I'm goingto kill my best friends.
The business partner ones.
All three of them.
Slowly.
With my bare hands.
“This boulder is where Jedediah Morgan allegedly conceived his seventh child.”
I read the words off the faux-aged plaque that's been bolted to a rock I've walked past my entire life.
The plaque that was definitely not there yesterday. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Caleb appears at my elbow, grinning like the charley horse mid thrust he’s rapidly becoming.
“Great, right? Roman found this company that does custom plaques with next-day shipping. We got twelve of them.”
“Twelve?”
“Scattered all over the mountain. It's a scavengerhunt. People find them, take selfies, post with the hashtag. Whoever gets the most wins a prize.”
“What's the hashtag?” I ask, already dreading the answer.
Caleb's grin widens. “MountainDaddyTour.”
I close my eyes.
Take a breath.
Remind myself that despite my earlier declaration, murder is illegal and would create a lot of paperwork.
“My great-great-grandfather is rolling in his grave.”
“Probably, but you know Grammie Bea is cackling with glee,” Caleb agrees cheerfully. “Because your great-great-gdad is also trending. Check it out.”
He shoves his phone in my face. The #MountainDaddyTour hashtag already has over two thousand posts.
People take pictures with the plaques, posing suggestively with the boulders, and make TikToks about the Morgan family “stamina.”
One of the most-liked posts is a video of two women reading the plaques aloud and losing their minds laughing.
“'The Morgan men have been known for their stamina on these slopes since 1887,'” one of them reads out loud, wheezing. “I'm DEAD. I'm actually deceased. This is the best thing I've ever seen.”
It has forty thousand views.
In three hours.
“What do the rest of them say?”
Caleb hands me a stack of images and my gut bottoms out.
The spot commemorating where my great-great-grandfather surveyed the original property lines? That fucking plaque.
“Jedediah didn't have seven children,” I say through gritted teeth.
“He does now,” Caleb replies cheerfully. “For marketing purposes.”
