At Whit's End (Wells Ranch, #4)(52)
“Well, in that case.” Beryl wipes the flour dust from her hands with a tea towel. “How much time do we have? Maybe we should make cupcakes so it’s a bit faster?”
Instantly she’s milling about, making trips to and from the pantry for supplies, and setting it all out on the counter while softly humming to herself.
Kate follows suit, but in a slightly less kindhearted way. She insists we wear aprons—adorning me in a particularly cute pink one that’s covered in red hearts.
Nobody makes mention of why I’m so invested in making sure she has birthday cupcakes, even as I grill Jonas about whether Whit prefers vanilla or chocolate, or when I spend the entire bake time deciding between frosting colors.
Beryl pulls them from the oven, dipping a clean finger into Jonas’s batch of frosting to taste. Since black wasn’t an option, Jonas suggested orange frosting so our chocolate cupcakes look like Halloween. Apparently, it’s his mom’s favorite holiday.
Something to note.
“I think we might have some Halloween sprinkles in the pantry,” Kate says without looking up. She’s been sitting at the kitchen table the entire time we were baking, flipping through a magazine. Occasionally, she’d lift her head to make a loud observation about how poor my baking skills are.
Beryl gestures toward the pantry door, silently asking if I’d like her to grab some.
“Nah, we’ll stop by the corner store and grab some sour keys to put on top. They’re her favorite.”
The corner of Beryl’s lip tugs upward. “I’m sure they are, and I won’t ask any questions about how you know that.”
“Colt came over to play video games and he bought a ton of candy because he didn’t know what kind we liked. The pile was probably this big.” He moves his hands in a half-circle above the quartz countertop to show a comically large height—definitely way bigger than the real amount of candy I brought.
“Wow, that was really nice of him.” Beryl shoots me a look.
“Super nice,” Kate quips.
With the actual worst timing in human history, Denny saunters into the kitchen. “Aww, you guys are talking about what a nice guy I am again, aren’t you?”
He sidles up next to Beryl, eyeballing the cupcakes, and she smacks at his hand.
“Colt’s the nice guy this time,” Kate says. She’s set the magazine down now—fully invested.
“What did he do?” Denny asks, then follows up with, “And also, can you stop swatting at me and let me have one of these?”
“These are for Whit,” Beryl says, shooing him away while simultaneously sliding the plate of pastries across the counter. “Have one of the strawberry rhubarb Danishes instead.”
“For Whit, hey?” His tongue skates between his teeth.
I point to Jonas, who’s so focused on getting the perfect frosting swirl, his eyes are crossed. “The kid didn’t have a present for her, and we couldn’t turn up empty-handed.”
“I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.” Denny takes a bit of Danish, licking a piece of flaky crust from the corner of his mouth. “You sly, sly dog.”
Guess I am. Whit can put me on a leash and ask me to beg any day.
Bark fucking bark.
* * *
? ? ?
Jonas cradles the box of cupcakes in his lap, fighting off Betty with his left arm. “We shouldn’t have brought her. She’s going to sit her big butt down on the cupcakes.”
“Miss Spaghetti.” I pat my lap, calling her over. “She loves birthday celebrations. Poor girl would be heartbroken if we left her behind.”
He side-eyes the dog, wary that she’ll barrel toward him at any second. “Does she love the birthday celebrations or the treats?”
“All of it.”
My pickup rounds the corner, and Betty leans hard into my rib cage. Then it dawns on me that we’re missing something crucial.
“Hold on tight for a—” Before I finish the sentence, I veer the truck down a side road shortly before the town’s limit.
“What the hell?” Jonas grips the box in one hand, clinging to the door handle with his other to stop from toppling sideways during the sudden, jarring turn.
“Dude, we forgot the most important part of any girl’s birthday.” The truck barrels down the road, through deep potholes and across a cattle guard. “Luckily, I have a spot where I grab flowers for my mom from time to time.”
Around one last bend, I pull to the side of the dirt road and look out at a field of wildflowers. At one point a few years back, it was a logging cut block. And the absence of thick forest, combined with a lot of rotting logs and branches to provide nutrients, means the field’s covered in a variety of wildflowers from May to September. Each vying for sunlight, they stand knee high and sway softly in the slightest breeze.
The pickings are slimmer today than they would be if Whit’s birthday were even a few weeks earlier, but we have enough options with vibrant red paintbrush, pale blue lupines, and yellow balsam root coating the earth.
“I don’t think Mom cares about flowers.”
“Women like to pretend they don’t care about flowers—my mom used to insist they were a waste because they wilt so quickly. But her face lights up every time I bring her a bouquet from this field.” Tossing open my truck door, I let Betty scramble out before me.