Truth was, it all felt so familiar that Tennessee found himself in a far better mood here than he should have been.They were basically digging up graves and calling in a good time, but he felt right at home.
Wasn’t that something.And here he was notinhis home, either.
“I had to do a family tree project in high school,” Helena was saying, as if Raleigh hadn’t interrupted her, which also felt like an old, familiar rhythm.“I’d enjoyed it well enough, though it was pretty basic.After I graduated, I found myself working at a coffee shop in Missoula.My life was fine, but every time I talked to my mother she still seemed so sad.So I decided to do a lot more research.It turned out, I’m almost as good at genealogy as I am at pulling shots and making coffee drinks.”She smiled at all of them, a glint in her blue eyes.“Our father, in case you wondered, knew better than to submit his DNA anywhere.But his mother had no reason to hide hers.”
“Grandma Lisle?”Cat laughed.“She never told us she did that.”
“Grandma Lisle was not exactly thebake cookies and knit cozy sockssort of grandmother,” Dallas explained for the benefit of the Patricks.“She was more thepull yourself up by your bootstraps, rub some dirt on it, and handle yourself like I didkind of grandmother.”
“Cuddly,” Raleigh murmured.
“Terrifying,” Cat replied with a laugh.
“Well, apparently, she liked a little genealogy herself.”Helena laughed.“That’s how I ended up finding out about Cowboy Point.And the fact that Dad had a different family.You can find anything in public records, if you know how to look.When I went to our mother, pretty nervously if I’m honest, I thought that I was going to rip her whole world apart.But it turned out she already knew.”
“It was kind of a relief and kind of messed up, the way she tells it,” Raleigh said, still sounding protective.
“There were some family meetings,” Finn added then.“Emotions were high.”
“How would you know?”Helena asked him, pointedly.
That got a smile out of Cat, and the two women looked at each other in an oblique sort of way that Tennessee couldn’t say he liked—because it felt like trouble—but he was pretty sure was foreshadowing a good sisterly friendship to come.
“Our mother wanted to leave things alone,” Helena continued after a moment.“Let sleeping dogs lie,I believe she said.Repeatedly.”
“Sounds like she knows who she married,” Dallas said, with a laugh.
Across the table, Raleigh nodded his agreement.
“I decided that sleeping dogs could wake up, maybe, and anyway, I’ve never personally met a dog that stayed asleep that long.”Helena shrugged.“So I came out here.And I really only intended to stay for a weekend.I got a hotel room down in Marietta and I thought I would just drive up here, poke around, kind of see where we all came from, and take off.”Her expression turned rueful.“I don’t know what happened.The next thing I knew, I was renting a cottage on the hill below the Lodge and outfitting a food truck so I could make it a coffee cart.”
“While also spying on us,” Cat said, but in what seemed like a big contrast to the night they’d all gathered at the house, she was smiling.
Helena smiled too.“You can learn a lot about a person by the coffee drink they order.Both when they’re alone and when they’re ordering in front of other people.It’s not always the same order.”
“She’s talking to you.”Cat lifted her brows at Dallas.“Mr.I only allow black coffee to cross my brooding, masculine lips, except when I’m drinking pumpkin spice lattes instead.”
“I choose to celebrate fall,” Dallas replied, with great dignity.“If you didn’t hate and fear joy, you would do the same.”
“Anyway,” Helena said, still smiling.“That’s how we all got here.”
“That’s how you got here,” Finn corrected her, gently enough.“I don’t think Raleigh and I would have bothered, if I’m honest.We spent more time with Dad growing up.So there was less motivation to dig into his past.”
Tennessee and Dallas nodded at that.“Understood,” Tennessee said, with a rusty laugh.
“I decided I was taking off and joining the military when I was ten,” Dallas agreed.“I didn’t care which branch, just as long as it got me away from here.”
Fromhim, he didn’t say.Because he didn’t have to say it.
The brothers all nodded, and shared a long look.They got it.Their sisters had been younger.Safer.It had been different for them.There was a particular agony in growing up and trying to become a man when your primary example was exactly the kind of man you didn’t want to become.Ever.
“But once Mom started making noises about coming…” Raleigh shook his head, and despite his lazy posture, there was something stubborn—and, again, protective—in the way he firmed his jaw.“We didn’t know what the reception would be like on your all’s side.We couldn’t have her doing that alone.You know, in case it got weird.”
“Now it’sreallyweird,” Cat said, grinning.She leaned in, putting her elbows on the table.“But here’s my question.Or first, a summary of who we are.”She inclined her head across the table.“Tennessee, the oldest, the least fun, definitely needs a life.”She moved to the side of him with another nod.“Dallas, possibly limited in ways he refuses to admit, may or may not ever open that bed-and-breakfast—”
“I’m on track to open the bed-and-breakfast next fall, thank you very much, fueled entirely by pumpkin spice lattes,” Dallas interjected.Loftily.
He did not speak to his limitations, or Cat’s perception of them.But then, Tennessee couldn’t really argue about his description either.And normally he would hear something like that and think that hehada life, it was just one Cat couldn’t understand, because his supported hers and all that usual older brother shit.
