Page 55 of Devoured

So here they were. John sat wrapped in a blanket on the porch with his cane leaned against the chair beside him, supervising an event he could no longer physically run, while his sons and nephews carried the whole thing around him like men trying not to let him feel the weight he'd lost.

By noon the ranch smelled like brisket and smoke and yeast rolls, and Lara had learned three things. One: feeding a hundred people was less cooking than military logistics. Two: Helen could command a kitchen with the authority of God Himself. And three: apparently nobody had informed the younger generation there was supposed to be a feud.

"Not that table," Helen snapped, without turning around.

Lara looked up from the sink just in time to see Knox freeze halfway across the yard with a folding table balanced against his shoulder.

"The legs are uneven on that one," Helen called through the open window. "You put potato salad on it and we'll all be wearing it."

Knox grinned. "Morning to you too, Miss Helen."

"Don't flirt with me. Fix the table."

"Yes, ma'am." He hauled it away laughing, while Chase nearly walked into a cooler because he was laughing too.

Lara rinsed another platter and looked back out the window. That was Clay's son. She'd started noticing it an hour ago, that half the people setting up this barbecue belonged to Clay's side. Not just showing up. Working. Like they always had. Mack had one of Clay's sons running the second smoker beside him. Stephanie had arrived at nine carrying folding chairs and started directing traffic in Helen's kitchen like she held partial rights to it. Clay's people and John's people crossed the same yard all morning, hauling tables and trays past each other like the split between the brothers lived in some separate invisible layer up above everybody's heads.

Nobody seemed surprised by it. Nobody even mentioned it.

Lara dried her hands. "They always do this?"

Helen glanced up from the mountain of dough. "Do what?"

"The two sides."

Helen snorted softly. "Honey, Stephanie's been bossing this kitchen since before you were out of grade school."

Right on cue Stephanie shoved through the back door with three grocery sacks against her chest. "And if somebody doesn't move those pies, Marge is going to stab a teenager with a serving fork."

"Might improve the teenager," Helen muttered.

Stephanie barked out a laugh.

Lara looked between them. "So this just… happens? Every year?"

"Course it does," Stephanie said, already unpacking buns. "Their daddy started this thing before either of those two old fools was big enough to carry a chair. We all show up."

"Even when John and Clay aren't speaking?"

Stephanie and Helen traded a look over the counter. Then Helen shrugged one shoulder and reached for the flour. "The men quit speaking," she said. "The rest of us got hungry anyway."

Outside, somebody yelped, and Mack's voice came thundering across the yard. "You drown my fire with lighter fluid again and I'll bury you in the back pasture!"

"I barely used any!" somebody yelled back, a Clay-side voice, one of the boys.

"Boy, I can smell it from the porch."

Laughter rolled across the grass. Stephanie shook her head. "Every year. The same fools."

"Language," Helen said, automatically, to nobody.

Stephanie blinked at her. "Helen. We are not young women."

"And yet the Lord still listens."

Lara laughed before she meant to, and earned a sideways look from Helen. Not sharp, almost approving.

The town started arriving after lunch.