Page 5 of Brim Over Boot
Well…more like I got asked to take Jenna for aride. But I don’t think my uncle needs to hear those specifics.
“So what are you doing here?” he asks.
“Guess I just prefer your company more.”
He mutters something aboutcharming, indeed, but what I said isn’t a lie. I love my uncle dearly. He’s the closest thing I have to a parent, considering my own passed away when I was seventeen. Walter took me in all those years ago, no questions asked.
I don’t know where I’d be without him. Certainly not here, in Darling, Montana.
“Wanna play some chess after breakfast?” I ask, dumping the bowl of whipped eggs into a pan to cook.
“When have I ever said no to chess?”
“Well, just last week,” I remind him. “When I was on a winning streak, and you kept losing and losing and—”
“All right,” he cuts in, slicing a hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “No need to dredge up the past.”
I snort, folding the eggs with a spatula before flipping the bacon again. I ready a plate with a paper towel to dry the grease off.
“Noah,” my uncle says seriously, his tone of voice enough to have my focus shifting fully. “You don’t have to be here.”
“Walt…”
“I’m serious. You’ve got your own life to live, kiddo. You don’t gotta stick around with my sorry ass out of some misguided sense of—”
“I’m not leaving,” I tell him firmly. “This, right here, is where I wanna be. End of discussion.”
“Stubborn boy,” my uncle mutters, although he sounds fond.
“Learned from the best,” I shoot back, pulling the bacon off the skillet and laying it on the paper towel, piece by piece.
“Yeah, well, my brother sure knew how to dig his heels in when he wanted something accomplished,” Walter says. “Remember that shed he built for your ma? Thing was crooked as could be, but he finished it all by himself. Picked up the pieces by himself, too, when it fell down not a year later. Your father had many talents, but carpentry was not one of ’em.”
Memories of that bright green garden shed ping around in my chest, both aching and sweetly familiar. I clear my throat before looking back at my uncle.
“I was talking about you, Walt.”
“What?” he asks, jerking enough to unintentionally flip a page in his newspaper. “Kid, you were fully grown by the time you came here. Only thing I taught you was the right way to cook eggs. You’re not burning those, by the way, are you?”
I shake my head, keeping my laughter to myself as I pull the pan of eggs off the heat. For all the ways in which Walter took up the mantle when I needed him most, he still can’t fathom the effect he had on me.
Maybe one day I’ll get it through his head.
“Oh boy,” he says mildly, slapping his newspaper shut.
“What is it?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” my uncle lies, taking a sip from his nearly empty coffee mug.
I set his plate down in front of him, steam wafting up from the eggs. “Mhm. Try again.”
“Nothing you needa see.”
I let out a sigh, retrieving the ketchup from the fridge for my uncle before snagging the paper from underneath his palm.
“I warned ya,” he says.
Flipping the paper open, I find the local advertisements. Fucking knew it.
