The Mechanics of Mistletoe

by Liz Isaacson

  She took the card upstairs and into Lincoln’s room. The child lay very still in bed, despite the squeak of the door when Sammy opened it. She crossed to his bed and sat down on the edge of it. She stroked his hair off his forehead, which caused him to stir.

  He opened his eyes, and she smiled down at him. “Sammy,” he said, sitting up and grabbing her in a hug.

  “Hello, my boy,” she whispered. She held him tight, grabbing onto the moment and forcing it to stop so she could experience it powerfully.

  “Can I come to the shop with you tomorrow?” he asked, pulling back and looking up at her.

  “Sure,” she said, smiling as her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Link. I don’t mean to leave you here for so long with Grandma and Grandpa.”

  “It’s okay,” Lincoln said, sobering. He was usually quite sober, something that came from Heather. The grief Sammy had spoken of several days ago hit her squarely in the chest, and she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t start crying.

  “They canceled the rest of school,” she said, opening her eyes. “A lot of your summer classes and camps aren’t happening.” She sighed. “We’ll have to be creative and find ways to keep you busy,” she said. “I’ll need your help.”

  “I can help,” Lincoln said. “I’ve got friends I can go play with, Sammy.”

  Sammy nodded, though she didn’t think that was quite the option Lincoln hoped it would be. Her phone chimed, and she leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, at the shop. Okay?”

  He lay back down, and she tucked him in. “You go back to sleep.”

  “I love you, Sammy,” he said.

  “Love you too, Link.” She eased out of the bedroom and pulled her phone out as she continued to her room.

  Bear had texted, as she suspected. Make it home okay?

  Yes, she sent back. But what a long day.

  They’re exhausting, aren’t they?

  Sammy sat down on her bed, absolutely every part of her body aching. She didn’t want to text; she wanted to talk to Bear. So she called him.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice quiet, as if he shared a room with one of his brothers.

  “Sorry to call,” she said, just as quietly. “I’m too tired to text, and I thought this would be easier.”

  He waited for her to speak, and Sammy closed her eyes. “They canceled school, and most of Lincoln’s summer activities aren’t happening either. My parents can’t watch him for sixteen hours a day. Maybe two or three, and I’m not sure what to do with him.”

  She sighed as she laid back on the bed, the pull through her lower back actually welcome.

  “I see the problem,” he said.

  “I’m taking him to the shop tomorrow,” she said. “He’s usually pretty good there.”

  “Can I bring you two lunch?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That would actually be amazing.”

  “Great,” he said, a smile in the word. “You’ll figure it out, Sammy. I’ll pray for you. Try to get some sleep, and things won’t seem so bad in the morning.”

  “My mom used to say that,” Sammy said. She’d believed her too. But sometimes, things were just as bad in the morning as they’d been the night before.

  Bear chuckled. “I bet she did. See you tomorrow, Sammy.”

  “Bye, Bear.”

  The call ended, and Sammy was too tired to change out of her clothes. Eventually, she did, and she knelt next to her bed, praying the power and water would be restored to Three Rivers very, very soon. As soon as that happened, life would feel more normal. She wouldn’t have to wait in line for water in the mornings, and the moment her parents’ roof got fixed, they could go back to their house.

  We need a miracle, Lord, she prayed. “Not just me, either,” she said aloud. “All of us. The Walkers. Liam and his wife. They don’t have a home either. Squire at Three Rivers. That therapeutic riding facility is apparently a mess, and they do a lot of good for a lot of people.” She paused, her desperation reaching a boiling point. “Help me with Lincoln. He’s already been through a lot, and I don’t want to be another person who’s failed him. Please.” She wept into her sheets for a few minutes, and then she managed to pull herself into the bed.

  “Oh,” she said as she faced the ceiling, her eyes closed. “And Bear Glover. Bless him, and bless…us.”

