Like her ring size, and if she wants to get married.I had to smile to myself because I was only half-joking. I pressed the earring lower into my pocket.
When I looked up, I saw that both of my brothers were staring at me.
“What?”
“Are you feeling okay?” Billy asked, eyes narrowed.
Better than okay.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Hank’s brow twitched. It was the tiniest of movements, but it was about all the emoting my oldest brother had in him.
“What? Why are you guys lookin’ at me like that?”
“You’ve been here almost sixty seconds and haven’t said anything about food.” I looked down at the sandwiches that were lined up on the island.
Damn, I sure hadn’t. That was a first for me. I usually had two modes: thinking about food, or eating. Sometimes, both modes were engaged at the same time.
In fact, screw sometimes. Most of the time. When I was eating breakfast, I was usually thinking about what I’d have for a snack and lunch. When I was eating lunch, I was thinking about what I was going to have for dinner. I was pretty much constantly thinking about the next time I was going to eat.
“What’s wrong?” Billy asked.
“Nothin’. I’m just a little distracted.” I tugged the hoagie toward me and took a bite. Now that I was aware of the food, no reason to let it just sit there.
“Who is she?” Hank, my man-of-few-words eldest brother asked as he crossed his arms in front of his chest.
This wasn’t the first time one of my brothers had asked me about women, and usually, I had no qualms about kissing and telling. But today, a cat had my tongue. A cat named Bella.
“You don’t know her.” I stood and grabbed a can of pop from the icebox.
“How do you know that?” Billy reached his hand out, indicating he wanted one as well. Part of being the youngest sibling was waiting on my brothers hand and foot. It didn’t bother me much, in fact I barely noticed it. It was just the way things had always been.
I handed him one and he popped the top and took a swig. When he set it back down, he said, “Maybe she’s come by the bar.”
“She hasn’t,” I stated with one hundred percent certainty.
If she had, I would’ve known. I wasn’t sure how I knew that to be true, but I did, the same way I knew the sky was blue.
Hank nodded at Billy. I recognized the move. It was his silent way of starting the meeting. I also now knew that apparently Billy had called it. I made fun of Hank for how spare he was with his words and gestures, but damn, he sure was able to communicate a lot by doing and saying very little. Hell, maybe I was the one who’d been doing it wrong all these years.
“Don’t we need to wait for Cheyenne?” It may have only been a few months since Cheyenne had been back in our lives, but it didn’t feel the same without our sister. Like it wasn’t really a “family meeting” without the whole family.
“Actually,” Billy sighed. “I wanted to talk to you guys about this before we spoke to Cheyenne about it.”
Billy set a manila envelope with several papers on top of it on the kitchen island.
“What are these?” I asked.
“They’re letters from Mama to Abernathy. Reagan found them when she was checking on a storage facility.”
Reagan was the lawyer who’d handled Pop’s affairs. She’d also been the woman to tame my brother Billy—AKA Panty Dropper. He’d taken one look at her at the will reading and been a goner. At the time, I’d thought it was funny. Hilarious even.
Now, after this morning, I knew it was as serious as a heart attack.
Hank took the papers and scanned them. As the youngest, I was used to finding out information last, but I didn’t feel like waiting.
“What do they say?” I asked.