I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Two Strays

Gran arrived at the cabin the next morning in a pickup with no muffler and a pot of chili on the passenger seat.

She walked in without knocking and looked at Lorne asleep in the loft with one long leg hanging over the edge.

"That's a Brodie," she said.

"He's a disowned Brodie," I said.

"Does he eat?"

"Constantly."

"Then he's my problem now too." She thumped the pot onto the woodstove. "Wake him up. Nobody sleeps through my chili."

Lorne came down the loft ladder in his socks with his hair standing straight up.

He took one look at Gran and said, "Ma'am," and tried to stand up straighter.

"Sit down before you fall down, beanpole."

He sat.

She fed us both at my parents' little table, which had one short leg and rocked every time you cut anything.

She'd brought cornbread too, and a jar of honey, and a sack of flour, and a broom because she said mine was a disgrace.

"Keir sent you," I said.

"Keir doesn't send me anywhere. I go where I want." She buttered a piece of cornbread and pushed it at Lorne. "He might have mentioned you had no food."

Lorne ate four bowls of chili.

Gran watched him with deep approval.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"You're too skinny for twenty-one. Your daddy didn't feed you?"

"My daddy disowned me in front of two hundred people last night."

Gran chewed on that.

"Well," she said. "His loss. My chili."

Lorne laughed so hard he had to put his spoon down.

It was the first time I'd heard him laugh since before the Choosing.

I found I was laughing too.

In the afternoon Lorne climbed onto the roof with a hammer and Gran's tarp to patch the worst leak.

I swept, and Gran sat on the porch and told me what she thought of Conrad Brodie, in detail, with a lot of words my mother would have washed out of my mouth.

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