“I’m fine.”
Ian took another bite of breakfast, squinted, and shook his head. “I’m going with you.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” I started, but Ian waved a hand, interrupting.
“You spend too much time alone.”
“But—”
“You need a dog, is what you need.”
As if on cue, one of Ian’s pack of hounds padded into the kitchen, eyes wide and hopeful.
“This is not a place for the dog. Get out of my kitchen!” Pilar called out, waving a tea towel at the dog.
“She doesn’t mean any harm,” Ian protested to his housekeeper.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Her hair will be in my food, and Mrs. Mariah won’t be happy.”
Ian winced. “You have a point.” He cleared his throat. “In that case, Pilar, I take full responsibility for any dog hair Mariah might find.”
Pilar scowled but said nothing
“You’re a brave man,” I told him before I tipped my mug back and finished the last of my coffee.
“Eh,” he said. “I’ll wipe the kitchen down myself. You still need a dog.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, setting my cutlery down. “Like I said, I’m headed to the house today. I want to make sure the finish work looks okay.”
“I’ll come along, give you a second opinion. How’s it coming?”
I shrugged. “It’s coming. Electrician went through last week; all of the light switches work now. I’m meeting Roy afterward to talk about the restaurants.”
“Separate cars, then.” Ian rose from his seat, and the dog at his feet sprang up to join him.
“Separate cars,” I agreed with a nod. There was no fighting it, once Ian had set his mind to be helpful. “If you take your A7, I expect you’ll beat me there.”
The house sat on the corner of 42nd and Avenue G, one of the largest lots and largest houses in the neighborhood.
And it was mine.
“Always was a fine place,” Ian said appraisingly as I climbed from my car; he had beaten me there, as expected. “You’ll have it shipshape in no time.”
I nodded and slammed the car door shut as the memories flooded back.
I hadn’t planned on returning. My brother Cameron had attended Trinity University in San Antonio and majored in business. He’d made it clear that he planned to join the family business, running Dad’s family of barbecue joints.
For many people, it wouldn’t seem all that lucrative, but Smoky Top Barbecue enjoyed a lot of success. The flagship location in Hyde Park was the kind of hole-in-the-wall that insiders loved and celebrities sought out.
There were two reasons why. The service was second to none. The staff weren’t just efficient; they were the kind of friendly you could only find in the south. The host would welcome you in like you were late for a family dinner and take you to a table like they’d been saving it just for you. And if there were no available tables? The host checked in frequently, giving diners updates about when they could expect to be seated.
As for the second reason, that was all Roy. Dad’s best friend was a barbecue alchemist, a pit master in the truest sense. He could smoke a side of ribs until the meat could hardly stand to remain on the bone. Dad provided the restaurant; Roy provided the barbecue that made your eyes roll backward. The server would bring a tray with seven different sauces.
The flagship restaurant put Dad and Roy on the map. After graduation, Cameron helped Dad expand across Austin, with plans to continue into San Antonio.
Dad and Cameron—they were a club. There wasn’t room for me.
How did I know? Cameron told me so.
So I left. I made it into the Naval Academy and went overseas as quickly as I could after receiving my commission in the Marine Corps. There was no place for me in the business, and I wouldn’t have wanted it even if there had been. I made a life for myself, traveling the world.
I wasn’t the worst son and brother, or at least, I tried not to be. I stood next to Cameron when he married Lila. Lila, my high school girlfriend, who started dating him when they were both at Trinity.
But I was in Germany when I got the e-mail from Cameron that he and Lila had divorced, enabling Cameron to date a string of leggy waitresses working their way through medical school. He may or may not have been seeing half of them before the divorce, but I didn’t want to know.
I was in Iraq when Cameron died in a car accident, drunk out of his mind at the moment of impact. My father hardly spoke to me during the funeral, and after that I spent all my leaves with my friend, Lt Reggie Harris, and his family.
My father sent a few e-mails after that, but not many. I knew he was busy managing the restaurants, but I also knew he’d lost Cameron and that I was a poor substitute.
I was in Afghanistan, on a routine mission, when a bomb tore through the retaining wall. I’d been able to help several marines reach safety before the second explosion tore through my leg. They airlifted me to Germany, where surgeons tried to save my leg before ultimately deciding to amputate. I remained in a postsurgery haze until my arrival at Bethesda.
It took me finally getting my phone back and calling a dozen friends to find out what had happened to Reggie Harris. I finally called his brother, who broke the news gently that Reggie had died on the ground, waiting for the medevac.
Two days later, Roy found me after traveling to Maryland to give me the news about Dad.
Roy informed me that I was the heir not only to Dad’s house in Hyde Park but also all five Smoky Top locations. And the restaurants, he noted in his gravelly voice, needed my help.
The thing about Roy is that if he asks for help, you listen.
In the weeks that followed, I understood why. Cameron hadn’t done a bad job with the expansion of Smoky Top. I had to give him credit. But after Cameron’s death, Dad hadn’t been able to keep up with five locations. He’d hired an extra manager who had skimmed funds and inflated the ordering costs. By the time he was arrested, Dad had his hands full trying to keep tabs on all five locations himself.
