“Chili,” he said. “You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”
“Oh, no, chili sounds good.” She cast about for something else to say. “Do you all take turns cooking?”
“I’d let the rest of them cook if they were any good,” Rick replied. “It works out better this way. Less complaining, for sure. And I take requests occasionally.”
“Well, it smells great.” She hesitated, wondering if she might be touching on a sore subject. “Are you a shifter? Or is it rude to ask?”
“No, it’s fine. If we were ashamed of it, we wouldn’t share it. I am a shifter. Most of us are.”
“Only most of you?” Hope asked.
He sprinkled something that looked like chili powder or paprika into the nearest pot, then reached for a large spoon to stir it. “Some of the in-laws aren’t, obviously. Some of them are. Some of the kids were born without it.”
“Is it a problem?”
“Depends what you mean by problem. It doesn’t bother me, but I may not be the one to ask. You could try talking to my brother Mark’s wife, Tammy. Their room is down the hall from yours. Both her kids are shifters, but she isn’t.” He reached for a smaller spoon, scooped up a bit of the chili, and proffered it to her. “Give it a try.”
She took the spoon and blew on it, then tasted. “It’s good. Maybe a bit more cumin?”
“I see you know what you’re doing,” Rick said. “Keep it up, and I may add you to the list of people allowed to help in here.”
Hope sensed that the offer was a bigger compliment than it sounded. Rick didn’t seem like the kind of guy who joked about food. “Thanks,” she said, smiling.
“Want to bang the dinner gong while I get the cornbread out of the oven?”
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and cocked her head at him. “There’s no gong, is there.”
He chuckled as he set the first pan of cornbread on the stove to cool. “Good for you. People usually fall for that, the first time. I had Ian convinced for a good six months that there was a gong we were hiding from him.”
As the crowd assembled in the kitchen and loaded up, buffet-style, Hope fell into line and collected her bowl, along with a piece of cornbread and a plate of salad. It didn’t seem like there were any designated places at the long table, just people shuffling around to accommodate others. Then she felt a hand on her elbow.
“This way,” Josh said. He escorted her to the side of the table that faced the windows lining the wall. Seated there, she couldn’t see too much of the dark landscape outside, but she appreciated the thought. They ended up not too far from the end of one bench, Josh on her left and someone’s child on her right.
She sat quietly and ate for a while, not attempting to enter any of the three conversations she could hear around her. The slightly spicy chili and the warm, buttery cornbread were excellent. Josh hadn’t exaggerated his uncle’s skills.
During a lull, she turned slightly towards Josh, deep in conversation from the two people sitting across from him. She thought the woman was his Aunt Lisa, and the other one was...one of those damn names starting with an M.
“How was the drive from the airport? Have they fixed that stretch of Route 86 yet?” he asked.
“They’re working on it,” Josh confirmed, “but the construction means you spend about five miles going twenty miles an hour.”
“Hope it wasn’t too bad,” M-guy said, looking at Hope.
“Oh no, Mark, it was fine,” she said, forcing herself to smile. She had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, after all.
“Matt,” Josh corrected her. Wrong guess.
“Sorry,” Hope said. Again. To yet another member of Josh’s family.
“It’s okay,” Matt replied, though she thought he looked a little irritated at being called by the wrong name a second time. Too late, she realized that she could have just omitted the name, though that would have only delayed the inevitable.
“I’d like to show Hope around tomorrow,” Josh said, “but before that we should probably go check on that fence in the north pasture. Does that sound good to you, Hope?”
“Sure,” she answered, trying to get back into the conversation. “Sounds like a plan.”
“We should also visit a couple of the barns, make sure all of the feed is okay,” Lisa added.
“Before I got here, I thought maybe you all slept in a barn,” Hope said with a laugh, inviting them to share in the joke.