Falling for My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The True Part

Wick answers the crowd in one line and takes Neva home to his gas-station smokehouse, where she finds her dead grandmother's face on a bottle of Kimbrough sauce, captioned Grandma Kimbrough.

Wick didn't look at the phones.

He looked at his nephew, the same flat way he'd looked at his grate.

Then he took one step forward, so he was standing beside me instead of behind me.

"She cooks for me now," he said.

He didn't raise his voice, and he didn't need the mic.

"That's the only true part."

Somebody near the front said, "Oh, damn."

Brice smiled for the camera. "Sure, Uncle Wick. Whatever you say."

"You've known for months?" Lorrie said.

She'd made it through the crowd, out of breath, my badge still in her fist.

"Months, Brice? You proposed to a different woman twenty minutes ago. With her trophy."

A few people laughed.

Then a lot of people did.

A woman with a baby on her hip said, "So who was cheating on who?"

"This isn't about me," Brice said.

"You brought a microphone," I said. "It's a little about you."

The laugh got bigger.

An old man in a straw hat leaned on the fence. "Who cooked that brisket, son?"

"It's a team," Brice said. "We all cook it."

"Then trim one," Lorrie said. "Right now. There's a packer in our cooler."

Brice looked at the camera.

The camera looked at him.

Sherrie's voice came from the back of the crowd. "Cut. Brice, cut. We've got what we need."

He handed the mic to a sound guy and walked back toward the stage.

He didn't look at me once.

Half the phones followed him.

My shoulders came down for the first time since the proposal.

"My knives are in his trailer," I said.

"I'll drive you," Wick said.

"It's three hundred yards."

"Then I'll walk you."

"I don't need a bodyguard."

"Didn't say you did." He picked up his keys. "Said I'd walk."

The Kimbrough trailer was forty feet long and smelled like six years of my life.

I'd built the shelves in it.

I'd labeled every bin of rub in my own handwriting.

My knife roll was where I'd left it, on the prep table next to the empty trophy stand.

I tied it shut.

Then I opened the cabinet over the sink, where I kept my notebooks.

One for every season, spiral-bound and greasy, my temperatures and wood and weather in pencil.

There should have been six.

There were five.

Brice was standing in the trailer door with his arms folded.

The ring was gone from his pocket. It was on Sherrie's hand now.

"Where's my first one?" I said. "The green one."

"No idea."

"It was here this morning."

"Then I guess it's company property now." He smiled. "Everything in this trailer is."

"Those are in my handwriting."

"So's the Royal Gold card. Funny how that works."

Wick was waiting at the bottom of the steps.

He didn't come in.

Brice looked past me at him.

"He'll drop you the second he's done with you," Brice said. "That's what he does to family."

"Then I'm lucky I'm not family," I said.

I walked down the steps with five notebooks under my arm.

Wick took the knife roll without asking and carried it to his truck.

Second Fire was an old gas station on a corner lot in Kansas City, Kansas.

The pumps were gone.

The sign on the pole still said SECOND FIRE in hand-painted red, with a little flame where the dot over the i should be.

Wick backed Mabel's trailer into the yard beside the building.

A yellow dog came hopping out from under the picnic table on three legs.

It went straight past him and stuck its nose in my apron.

"He doesn't like people," Wick said.

"He likes me."

"He likes brisket. You're wearing about four pounds of it."

Inside there was a counter with five stools, a cash register older than me and a chalkboard that said SOLD OUT.

It was the cleanest kitchen I'd ever seen in a barbecue joint.

He opened a door at the back.

There was a cot in there, made up tight, with a wool blanket and one flat pillow.

"It's yours as long as you want it," he said.

"Where do you sleep?"

"Upstairs."

"Then why do you own a cot?"

"For nights Mabel runs." He paused. "And nights the dog wins the bed."

I laughed, and it surprised me.

It was the first time all day.

"There's a shower behind the walk-in," he said. "Towels on the shelf. Help yourself to whatever's in the cooler."

"You're not going to ask me anything?"

"Like what?"

"Like if I'll steal your recipes."

"You told me my recipe was too salty." He went to the stairs. "I think I'm safe."

The dog lay down across the doorway to my room.

I sat on the cot in my apron for a long time.

At midnight I got hungry.

The walk-in was cold and tidy, with labeled hotel pans of sides and a wall of sauce bottles.

They were all his, in plain glass with masking tape labels.

All except one.

It was on the top shelf, by itself, a yellow bottle with a gold cap.

ROYAL GOLD. KIMBROUGH'S BAR-B-Q.

I took it down.

There was a photo on the label I had never once looked at closely.

A woman in a sun hat, laughing, a wooden spoon in her hand.

It was cropped so you couldn't see the roadside stand behind her.

But I knew the hat.

I'd buried her in it.

Under the photo, in gold script, it said GRANDMA KIMBROUGH.

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