Thankful For You. Joanna Sims

the seating and he took his seat between Clint and Luke.

      “Dallas!” he heard his aunt holler above the din of the family talking among themselves, all voices mingling together in a loud cacophony. “Where are you going?”

      Nick followed his aunt’s sight line to where Dallas was just about to disappear into the foyer. “I’ve got work to do.”

      “You’ve got eating to do.” His aunt shook her hand and gestured for Dallas to sit down.

      Nick thoroughly enjoyed watching Dallas actually get outbossed by his aunt. Dallas ruled her own roost, but Bent Tree was ruled by Barbara Brand. Period. End of story.

      * * *

      Dallas hadn’t planned on joining the Brand family for dinner, but she couldn’t deny that she was glad Barbara had invited her to stay. Ever since she had been a little girl, eating at the Brands’ had been a treat. This was the table where she learned what it was like to be a real family—with a mom and a dad who loved each other. And perhaps she would always felt a little bit like the girl with her nose pressed against the glass, even when the Brand family did everything they could to make her feel like she was an honorary family member. Either way, sitting down for a meal in the farmhouse was the closest thing to a typical American family she had ever experienced. Barbara’s kitchen was buzzing with activity—loud talking, occasional arguing and so much laughter. Dallas sat quietly, watching, enjoying and soaking every second in.

      The food started to get passed around the table, and Dallas’s stomach started to churn with hunger and anticipation. Nick smiled at her happily as he filled his plate with heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and smothered it with his aunt’s gravy made from the pan drippings, pot roast with homegrown carrots and onions. For the first part of the meal, she noticed that Nick didn’t talk—he just ate. Every now and again, Nick would make happy noises in between chewing and washing down the food with glass after glass of his aunt’s homemade root beer.

      “This beats our dinner prospects out at Lightning Rock, hands down,” Nick said to her while he loaded some more food onto his plate.

      It was Dallas’s pleasure to watch Nick interact with his family. She could see how close he was to his sisters, how much they adored him, and it spoke well of the kind of man he was. A decent man. A good man. A man to admire.

      A man to love?

      By the end of the meal, Dallas had landed on one certainty – having dinner with Nick and the rest of the Brand clan would be one of her favorite memories.

      * * *

      After his second full plate of food, Nick felt satisfied enough to slow down and actually enjoy the third plateful of food and the atmosphere of his first family meal at Bent Tree Ranch since he was a teenager. It had always felt homey and welcoming here at the ranch; his aunt had a big hand in that.

      He’d found himself comparing his mother with his aunt, and wondering how two women from the same place, the same neighborhood, could turn out so radically different. But they did. Aunt Barb always had something good cooking in the kitchen. She was a homemaker, wife and mother, and proud of it. This was what he remembered: good food and good conversation. Laughter. Family. He’d missed this feeling and all those childhood memories he had pushed aside when the family fractured after the reading of his grandfather’s will bubbled to the surface. It had hurt to be separated from his aunt and his uncle. It had hurt not to be able to return to Bent Tree Ranch.

      “Save room for dessert.” His aunt, who had leaned over him from behind to take his empty plate, stopped first to give him a little hug.

      Nick groaned. He knew he would have double helpings of whatever his aunt would be offering for dessert. No doubt it would be homemade, chock-full of sugar and butter, super delicious, and fattening. He didn’t eat a lot of sweets even though he had a substantial sweet tooth. Law school required him to spend a lot of time sitting and studying—he didn’t want to develop a “dad bod” this early in his life. But with all the physical exertion he was putting out just to keep up with Dallas out at Lightning Rock, he could stand to eat a slice or two of whatever awesome dessert his aunt had baked.

      His aunt stopped next by her husband’s side. She put her free hand on her husband’s shoulder—Nick remembered how affectionate his aunt and uncle were with each other and it was nice to see that, like many things at Bent Tree, that hadn’t changed either.

      “Why don’t you and Nick go have a chat while I get things ready for dessert?” he heard his aunt suggest quietly.

      The expression on Uncle Hank’s long face, a face that resembled Nick’s father’s in so many ways, shifted from satisfied to annoyed.

      “I already had it in the works, woman. You don’t have ta keep remindin’ me like I’m Little Johnny who can’t tie his own shoes without help. You manage your business and I’ll handle mine.”

      Aunt Barb didn’t appear the least bit bothered by her husband’s sharp comment. She just smiled, gave Hank a quick peck on the cheek and then took his plate over to the sink.

      Nick could feel his uncle’s eyes on him; he had been trying to get Uncle Hank alone to discuss Lightning Rock, but Hank wasn’t interested in opening up a dialogue. He was reminded of the phrase “be careful what you wish for” because the idea of sitting down with his uncle was making him anxious in a way that he didn’t normally feel. But this was Uncle Hank—a man he’d idolized all his life—and he was talking about the one thing that his uncle loved only second to his family—Bent Tree Ranch.

      His uncle balled up his napkin, dropped it on his plate, pushed back roughly from the table and stood up. Uncle Hank was a tall, slender man; the deep crevices around his eyes, on his forehead and around his mouth bespoke of a life lived in the sun. Even though he was eventually going to turn the operations of Bent Tree over to his middle son, Tyler, one day, Hank Brand appeared to be far from retirement.

      Nick met his uncle Hank’s eyes; his uncle, without a word, gestured with his hand for Nick to get up and follow him. Nick wiped his mouth with his napkin before he stood up.

      “Hey,” Taylor, always the mother of the siblings, said, “he’s dad’s brother – be respectful.”

      Instead of addressing Taylor’s worry that he didn’t have full control of the temper he’d had since he was a teenager even as a full-grown man, Nick merely said to those still sitting at the table, “Save my spot.”

      Nick followed his uncle into a small office off the kitchen. This was, as Nick remembered, Hank’s sanctuary. It was the one spot in the house that Aunt Barbara didn’t touch—no matter how disorganized or cluttered it became.