We’d just pulled into the parking lot—at five in the morning, because that’s how long it took to cook turkeys—when a maroon-colored Explorer pulled in behind us, and I could see Judy Hart waving furiously, a light from what was presumably her phone illuminating her face from below.
“And that,” Elliot remarked sleepily—I’d driven his truck while he’d slept—“is vintage Ma.” He took a sip of his coffee, which I’d poured into his travel mug when I’d made my own at the ungodly time in the morning we’d had to leave.
“It’s something,” I agreed, a little jealous that Elliot had somehow gottentwoawesome mothers, by all accounts, while I hadn’t gotten one. Or even half of one.
“You know you’re now her fourth kid, right?” he asked me.
“Fourth?” I didn’t think Hart had any siblings.
“Val is obviously first, then me, then Taavi, and now you,” he replied, and there was something warm and maybe a little shy in his voice.
“Oh,” I said, the flush on my neck as much from pleasure as self-consciousness. “That’s… nice.”
Fortunately, Elliot is actually fairly good-natured most of the time, and he grinned at me instead of taking offense at how incredibly awkward I am about things like that.
And then I could stop worrying about it because I was somehow being given a bear-hug by a woman who barely came up to my armpit.
“Oh,sweetie! It’s been too long!” She squeezed again, and I was mildly impressed at the strength in those short human arms as I hugged her carefully back. I wondered—not for the first time—how two people like Marsh and Judy had ended up withHart. Not because of the height thing, because I understood that, but the personality.
I looked over at Elliot, who had an enormous grin on his face.
Then Judy pulled back and promptly swatted at my arm. “You need to come by more often, Seth,” she told me sternly, and I saw a flash of where Hart had gotten his pushiness.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Judy,” she corrected me.
“Yes, Judy.”
She let out a disgruntled sound that I recognized as being very Hart, as well. I guess I could see where Hart’s personality came from, after all. Just not his propensity for extremely creative cursing. Or the fact that he acted like the world’s biggest asshole most of the time—although once you spent enough time around him, that actually became strangely endearing, and I found myself missing it sometimes. Especially at crime scenes.
Judy took my arm, distracting me from my thoughts. “Come help us with the food,” she said to me. “You’re a big, strong boy.”
I shot a look over at Elliot, who was still grinning at me over the rim of his travel mug. “Yes, ma—Judy,” I said meekly, and let her lead me over to the Explorer and load me up with two tote bags, one on each shoulder, and two coolers.
When I staggered inside, people immediately took things from me—and Elliot, who had grabbed the totes from the back seat. He wrangled a couple people to help him unload the food I’d gotten people at work to donate—without telling them where, exactly, I was taking it—and what he’d rustled up from somewhere yesterday after we’d talked about it.
There were three other volunteers there, plus the Green Bay shelter’s Noah-equivalent, a woman named Nari with purple braids and deep brown eyes and skin. “Oh, my God,” she kept saying as Judy unloaded multiple side dishes, two turkeys, and a ham from one of her coolers, while Marsh pulled out bags of dinner rolls that looked and smelled homemade.
The other volunteers looked just as awed by the copious quantities of food the Harts had brought along. Elliot leaned into me and whispered, “And here I was, impressed by our cans of green beans and corn.”
I snorted. “The ducks are more impressive,” I told him. He’d brought along three.
“Fair,” he replied.
We’d cooked all day—dinnerhad been served at four—making enough that Marsh had gone off to borrow a grill from somebody he knew who lived in Green Bay so that he could put several turkeys and the ducks on the grill to make space in the ovens for everything else.
There was green bean casserole (which I couldn’t have, because cream of mushroom soup), corn casserole (made with oat milk), corn bread (also made with oat milk), roasted and pureed baked squash, two kinds of stuffing, cranberry sauce, Judy’s dinner rolls, sweet potato casserole with marshmallowsand without marshmallows, roasted carrots, a veritable mountain of mashed potatoes (made with chicken stock and oat milk), gravy made with the rendered duck and turkey fat, about five different salads, Elliot’s frybread, smoked fish, ham, roasted apples, and then pies—pumpkin and apple, and I’d made a point of making several pecan, because these Northerners needed to understand what real pie was. And then there was ice cream (not the kind I could have), whipped cream (also no), and, because this is Wisconsin, enough cheese to choke a horse or ten.
I’d never actually seen so much food in one place, and Nari had blown her nose at least a half-dozen times because it meant that not only would we be able to feed the shifters who normally lived at Hands and Paws, but also everyone who had driven or hitched a ride into Green Bay from one of the surrounding towns, including Shawano.
And everybody got to feelfull, which I knew very well was a rarity for a banquet hall full of shifters. It was the happiest I’d ever heard a Hands and Paws dining hall—people talking and laughing, trying different dishes they’d maybe never had before, feeling full, surrounded by people like Judy Hart, who I swore had adopted at least half the room.
The woman was an energetic pinball of love, bouncing all over the room and lighting up every single person she touched.
It mattered that she wasn’t a shifter herself. That she cooed and petted and hugged anyone who showed the least bit of interest in her attention. That it didn’t matter to herwhatanybody was—because Hands and Paws had been made for shifters, but they also catered to any Arcanid, and there were orcs, a few elves, fauns, a handful of ghouls, and even a vampire.
And Hart’s mom gave love to all of them.
