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Marion dressed the way she looked—soft, feminine, usually in pale colors that made it even easier to underestimate her.
Sunshine came up behind me and wrapped both arms around my waist. “Hey, babygirl. Missed you.”
I laughed. “I was just with you an hour ago.”
“I know. Still missed you.”
I leaned back into her for a second.
She was only a few inches shorter than Buck, dark-haired and blue-eyed, with light brown skin and the kind of voluptuous figure I had decidedly not inherited in full.
People said I looked like her, but my coloring had landed somewhere almost exactly between my parents—honey-toned skin, masses of streaky brown/blond hair that looked sun-kissed without any help, and eyes neither of them had managed to explain.
Mom dressed more boldly, in fitted clothes and brighter colors that suited her better than anything delicate ever could.
She always smelled faintly like flowers after work, something green and sweet clinging to her clothes and hair. I breathed it in without thinking.
“You running tonight?” she asked me.
“After dinner.”
“Don’t go too late.”
“I won’t.”
Then she released me and started inspecting dinner. “You remembered the broccoli.”
“Of course.”
Micah coughed loudly from across the kitchen.
I smiled sweetly, then stuck my tongue out at him.
He laughed.
Marion dried her hands. “We’re setting the table. How many are we feeding tonight?”
“Sadie’s coming,” I told her.
“Then twelve. Your dad said Ben was coming too.”
“Thirteen,” Rook said, entering the kitchen. “Asa’s coming.”
“Fourteen,” Ruckus added. “Jake too.”
Asa and Jake were longtime friends of the Bishop boys and fixtures around both houses. Asa was lean and dark-haired, perpetually rumpled, with an easy grin and the look of someone who never quite finished getting dressed. Jake was broader and fairer, sandy-haired and freckled, with the kind of open, friendly face that made him look harmless even when he was being an idiot.
Sunshine looked at the potatoes. “Good thing you made enough to feed all of Briar.”
I glanced at Marion. “I’ve met your children.”
“Fair,” Marion said.
Rook came to lean against the counter beside me.
I shot him a smile. “Hey, Rook.”
He looked like Clayton with an edge—same blond coloring, same face, but more sardonic and harder to read. To people who didn't know him, it came off mysterious. Girls loved it.
