He’d say you’re treading with big boots on thin ice.
I don’t fucking care.
We turn onto Main Street, and she says, “Rush Creek must have changed a lot since you were a kid.“
“A ton. Some things haven’t changed at all. I think those light standards and flower barrels have been around since cowboys met at noon for showdowns in the middle of the street.”
We both eye Rush Creek’s main drag. The buildings are low-slung, squat and Western, with long-plank siding. Dotted among them are cottages and a log cabin or two, plus an old-fashioned red train depot. In addition to our signature flower barrels and the tall wooden Ts of the lamp standards, there are lots of strategically placed benches, so wanderers can rest before being lured into the next shop.
Even today there are feed stores and tack shops and outdoor equippers tucked in among the gift and ice cream and bookshops. But the street is definitely dominated by establishments catering to the weddings and girls’-weekend-out crowd—gifts, beauty products, wedding dresses—and, more recently, Eden’s store.
“Did cowboys really used to have shoot-outs at noon in the streets?” she asks.
“As far as I know, they were exceedingly rare.”
“When you grew up, the rodeo was here, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what happened?”
“There were a bunch of protests around safety and animal welfare. There were other factors at work, too. Ranch land was being sold off because it was getting harder to make ranching pay. Cowboy culture was…changing. It was hard on everyone. People were afraid we’d become some Western ghost town. And then practically overnight, the hot springs appeared.”
“Like magic?”
I laugh. “Like geology. Like moving plates and boiling magma and groundwater getting superheated.”
“But it must have felt a little like magic to a struggling town.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I mean, I don’t think I’d be here running In Stitches if it weren’t for those springs.”
“I’m not sure any of us would be here if it weren’t for those springs. Maybe Hanna. But she’d still be running adventures on the mountains. Which she enjoyed—but my sister is definitely meant to be in charge of her own business. I’ve got to give it to my grandfather. He may have stuck it to me and my brothers, but he definitely had a vision for what would be good for her. It’s clear he loved her, even if he didn’t have much patience for the rest of us.”
“Do you think he didn’t?” she asks. “I get the impression your brothers are pretty happy.”
“But he couldn’t have foreseen that. He didn’t know what would happen when he called us all back here and set up the terms of the will.”
“Maybe he had a better idea than you think,” she says.
I toy with that idea for a while. She’s right that my brothers—three of them anyway—are happy as clams right now in ways that none of them could have predicted.
And as I park the car in an unusual open spot in front of Rush Creek Bakery, I have to admit to myself that maybeI’mhappy right now in a way I couldn’t have predicted.
You’re still an asshole,I tell my grandfather, and I can almost hear his rare, dry chuckle and his voice saying,Tell it to the judge.
42
Rhys
“If it isn’t my lucky day! There’s a Hott man in my shop!”
Rush Creek Bakery’s owner, Nan, bustles out from behind the counter in her apron with her white cotton-candy hair wrestling for escape from a hairnet. Nan thinks our family name is hilarious and rarely misses an opportunity to tease us about it. And we all love her, even if she’s a blabbing busybody, so we tolerate it.
She gives me a floury hug that leaves my T-shirt powdery, then holds me at arm’s length for examination. “I won’t tell you how much you’ve grown up since I saw you last,” she says fondly, patting one of my cheeks.
We all grew up cramming our faces with Nan’s breads and cookies, soaking up the comfort of the bakery, which is always warm and slightly steamy and smells like fresh-baked goods.
