“He won’t even give me his Wi-Fi password.”
Gran laughs. “That’s Asher—controlling what he can control because so much of his life felt scary when his sister was sick.”
“She seems fine now…”
As if summoned, I hear voices upstairs. The sound of a baby fussing, a man’s low rumble, a woman’s laugh.
Gran’s face lights up. “Perfect timing. Come on.”
* * *
Upstairs, a man who must be Ethan holds a baby carrier and a tired-looking woman at his side must be Lia. She has dark hair pulled into a messy bun and looks exhausted and radiant at the same time. “Eva! So great to finally meet you. I was just talking about you pulling my brother out of his cave.” She glances at the baby. “Porter’s not usually this fussy but someone didn’t nap today.”
I move closer, unable to resist the pull of a baby. “He’s just so chunky and cute.”
“He’s a terror,” Ethan says, but his voice is full of love. He’s tall and broad and has the same general “I don’t do people” vibe as Asher, but slightly friendlier. Like, one degree warmer than absolute zero.
Feeling like I should say more, I try, “Porter looks like his uncle Asher.”
“Guess so,” Ethan says as the baby scrunches his face in a scream.
Lia elbows him. “Be nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
Lia rolls her eyes in a way that says, “This is what I deal with.” I like her even more.
“Can I hold him?” I ask, gesturing to Porter.
“Please,” Lia says. “He’s sick of us.”
I take the baby carefully, and he immediately stops fussing. Just looks up at me with huge dark eyes, curious and calm.
“Oh, you little faker,” Lia says. “You were screaming two seconds ago.”
Porter makes a small cooing sound, and my crabby mood softens.
“You’re a natural,” Gran says. “Maybe you should babysit sometime.”
“I’d love that.” The words come out before I can think about them.
“You can come down anytime,” Lia says, gesturing toward her house down the lane from Gran’s. “Seriously. We’re always here, always covered in baby drool, always desperate for adult conversation.”
“You might have to dodge Baabara to get to the house,” Ethan adds, “but I hear she likes you, too.”
The casual invitation makes me want to cry for reasons I can’t fully explain. The Bedd family seems to have the same sort of open-door acceptance Esther curated for us Storm girls. It’s jarring for me to realize it can exist elsewhere.
I hide a sniffle behind Porter’s hair. Soon, he starts to fuss again, and Lia takes him, kissing Ethan on the cheek. “We should get home before he really loses it.”
After they leave, Gran says, “Want to see the rest of the basement setup? I’ve got some hydroponic experiments going that might interest you.”
I should get back to my inbox, or my dusting, or looking up realtors, but Ethel Bedd and her basement garden sound way more fun. We head downstairs, and she shows me her system—the water reservoirs, the nutrient solutions, the careful pH monitoring.
“This is amazing,” I say, taking photos with my phone. “I have an almost-brother-in-law who is a hydroponic scientist. He grows tiny Christmas trees.”
As I’m talking, explaining my family and their businesses and how they’d react to all of this, I realize something. I want to show them Fork Lick.
Not just tell them about it but bring them here. Show them the maple grove and the Bedds’ farm and Gran’s basement garden. Introduce them to Latonya and Diego and Baabara the sheep.