“We need the help,” Roy told me as he sat beside my bed. “There are a lot of jobs on the line.”
So I came home. Came home to lawyers, trust agreements, and five restaurants that needed…I didn’t know what.
And the house? Just this side of habitable. Looking up at it, I still didn’t know if I’d hang on to it or sell it. At twenty-seven-hundred square feet, it seemed like a lot of square footage for a guy like me.
Either way, it was on its way to having a new air compressor and a new roof. Ian’s favorite contractor was assisting in the repairs. And while those were going on, I had begun to organize for an estate sale.
It was coming together, which meant decisions lurked around the corner.
A thought pinged in my mind. If I shared the house with someone…someone like Jane…
I saw her face again, focused on her tea, and later at dinner, eyes glowing at Sean.
Ian’s thought process must have explored a similar trail. “It’s a lot of house for a bachelor,” he said, his voice heavy with meaning.
“Mmm,” I answered, squinting as I looked up toward the new roof.
“You had to have noticed my cousins,” Ian continued, undeterred.
“Celia’s not interested in me,” I told him, my voice frank. “Unless I miss my guess, there’s a man back in California.”
“You think?”
“Just a hunch.”
A strong hunch. I knew what it looked like to be pining. It was the way my face had looked for three years.
“Jane then,” Ian said, and something in my face must have betrayed me. He gave a pleased nod. “She’s very pretty. Odd, maybe. But pretty.”
“She’s not for me,” I said, with a rueful shake of my head.
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Ian sounded outraged.
“She’s young, for starters,” I said, striding toward the house.
Ian matched me step for step. “
She’s not that young, and you’re not that old.”
I shot him a glance. “Sean Willis found her first, from the sound of it. She was looking at him the way you look at a new litter of puppies.”
“That was bad luck. He is a handsome one,” Ian admitted ruefully. “Helpful too—the women like that.”
“I’m an amputee with a chain of failing restaurants,” I said, reaching for the front door. “Let Jane have Sean. He’ll do her more good than I would.”
Ian kindly walked through the house with me, commenting on the pieces worth keeping—the antiques my mother had collected in happier days. By the time we were done, my leg ached but we had the house ready for the estate agent.
I saw Ian off before walking the three blocks to Roy’s place.
Roy opened his screen door when he saw me coming down the path, his dark brow furrowed with concern.
“I didn’t think you were stupid, boy, but you look like you’re going to pass out from pain. Say the word and I can drive you.”
“Good to see you too, Roy,” I said, grasping the porch railing for support as I climbed the stairs.
“Fool boy,” Roy muttered as he took my arm to help me up, but I’d known him long enough to hear the affection behind the words. We walked the short distance to his dining room table.
“I cooked,” he said. “You sit down and stay there. Too much of your father’s stubbornness in you.”
“Funny,” I said, shaking my head. “He told me once I didn’t have enough.”
Roy snorted and dished up lunch. A heaping serving of brisket, a spoonful of beans—I recognized my dad’s recipe—and a stack of lightly dressed coleslaw.
“No corn bread? Is that what semiretirement’s done to you?”
“Corn bread is for young men who don’t injure themselves out of stubbornness.”
“I think you’d hate my physical therapist. I’m supposed to push myself; it’s how I retrain my body.”
Roy harrumphed, and we both tucked into lunch. As expected, the brisket melted in my mouth, but the coleslaw took me by surprise.
“What’s in this?” I asked, lifting a forkful of dressed cabbage closer to my eye.
“Pineapple, jalapeño, and enough lemon juice to keep things interesting.”
“That’s pretty fancy.”
“Well, Austin’s become a fancy town. Can’t get by with cabbage and mayo anymore.”
Anyone else would have thought he was grousing, but I could tell he was pretty proud of his twist on the classic.
After several minutes of focused eating, I nodded to the file folders on the table. “Talk to me about Smoky Top,” I told him. “How bad is it?”
“I’ve been retired for the last five years, but as a shareholder, and as your dad’s executor, I got my hands on the numbers. It’s doesn’t look good.”
“Even with the coleslaw?”
“Nobody saves a business with cabbage.”
I stifled a chuckle. “Words to live by.”
We finished our food and wiped the sauce off our fingers before Roy brought out the papers. He showed me the accounts, the drop in profits, the loans my dad had taken out to stay afloat.
“It was so successful,” I said, hardly understanding the numbers in front of me. “What happened?”
“Well, the economy, for starters. It didn’t help. Cameron put a lot of work into the expansion of the locations and made a lot of money. But after he died…” Roy shrugged. “It was a lot for your dad. Too much. And then he got sick.”
I frowned. “Sick?”
Roy frowned back. “Heart disease. Your father had a bad ticker. You knew that.”
“No,” I said, my breathing shallow. “I didn’t.”
“Have mercy.” Roy shook his head. “He didn’t tell you?”
“I thought he died of a heart attack.”
“He did. Heart attack after five years with heart disease.”
