“Yeah. With less God than most, though. I mean, everyone goes to the local Baptist church, but God only comes into it as a given, American as apple pie. What counts is how straight you can shoot, how well your women prepare canned goods, and how much you hate globalism and taxes.”
“So they didn’t kick you out for being bisexual?” I’d assumed that was why he was rejected.
“Oh, partly. Not because I was defying the Bible as much as because the queer kid was too much of a wimp to finish off and dress a terrified, gut-shot deer. Plus, me dating boys wasn’t going to add to the local population. That’s a bit of an obsession.”
“Sex? Population?”
“Adding to the local core families. Like most small towns, a lot of the young folk leave Piperstown and surprise, surprise, they don’t come back. There are a few new folk who show up, some of them even crazier than the locals, but the core is third and fourth generations. My folks expected me to marry a neighbor girl and raise them a bunch of soldiers for America. As a queer, I was useless to them, and they treated me that way. So, I left. For a while.” Brooklyn’s gaze went unfocused and distant, the twist of his lips suggesting his thoughts were not fun ones.
I didn’t press, and a moment later he shook himself and glanced at me, his shoulders relaxing. “I imagine it’s something similar with Cheyenne. She’s smart, smarter than me?—”
“Don’t put yourself down,” I told him.
Brooklyn waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, just the truth. She’s got so much potential, and my family would only see her as domestic labor and motherhood. The question is, why didn’t she wait till she was eighteen, like I did? Running while underage and without a high school diploma seems like a foolish choice, and while Cheyenne can be hotheaded, she’s never been stupid.”
“Makes you worry,” I suggested softly.
“Sure does.” He stared morosely at the last of his toast, then popped it into his mouth. “Well, nothing I can do about that till she wakes up. Which, judging by how she looked, might be afternoon. I’ll get you to work, and then Poppy’s arriving at seven.”
“Oh good, goldendoodle zoomies first thing in the morning.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Might cheer Cheyenne up, though.”
“It might. I hope she’ll talk to me.”
“What if she doesn’t? Will you let her stay if you don’t know why? Will your parents be looking for her?”
“I don’t know. They were glad to see the backside of me, but she’s a girl and not queer. Well, as far as I know.” He glanced toward the bedrooms too. “This is a mess. I was gone, free and clear, didn’t owe them a thing, didn’t even have to think about them. And now…”
“She’s back in your life, but she’s your sister and just a kid, and you’re going to help her.” I was sure of that. Brooklyn hadn’t even let a grumpy stranger climb a flight of stairs without offering to help.
“I guess.”
“I know.”
He cleared our plates and mugs into the dishwasher. “Let’s get going. I’ll leave her a note in case she wakes up.”
“I’ll put the dogs into the outdoor kennels till you get back.” If Cheyenne hadn’t been around dogs before, I wasn’t going to leave her responsible for three, even while sleeping.
My lack of rest made the seat of Brooklyn’s old SUV less comfortable. The sun was just coming over the horizon as we drove, forcing us to squint.
Brooklyn dug a pair of sunglasses out of the door pocket and offered them to me. “Here. You want?”
I waved for him to put them on. “You’re driving.”
Gold and lilac streaked the sky as I looked away from the crescent of the sun. At this point in the fall, up in Minnesota, six-thirty would still be pitch dark. Folks would already be working on my father’s farm, though. Cows didn’t wait for daylight to need milking. Mom would’ve made a light breakfast and would be starting the full meal for after morning chores…
As if he’d followed my thoughts, Brooklyn said, “You never talk about your family, either.”
“Well, I don’t have any younger sibs who might show up on the doorstep,” I said lightly. Nieces, maybe. Except I’d been gone so long, they’d no doubt forgotten about me. Still, Brooklyn had given me some truth, so I owed him mine. The easy version, anyhow. “Five older sibs. Minnesota farm country. Nothing like yours, though. My brothers and sisters stayed local, started families, but they’re good people. I grew up only a little older than some of my nieces and nephews, and Mom sometimes babysat them with me.”
I still remembered when I was seven and had a bad cold, Mom asked my cousin Rick to watch me because she was going to take care of my sister’s three and didn’t want me to make them sick. Achy and feverish, I’d asked why Rick couldn’t watch the littles and let me have my mom. But she said they needed her more. In retrospect, she probably didn’t want to saddle a teenage sitter with three toddlers, but at the time, I’d sat huddled on the couch, numb, as she headed out to be with kids who were more important than me. And it wasn’t the only time…
I shook off the mood. “I never really fit in, and my next older sister, Melissa, took up a lot of my parents’ energy and money.” I remembered Mom crying at the kitchen table when Mel had been gone deep into the night again. I’d tried to comfort her, but at thirteen I was just clumsy, and she sent me off to bed. They’d paid for Mel’s rehab twice and an abortion I wasn’t supposed to know about. That was Mel’s personal business, though, and I said nothing.
Brooklyn threw me a glance at a stoplight. “You sound sad.”
“I wish my folks and I were closer. I went off to college, and we kind of drifted apart.”
“Do you ever go home?”
