet potato casserole and the three of them walked out to the table now covered in a fine white linen tablecloth and October-orange napkins.
“A little boy trouble?” Val asked as she laid down dish towels on the table where the hot dishes would go.
“I wish. That’s what normal teenagers do. No,
my daughter joined an ecoterrorist group online and set a factory farm barn on fire,” Erick said. All conversation in the room stopped.
“She did what?” Val asked. Erick had to force himself not to smile. Ruthie was always good for getting a strong reaction, even when she wasn’t there.
“Arson,” Erick said. “She committed arson. But for a very good cause. She’d run away from home if she ever caught me buying non-cage-free eggs. A new factory farm was under construction and the group she belonged to decided to torch it before they finished building. It was a protest. She’s a nature worshipper.”
“So she’s an environmentalist?” David asked.
“No, she’s a literal nature worshipper,” Erick said. “Neo-pagan, according to her. Although technically she says she worships Mother Nature but I’ve never figured out if that’s an actual person in her theology. She can worship Gozer for all I care as long as she keeps her room clean and doesn’t get arrested. Again.”
“Well.” Val blinked a few times. “What an interesting girl you have. You’ll probably be relieved when she starts college. Do neo-pagans go to college?”
“Mine plans to,” Erick said.
“And this girl works for you?” Val said to Clover.
“She’s my assistant at the nursery. She’s my best hire ever.”
“I don’t know what we would have done without Clover,” Erick said as he placed forks, spoons and knives on the napkins Clover had laid out. “Ruthie got probation for the barn burning and had to pay ten thousand dollars in restitution for the fire damage. She emptied out her car fund and then had to get a job to pay the rest. No one would hire her because of her criminal record, but if she didn’t find a job, she’d probably have had to do some jail time. The only thing Ruthie seemed to care about was the planet and nature so I thought maybe someone at a nursery would hire her. Clover was the only one willing to give her a chance. Still don’t know why, but I appreciate it. For many reasons.” He winked at Clover.
“She’s so smart and driven,” Clover said. “You just have to channel that energy into something positive.”
“Your daughter is a miracle worker,” Erick said to Val, hoping to counter some of the digs her family had taken at Clover with a few compliments. “Ruthie came back from the interview and said Clover was the coolest woman she’d ever met. I asked her why and she said, ‘Clover says there’s two ways of making the world a better place—you can destroy the bad or you can create the good. I think I want to focus on creating the good.’ She’s been a great kid ever since. All thanks to Clover.”
“And you,” Clover said, wearing a bright blush and the first genuine smile he’d seen on her face all day. “She’s very lucky to have you in her life. So am I.”
“She is,” Erick said. “I tell her that all the time. Eventually she’ll believe me.”
“She believes it now.” Clover gave him a quick kiss on the cheek as she walked past him to pick up her wineglass. Maybe they could make it through this day, after all.
“That’s very sweet,” Val said. “David, we might get to have a neo-pagan ecoterrorist for a stepgranddaughter.”
“Hey,” David said, lifting his glass in a toast. “Better than nothing, which is what we’ve got now.”
“I don’t know about that,” Val said with a brittle smile.
Erick flinched as the wineglass in Clover’s hand hit the floor and shattered into a million pieces.
“Shit,” Clover said.
“Stay right there,” Erick said. “I’ll get the broom and the towel.”
“You go check on the turkey, Erick,” Val said. “I’ll help Clover clean it up. Our little dropout is a bit dropsy today. Too much wine?”
“That was my first glass,” she said. Clover was ghost white in the face. Had dropping the glass scared her that much? Erick looked at her but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’ll just, um, check on the turkey, then,” he said. “Should be done.”
He was alone on the deck for all of two minutes before Clover came outside.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she said, looking like she was about to burst into tears. “I can’t believe my mother said that about Ruthie. I can’t—”
“Clover, it’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Ruthie didn’t hear it. She’s fine.”
“I’m not fine,” Clover said.
“I know, sweetheart. Look, I’m going to bring in the turkey. Everyone will eat and that’ll keep them busy. We’re going to make it. Just hang in there.”
“Mom said something in the kitchen.”
“What did she say?” Erick asked, keeping his voice calm. Clover was on the verge of losing it, he could tell. He didn’t blame her. He was about ready to throw her over his shoulder, carry her out to his truck, drive off into the sunset, and never let her family within a hundred miles of her ever again.
“I told her she shouldn’t say stuff about Ruthie like that and that you and I just started going out so even joking about Ruthie being her granddaughter made me uncomfortable. And she said, ‘I just want the best for you, dear. Stepchildren are second-best and we want you to have the very best.’”
“Ouch,” Erick said, wincing. “Wish Ruthie were here. She’d put your whole family in their place.”
“Ruthie is not second-best,” Clover said. “She’s the best. Your daughter is the absolute very best.”
“I know that and you know that, and God knows, Ruthie knows that. Who cares if your parents don’t know that?”
“I care,” she said. “I care, Erick.”
He tried to say something else to comfort her, but it was too late. She had already gone back into the house.
Erick brought in the turkey on the platter and got out the carving knife and fork.
“You want me to do that?” Hunter asked.
“My turkey,” Erick said. “My knife.”
“You the man,” Hunter said, raising his hands in surrender. Clover had put all the dishes on the table and everyone was taking their seats. Hunter sat at the opposite end of the table, the head.
“You’re sitting in Clover’s spot,” Erick said.
“Am I?” Hunter said. “I always sit at the end of our table at home.”
“It’s okay,” Clover said. “I’ll move.” She picked up her new wineglass and moved it from the head to the seat nearest Erick, who was considering telling Hunter that it was exactly where Clover had been sitting when he’d fucked her there on Monday morning. He thought better of it but at least the memory kept him from stabbing Hunter with the carving fork.
“So how’s business going, sis?” Hunter asked. “You selling a lot of flowers this year?”
“Flowers and trees and garden equipment.” She picked up her wineglass and took a sip of it. Erick saw her hands were shaking, but she was doing a good job faking a good mood. “In fact, I have some news.”
“Good news?” Kelly asked as she sat opposite Clover.
“Great news,” Clover said. “PNW Garden Supply offered to buy me out. I have until Monday to accept their offer. But it’s a good offer.”
“How much?” Hunter asked, leaning in and grinning.
“Five million,” Clover said.
The room went silent immediately, a shocked silence much like the one that had greeted the news that Erick’s daughter was a felon.
“Five million dollars?” Hunter repeated.
“Yes,” Clover said.
“Jesus...” Hunter sat back. “I had no idea your business was worth anything.”
“Gee, thanks,” Clover said.
“You know what I mean,” Hunter said. “That’s a lot of money for some flowers.”
“It’s a nursery with two locations and over four acres of prime real estate,” Clover said. “I don’t sell boutonnieres to prom kids, okay?”