  She didn’t know how to say it more eloquently, and she’d never had to in the past. So bless us would have to be enough for tonight. She hoped it would be enough for a future with the strong, steady cowboy too, but she’d have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

  Chapter Eleven

  At eleven-thirty the next morning, Bear met Ranger’s eyes and nodded. “Go on,” Ranger said. “Tell Sammy hi.”

  “And Lincoln,” Bear said. For some reason, he didn’t want his cousins or any of his brothers to think he was shirking around Seven Sons Ranch so he could sneak off and kiss his girlfriend.

  He had been thinking about kissing Sammy, but that prospect seemed so far off that it was a distant dot on the horizon. They’d held hands a few times. He hadn’t even shared a meal with her that wasn’t full of awkwardness and nerves. Today wouldn’t be a candlelit, romantic experience, just like taking tacos to her family hadn’t been.

  He’d had a good time, though, because Sammy’s parents were kind, and they’d expressed so much gratitude for his help on their house.

  He’d told them over and over that it wasn’t just him. That all five of his brothers had come, and all three of his cousins. Skyler, Micah, Liam, Tripp, and Rhett Walker had too. Wade Rhinehart and his adult son, as well as Tammy and her husband. It really hadn’t taken long to re-stack some wood and pile debris and garbage along the road.

  Now the roof, Bear had spent some time on. He’d done the rest of the demo the tornado had left behind and prepped it so whoever Sammy could hire would be ready to start. She’d gotten Micah to agree to do it, and when Bear had texted him last night, he’d learned that Micah just needed the supplies to come in.

  Trucks arrived daily in Three Rivers, some with food and water, some with backup generators for those in hospitals or who needed electricity to keep medicines cold. Some brought construction supplies and animal feed, and some brought clothing and household items. Bear hadn’t had a need for any of it yet, but he knew Sammy went to get water for her family every morning. When he’d asked her if they had food, she’d said, “Loads. My mother liked to stock up during case lot sales.”

  Food out of a can was better than no food at all, and Bear had seen the volunteers passing out freeze-dried packets of food that morning. Anything was better than that, in his opinion, and he was grateful his parents had taught him to always have a store of food and water at the ranch. He hadn’t understood why growing up. They’d never used it that he knew of, and he remembered Mother making a “pantry feast” a couple times a year to clear out the about-to-expire food in their cellar.

  He’d hated the pantry feast, because it seemed like a lot of mushy food combined into one dish. His father had kept the chest freezer in the cellar full of meat and bread, and as Bear and Ranger had taken over the ranch, they’d added some of the more convenient boxed and bagged freezer foods too.

  They had a lot of mouths to feed at Shiloh Ridge, but Ace had been taking care of the food, and he said they had enough for another month at least.

  The grocery stores were open during the daylight hours, as none of the three in town had suffered terrible damage. But the lines were long as goods had to be rung up by hand, the totals calculated by hand, and people could only use cash to pay.

  Bear had plenty of that on-hand too—another lesson from his ancestors. His grandmother had lived through the Great Depression, and before she’d died, she’d patted Bear’s hand and told him stories of her father giving her a five-dollar bill and telling her to go buy milk, eggs, and bread.

  “He walked behind me,” Grandmother had said in her old, shaking voice. “The whole wa
y to the store. Once there, I slipped inside while a wall of men blocked him. They held his arms and searched his pockets, looking for money.”

  The moral of the story was that those that had cash money were able to buy what they needed. She’d told Bear to keep cash in “every cupboard and closet you can, my teddy. You never know where you’ll be when you need it.”

  Bear had taken her advice to heart, and when he’d had to pack everything he owned to move out of the homestead to raze it, he’d found Altoid tins with a few bills and coins in them. He’d found envelopes stuffed with fifties. He’d found a miniature safe he’d completely forgotten about—with ten thousand dollars in cash inside.

  He’d centralized all of the money in the new storage room beneath the basement, with just one envelope of money in his nightstand drawer. Ranger knew about the money, as did all the Glovers who lived and worked on the ranch.