“I didn’t know,” I said quietly.
I didn’t know because I never came home. If I had, would he have told me? Would I have noticed?
Why hadn’t he told me?
“So he was sick,” I said, my voice low and tired. “He was sick, and the restaurants got out from under him.”
Roy nodded. “I tried to help. But I was training the kitchen staff, didn’t know half of the troubles he was having. He told me some, but not all of it. One manager made off with thousands of dollars before Wallace caught it and set the police on him.”
I reached for the next folder, marked Online Reviews.
Roy had printed off reviews from the leading restaurant review sites, and the comments chilled me. Diners from almost every location complained of slow, lazy service, orders being mixed up or forgotten altogether, dirty, dated spaces, unfriendly servers. “This doesn’t sound like Smoky Top.”
Roy sighed. “No. No service complaints at the flagship place—you know Wallace wouldn’t allow it. But the reviewers are right about the place needing a facelift. No one likes sitting on cracked vinyl.”
“At least they all say the food is good.”
“Thank goodness for small miracles.”
The last papers were a list of employees at each location. Five locations, six to ten employees at each—the livelihoods of almost fifty people rested in my ability to turn things around.
The thought made me sick.
The last time people had depended on me, I’d gotten my leg blown off and lost friends. While I knew that there weren’t going to be any explosives in this situation, the pressure still made me jittery. But if there was one thing I’d learned in the marines, it was how to manage men and advance when things looked bad.
I spread the papers out further. “So what I’m seeing is that business is failing and changes need to be made and there are some major repairs and updates necessary but no money to do it.”
“That’d be about it,” Roy said, his eyes on file folders.
I turned my gaze to him. “Back in Maryland, you made it sound bad,” I said.
Roy looked at me, a slow laugh rumbling out of his chest. “You always did have Wallace’s sense of humor.”
Did I? No one had ever thought to tell me so.
“One last thing,” Roy said as he tucked the papers away. “Lila called me a few months back. Asked if there were any waitressing jobs.”
“Lila? Lila asked about a job?”
“She did. If I had one, I would have given it to her. As it was, I didn’t have enough work for the servers I’d already hired. Hated telling her no, but I did tell her I’d ask around.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “Do you still have her number? I should check on her.”
“Thought you might. It’s inside the green file.”
“Thanks, Roy.”
Afterward, we took our glasses of sweet tea to the front porch, and I asked after his family. He asked about my years in service and the finer points of life with a shorter leg than I was born with.
I carried my glass inside before leaving, and he walked me down the steps. “Your car back at your place?”
“It is.”
Roy scratched his head. “I’ll walk over there with you. Been meaning to see what you’ve done to the place.”
“I can walk three blocks on my lonesome,” I told him. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
Roy grunted. “Your father told me to look in after you,” he said, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to shake him, like I hadn’t shaken off Ian earlier.
He filled me in on the neighborhood as we walked, telling me which trees had dropped branches in the last storm, which neighbor had a new baby or lost a loved on. He looked over the house, once we reached it, and pronounced that it was looking fine. “If you need anything,” he said, as I climbed into my car, “a place to stay, a hot meal, you don’t hesitate.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
Satisfied that I meant it, he turned to walk back home.
Fancy Coleslaw
½ jalapeño or more to taste, seeds removed (or left, if you want more heat), chopped fine
1 8-ounce can pineapple, juice drained into a separate container
⅓ cup mayonnaise
1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon pineapple juice
¼ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
Shred the cabbage, using a mandolin slicer or food processor’s slicing attachment. Add to a large bowl with the diced jalapeño and pineapple.
Stir in the mayonnaise, lemon juice, and pineapple juice, and scatter the ground pepper over the top. Taste. Adjust seasoning as desired. Serve chilled, either on the side or on top of barbecue.
Serves 6.
10
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
—JOHN STEINBECK
Callum
By the time I drove back to Ian and Mariah’s, twilight cloaked the low hills. The lights at the house were all on, the light pouring out the windows, painting the property with orange and gold.
I reached for the file Roy had given me and pulled out my phone to dial the contact number Lila had scrawled on the page. It rang several times before the recording of Lila’s voice instructed me to leave a message.
I cleared my throat. “Lila, it’s Callum. I’m in town, in Austin. You’ve got my number. Give me a call. It’d be good to catch up.”
Afterward I found myself staring at the phone, waiting, thinking maybe she’d simply missed the call and would call or text back. But the screen remained blank and quiet; after a moment, I slid the phone into my pocket and headed for the house.
Even before I opened the front door, I could hear the music.
Acoustic guitar—one of them? Two? Instruments, at any rate, and the sweetest singing voice I’d ever heard. Coming closer, I recognized the song—Fergus O’Farrell’s “Gold.”
I followed the sounds to the music room. For the duration of my stay, the room had been devoid of people, but now Jane sat on the piano bench, facing away from the instrument as she strummed a guitar and sang. Sean sat next to her on a barstool, filling in the chords and embellishing the melody with fingerpicking.
Jane of Austin Page 9
