Page 66 of Knot the Plan
“Isn't it just,” Cynthia says, and pats my hand, then leans in like she's letting me in on something. “But you know what, next time you come, I'll teach you mine. My mother's recipe, her mother's before that, the one I made for Finn's father the first Sunday he ever sat at this table. It goes to family.” She says it simply, like she's already decided, like it's already settled. “It's about time somebody young had it.”
And that's the one that gets me. Not thefamilyby itself, though that's bad enough on its own.
It's the handing-down of it. A recipe older than she is, that came the whole way to this table through women who meant it. Held out to me like I'm the next link in a chain, the omega who finally gets to sit in the empty chair.
A chain I've got a demolition date stapled to.
“I'd love that,” I hear myself say, and I mean it, and that's the worst part, I mean every word.
“Mom,” Gemma says, quiet.
“What? I'm allowed. I waited fifteen years for that boy to want a pack, and now he's got one and a girl who makes potato salad from scratch, and I'm going to say the word family as many times as I please.” She reaches for the gravy. “Now. Gemma. Your turn.”
Gemma goes very still. “No.”
“Marie's nephew's back from Bozeman. Alpha. Dentist. Owns his practice.”
“I have a full waiting room and eleven goats, Mom. I don't have a gap in my life shaped like a dentist.”
“That's because you spoil them.” Cynthia turns to me, undeterred, radar swinging clean off Finn now that Finn's got his pack and the last unmatched Morrow at the table is the omega with the goats. “Josie, you tell her. She'd rather live with goats than let me set up one nice dinner.”
“The goats have never once tried to introduce me to a dentist,” Gemma says.
And there it is. The whole Morrow machine swinging its full weight onto Gemma now that her brother's off the market.
She takes it with the flat unbothered patience of a woman who's clearly been taking it her entire life. But for one second I catch something behind her eyes. Quick, gone. A thing she's not saying that has nothing to do with any dentist.
Then it's tucked away, and she's reaching for the rolls, and Cynthia's already onto the Huckleberry Festival, and whether they'll ever let Carl Tubbs near the pie contest again, and her opinion is no.
And I sit there in the middle of it, warm and fed and folded in like I belong, and let the wordfamilykeep ringing where she dropped it, and I don't let myself count the number of people at this table who'd have to grieve a thing that was never real.
It rolls through me right then. Low, warm, no warning. A pull that starts behind my navel and goes down.
I set my fork very carefully against the edge of my plate. Breathe through my nose. Smile at whatever Cynthia's saying about the pie contest. Because there's no version of this where the omega excuses herself from a Morrow family dinner to go have a feeling in the bathroom.
It passes. Mostly.
It leaves the low hum behind it. The one my suppressant used to erase and now just blurs. It hasn't fully left in days.
I look down at my plate. My olives are gone. There's a fresh roll on it I don't remember taking. My water's full.
I am so loved at this table, and none of it is allowed to be real, and I did that.
“Josie.” Hudson, gentle, under the festival talk. “You good?”
“Great,” I say, too bright. “This is great. I love it here.”
That last part isn't a performance and everyone within range knows it, and Finn's knee presses back against mine, once, on purpose, and that's worse than if he'd said something.
Gemma stealsme the second the plates are cleared, the way I knew she would from the moment dessert hit the table.
Because here's what happens in the Morrow house after Sunday dinner, apparently. The alphas do the dishes.
All three of them, sleeves pushed up, crowded around a sink built for one, while Cynthia orbits them fussing about her good pans, and it might be the best thing I've ever seen.
Finn washes like he's decontaminating a scene. Hudson dries exactly one plate per story. Logan keeps trying to reorganize the drying rack for load distribution, and Cynthia keeps smacking his hands with a dish towel, delighted.
“They'll be an hour,” Gemma says, pressing a mug into my hands. “Come on. Swing's mine, but I'll share.”