  He wasn’t scared, but he’d been taught to be prepared for anything.

  He drove into town, finding a couple of the streets had been cleared of the garbage and debris that had been piled along the sidewalks. Life was starting to look more and more normal, and he’d been planning to stop by Sammy’s shop on the south side of town to pick up her and Lincoln. Then he was going to take them to the ranch.

  A crowd had gathered in the parking lot at the bank, and Bear frowned as he slowed to see what was going on. He initially thought there was a riot forming outside the bank, with people who wanted access to their money.

  Then he saw the food truck. He swung onto the road that led to the bank, his mouth already watering, and he didn’t even know what the truck was serving yet.

  He didn’t like waiting, but he shoved against his grizzly instincts, parked, and got out. Turned out, most of the people milling about weren’t in line.

  “Have you ordered?” he asked a couple of teenagers.

  “No,” one said with plenty of attitude. “They’re only taking cash.”

  A man came out of the truck. “We’d take cards if we could,” he said. “My brother is working on figuring out how to type in the cards on his phone, so we can just use that.”

  Bear had been charging his phone in his truck while he drove from ranch to ranch, and running credit cards would drain a battery quickly. He glanced around as the man kept talking.

  “That said,” he said. “Anyone who has cash and is willing to pay with the whole dollar, we’re ready to take your order.”

  No one moved forward, and Bear realized that none of them had cash. He did. His heart started to pound in his chest, because he could feed all of these people. He knew it wasn’t life or death; no one here was starving.

  They were all just like him—tired of eating out of cans and boxes and bags.

  His adrenaline flowed through his head, making his vision a bit blurry. He hurried toward the man still standing by the serving window of the truck. “Hey,” he said, smiling Bear. “Do you have cash?”

  Bear glanced around, well-aware of how many people were watching him. “Can you feed all of these people?”

  The man blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean.” Bear lowered his head and his voice. “I have enough cash to pay to feed all of these people. Can you feed all of them?” He still hadn’t seen the menu, but it didn’t matter. It smelled like barbecue and smoked meat, and Bear’s stomach roared at him.

  “Yes,” the man said. “We can just start to put together meals, label them, and start handing them out.”

  “What kind of meals?” Bear asked, leaning back to look at the menu finally.

  “Two meats, two sides, two rolls,” the man said. “The brisket sandwich meal has two sides. And we have a one meat, one side, one roll option.”

  “How many choices for sides do you have?”

  “Six.”

  “Will it be hard to do?” Bear looked at him, his eyebrows up. “Should we just have everyone line up and say what they want, and you can start putting them together?”

  “Listen,” the man said, his eyes bright. “I don’t know you, but there’s probably sixty people here. Our meals are ten to fifteen dollars. You’re talking about over six hundred dollars.”

  “I want five—no, six—no, fifteen two meat meals.” He nodded to the man. “Write this down. You can start on it while I go grab the money from my truck.” He waited for the man to get his pen poised.

  “Two meat meals,” Bear said. “Brisket and pulled pork. I want half with mashed potatoes and pea salad. The other half with mac and cheese and slaw.”

  The man scribbled down Bear’s order and looked up, his eyes bright. “This is insane.”

  “As soon as I get my meals,” Bear said without missing a beat. “You can tell them all that you’re donating lunch to them.”

  The man searched his face. “You’re going to buy the whole truck?”

  “How much would that cost?” Bear glanced at the man standing just a few feet away. It was Sam Hodges, and Bear knew him, because the Hodges had been in Three Rivers about as long as the Glovers.

  “We have enough to feed three hundred people.” He started shaking his head, and he looked around too. “That’s three thousand dollars. Minimum.”

  “Done,” Bear said. “Feed anyone who comes today.” He started back toward his truck, the man stammering after him.

