Falling for My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Grandma Kimbrough

Neva confronts Hal at the flagship during lunch rush and takes her grandmother's portrait off his wall; Lorrie quits and follows her, and the show's trailer brands Neva the woman who betrayed the family.

I sat on the walk-in floor with the bottle in my lap until my hands went numb.

At six the back door opened and the dog's tail started thumping.

Wick stood over me in a T-shirt and bare feet, holding two mugs of coffee.

He looked at the bottle.

He didn't ask.

He just handed me a mug and sat down on an upturned bucket.

"I bought that the week it came out," he said. "Knew on the first taste it wasn't ours."

"How?"

"The old man's sauce was tomato and brown sugar. Thick as paint." He nodded at the label. "That's mustard and cider vinegar. That's from north of the river."

"Platte County," I said. "Her stand was on Highway 92. Hutchens Gold. Thirty years."

"And that's her?"

"That's her hat. I buried her in it."

"What do you want to do?" he said.

"Go get her."

The Kimbrough flagship was on Main Street, on the Missouri side, three stories of brick with a neon pig on the roof.

Wick parked across the street and turned off the engine.

"I'll be right here," he said.

"You're not coming in?"

"Hal sees me walk through that door, this turns into a story about me." He looked at me. "It's about her."

The Sunday lunch line went out the door and down the block.

I walked past all of it.

Along the back wall, over the big booths, hung the founding family.

The old man in 1971, squinting in front of the first pit house.

Hal cutting a ribbon.

Brice at eight years old in a paper hat.

And in the middle, the biggest frame on the wall, my grandmother in her sun hat.

They'd hung the whole photo, not the cropped one.

The hand-lettered sign behind her was painted over in a dark smudge.

The brass plate said GRANDMA KIMBROUGH. WHERE IT ALL STARTED.

Hal was in the corner booth under her with a plate of burnt ends and two men in golf shirts.

He saw me and smiled.

"Neva," he said. "Sit. Eat something. You look terrible."

"Who is that?" I pointed at the frame.

The men in golf shirts looked up.

"That's the face of the brand," Hal said.

"That's my grandmother. She sold sauce from a plywood stand for thirty years. She never met a Kimbrough in her life."

"Lower your voice, honey."

"She raised me. She died seven years ago. And you've got her up there calling her yours."

Behind the pass, the line cooks had gone still.

Lorrie was at the flat-top in her bandana, a spatula in her hand.

Hal wiped his mouth.

He took his phone out of his blazer, scrolled for a moment and turned it toward me.

A page with my signature at the bottom.

RECIPE RELEASE. RECIPE, NAME AND LIKENESS.

"You signed it," he said. "Two years ago. Brice said you cried a little."

"He told me it was for the label printer."

"And you didn't read it." He set the phone down. "That's not my problem. That's a lesson."

One of the golf shirts laughed.

"Your grandmother's in four thousand stores," Hal said. "You should be thanking us. Nobody ever bought a bottle off a plywood stand."

I climbed onto the booth seat in my boots.

"Neva," Hal said.

I lifted the frame off its hook.

It was heavier than I thought, and the wire sang against the nail.

"Put that back," Hal said. "That's company property."

"You can sue me for the frame."

"Somebody call the police."

Nobody in the kitchen moved.

The whole dining room was watching now, forks in the air, a kid with sauce on his chin.

A few phones came up.

A camera too, by the windows.

I hadn't noticed the crew until then, a man with a shoulder rig and a woman in a headset, shooting the lunch rush.

I stepped down with my grandmother against my chest.

"You walk out of here with that," Hal said, "and you'll never cook in this city again."

"I'll cook in Kansas."

I walked down the aisle between the tables.

Behind me something clanged on the steel pass.

I turned around.

Lorrie had untied her apron and dropped it on the counter, next to her spatula.

"Bixby," the kitchen manager said. "You're on till close."

"I've been on till close for eleven years," Lorrie said.

She came around the end of the line and took the other side of the frame.

"Hey, Hal," she said over her shoulder. "Your burnt ends need salt. They have for a decade."

We carried my grandmother out into the sun together.

Wick was out of the truck before we reached the curb.

He took one look at the frame and opened the back door.

He laid it on the seat on top of his own jacket so the glass wouldn't touch anything.

Lorrie looked at him.

Then at me.

"So this is the uncle," she said.

"This is my boss."

"He's tall."

"Lorrie."

"I'm just saying he's tall."

Wick got behind the wheel and didn't say a word, but his ears had gone red.

We were halfway across the state line bridge when Lorrie's phone buzzed.

Lorrie read hers and went white.

"Oh no," she said. "Oh, honey. Don't look."

I looked.

KIMBROUGH COUNTRY. THIS SUMMER. OFFICIAL TRAILER.

Brice by a smoker in slow motion. Sherrie's ring catching the light.

Then me, on a booth seat, ripping a frame off a wall while a child stared.

A man's voice, deep and sad, over the top of it.

"Every family has one. The woman who betrayed the family."

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