Our youngest brother looked like a clone of the rest of us. Dark hair, brown eyes, olive skin, and a semi-permanent shit-eating grin. He was going through a phase of keeping his hair so long it hung in his eyes, and he hadn’t quite lost his round cheeks yet. When I really wanted to piss him off, I called him babyface.
“The pie needs to cool,” Gram said. “And there’s no need to fight over it. I made plenty. Still have two more to bake.”
The three of us hadn’t tried to climb over each other to get downstairs because we thought we’d run out of pie. With five boys in the house, Gram always made enough food to feed an army. For us, it was just habit. We were brothers; wrestling was our love language.
Logan walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her cheek. “It just smells so good we can’t help it. Plus, I’m starving.”
“You just ate lunch.”
“I ran five miles this morning.” He leaned against the counter and grabbed an apple out of a bowl.
“Do you want a medal?” Levi asked.
Grinning, Logan tossed the apple at him. Levi caught it and threw it back.
“Go find Evan,” Gram said.
Logan took a bite of the apple. “Which one of us?”
“All of you.”
“Where is he?” Levi asked.
Gavin jerked his thumb toward the back door. “Woods. I saw him leave earlier.”
Evan kept to himself a lot, often wandering in the woods out behind our house. He had come home from his second year of college a few days ago, but even though we shared a room when he was here, I hadn’t seen much of him.
“Go on then,” Gram said, shooing us with the oven mitt. “No pie until you bring your brother back, or you animals will eat it all before he has a chance at any.”
A chorus of groans went around the kitchen, coupled with the scrape of Gavin’s chair against the floor.
While my brothers headed for the door, I hung back. If Gram really wanted to be rid of all four of us, she’d shoo me out too. But I didn’t want to wander the woods searching for Evan, so I hesitated next to the table, waiting to see if she’d insist I go.
She didn’t.
The back door banged shut. I pulled out a chair and sat while she put two more pies in the oven.
“You finish up your finals?” she asked.
“Yep. All done until September.”
“How’d you do?”
“Pretty sure I aced everything.”
She closed the oven and put her oven mitts on the counter. “Of course you did.”
Unlike Grace and my brother Evan, I’d stayed in town after high school and enrolled in Tilikum College. It was a good school, and had one of the best fire sciences programs in the state. Logan and Levi were starting there in the fall. All three of us planned on going into fire safety. I’d been a volunteer firefighter since I’d graduated high school, and my plan was to make a career of it. Eventually become a fire inspector. Maybe even fire chief someday.
But even if the college here hadn’t been a good school, I still would have stayed. I couldn’t leave Gram or my brothers. Our parents had died in an electrical fire when we were young—fortunately for us kids, we hadn’t been in the house—and Gram and Grandad had taken us in.
We hadn’t exactly made things easy on them. Whether it was just the nature of a family of five boys, or because we were all a little messed up from losing our parents—probably both—we’d been rowdy. Troublemakers, even.
Maturity was calming us down, at least a little. And I was doing my best to get—and keep—my shit together. As the oldest, it was my responsibility to be the man of the family, especially since Grandad had passed away a few years ago. I hadn’t always done a great job at it, but I was trying.
However, I was seriously considering moving out—getting an apartment in town. I was twenty-one, three years out of high school, and itching to have my own place.
Still, I was worried about leaving, even if I’d only be a mile or two away.
Gram cut a piping hot piece of pie and brought it to the table. Slid it in front of me and handed me a fork with a wink.
“What troubles you, Bear?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm.” She got her tea from the counter and sat across from me. “Grace is home for the summer.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You could go next door and see her.”
I took a bite of pie without meeting her eyes. “I’m sure she’s busy. I’ll see her at some point.”