  Bear went to the passenger side of the truck and opened the side compartment in the console. He kept an envelope of money there, and it easily had three thousand dollars in it. Probably three times that much. Bear could lose it and not miss it, but no one needed to know that. He’d rather play the part of the grizzly when he had to pay Marcy Walker an extra five grand to rid Shiloh Ridge of all the grasshoppers.

  He counted out the money, thinking through the cost of the meals. Ten to fifteen dollars each. He added another thousand to the cash in his hand and stuffed it all in his pocket. He locked the rest away in the hidden compartment, closed the door, and locked the truck. He went back to the food truck and right up the steps.

  One glance behind him, and he confirmed he was alone with the two men in the truck. “Here you go,” he said, removing the money from his pocket and sliding it under a metal box they likely used for a cash box. “Remember, you’ve just had a change of heart. No announcements until I get my meals.”

  “We’ve got five or six done,” he said, smiling at Bear.

  He nodded and went down the steps, tucking his hands in his pockets and standing out of the way. Several people watched him, and Bear ended up dropping his chin to his chest to avoid all of their eyes.

  Several minutes passed, and Bear’s patience started to run thin. Finally, the man came down the steps, his meals all bagged up and ready. “Here you go, sir,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Bear said, taking all the bags. He turned away, desperate to get back to his truck and leave this parking lot.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” the man asked, hurrying after him.

  “Why?” Bear asked. He didn’t slow down but kept moving.

  “Just so I can thank the Lord for you in my prayers.”

  Bear met his eye, and the man did have a good spirit about him. “Bear,” he said. “Bear Glover.”

  “Thank you, Mister Glover.” The man fell back as Bear kept striding away. He reached his truck and loaded all the food in the back of it. His family would be thrilled to have meat and macaroni for lunch, and he got behind the wheel and sent a quick text to Ranger.

  I got meat, rolls, and sides from a food truck for lunch. Enough for everyone. Spread the word.

  A cheer rose up beyond the glass of Bear’s window, and he jerked his attention in the direction of the food truck. He distinctly saw the man pointing to him, a wide smile on his face. Several people started toward the truck, and Bear got out of there as quickly as he could.

  At the shop, he parked on the side and entered through the back garage, as Sammy had texted him to do. “Hello?” he called, carrying only one bag with five meals in it.
<
br />   “Bear,” Lincoln said, popping up from behind a dark blue sedan. A smile split the boy’s face, and Bear found himself grinning back at Lincoln. “Sammy, Bear’s here.”

  “Tell ‘im I’m coming,” Sammy said. “And that something smells good, and it’s a good thing he got here when he did so I don’t have to eat off my arm.”

  Bear chuckled and tousled Lincoln’s hair as the boy stopped in front of him. “I got one with mac and cheese or one with mashed potatoes. Which do you want?”

  “Mac and cheese, please,” Lincoln said.

  “Mashed potatoes for me,” Sammy said, standing. She wiped her hands on a dirty rag and beamed at Bear. Her dark hair had some static in it, and she wore a grease-smeared T-shirt with a faded rainbow on it, jeans ripped through the knees, and the dirtiest pair of boots Bear had ever seen.

  She was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

  “Mac and cheese,” Bear said, his voice barely coming out of his throat. Sammy went to wash her hands, and Bear was infinitely grateful humans couldn’t read thoughts. His were still spinning and still conjuring up fantasies of kissing her until they both couldn’t breathe.

  “Where are we eating?” he asked, glancing around.

  “We eat at the counter,” Lincoln said. “Out front.”

  “Great, lead the way,” Bear said. He glanced at Sammy, who called to say she’d be right there. Out front, there was much less of the oily smell and more room to move around. A computer sat on the chest-high counter, with a jar of brightly colored jelly beans next to that.

  Bear went to the other side of the counter and pulled out a stool. “Okay, let’s see.” He pulled out a plastic container, which had a clear lid. “Mac and cheese.”

  “Thanks, Bear,” Lincoln said. “This looks good.”

  “It sure does,” Sammy said, sidling up beside Bear. “Where did you get this?”