All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(74)

Debra and Don seemed like a perfect fit. She was high-power, high-price, high-fashion: pretty, toned, and apparently a successful entrepreneur with her own clothing boutique. Don was probably ten years older, with a full head of perfectly parted, perfectly salted hair, his black tie loose around his neck, his shirt pocket full of pens. He looked like a guy who ran a hell of a business back in 1969. If I remembered correctly, he was an executive at the mine.

True to her word, Debra vanished into the kitchen, and Don, with a weary smile, settled into his chair at the head of the table. Austin practically ripped my jacket off me and darted out of the room.

“Sit right here,” Don said, tapping the seat next to him. “Vie?” He stood again, just long enough to shake my hand. “Good grip.”

“Thank you, sir.”

One of Don’s eyebrows went up, mimicking Austin’s gesture from before. “You’re pretty new in town.”

“I got here in August.”

He calculated. “A lot’s happened in three months.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you liking our little town?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are you from originally? Texas? Is that what Austin told me?”

“Oklahoma.”

“Oklahoma,” he pronounced the word with satisfaction, like he’d had it the whole time at the tip of his tongue. At that moment, Austin sprinted back into the room and dropped into the chair next to me. Don’s eyes moved from me to Austin and back to me again. There wasn’t anything probing about the gesture; Don seemed tired more than anything, maybe a little confused, like the numbers at work weren’t adding up, but no big deal, he’d just tackle them tomorrow. “How did you two meet?”

I had punched Austin in the face, that’s how. Becca’s reminder, though, snapped at the back of my head, and I glanced at Austin, who blushed.

At the same time, we both said, “School.”

“What do your parents do?” Don asked.

Debra emerged from the kitchen with an enormous pot roast, which she nestled on the table between the salad and the green beans and the rolls and the potatoes and what looked like some sort of whipped cream, which couldn’t possibly be right because why would you eat whipped cream with pot roast? She must have heard the question, though, because her face paled.

Before I had to answer that question—and with or without Becca’s police of being nice, I had no idea how to answer it—Austin groaned. “Dad, leave him alone.”

“I was only asking,” Don said in that same weary, somewhat remote tone.

“Well stop asking. He came for dinner not an interrogation.”

“Austin,” Debra said.

“Dad’s grilling him—”

Jake stormed into the room. No, stormed wasn’t quite right. He came in like a six-foot patch of earthquake, stomping so hard that the gravy rippled and the china clinked and a glass door on the hutch swung open. Throwing himself into the chair, he said, “Can we eat already?”

“Let’s have the blessing,” Debra said. Her eyes flickered like lightning: Jake, me, Austin, Don. “Don?”

Before I realized what was happening, Don took a hold of my right hand, and Austin, with a silent apology, took my left, and Debra took Austin’s, and for a moment it looked like Jake was going to give everyone the finger and march out, but finally his parents wrangled his hands. Don said the blessing, which was, I think, as short as Don thought he could get away with, and then it was over. Austin’s face had reddened during the prayer, so I smiled and, as discreetly as I could, squeezed his knee. Be positive. Be nice. Thank God she hadn’t asked me to be normal. I probably would have exploded.

Austin flashed me a grateful look, and then everyone started serving food. The whipped cream, it turned out was supposedly some sort of salad.

“It’s a sweet salad,” Debra chirped. “It’s got marshmallows and oranges and, oh, I don’t know. Austin, what’s in it?”

“Yeah, Austin,” Jake said, parroting Debra. “What’s in it?”

Austin glowered at his little brother, and Debra gave a tiny laugh that sounded like a bird caught in a trap. “Now, Jake,” she said. “Be nice.” She gave another of those broken winged laughs. “What else, what else, what else, hmm.”

So I took a bite of the sweet salad. It was sweet. Sweet like I’d bitten into a bag of sugar. Somehow I managed to make myself chew, and then I managed to swallow, and somehow I heard myself say, “Nuts?”

“That’s it!” Debra was beaming. “Pecans. Very good, Vie.”

“It’s delicious.”

Jake coughed into his napkin. It sounded suspiciously like kiss-ass.

Sweet salad notwithstanding, the rest of the meal was delicious. Even after gorging myself on Becca’s amazing burritos, I was starving, and so I ate. A lot. Don smiled and glanced around from time to time and generally looked both bored and mystified, as if he weren’t quite sure why he was there but he’d like to read the newspaper, if anyone had it lying around. Jake alternated between staring poison at me and glaring at his plate. About halfway through the meal, some of the tension went out of Austin’s shoulders.

Then Debra kicked the small-talk into high gear. “We’re so glad you could come, Vie. I’ve been wanting to have you over for ages. We’re so pleased. We’re just so pleased.”