Most of the people I love are sitting at this table.
The thought sneaks up on me while I pass the potatoes.
Chris is talking.
Topher is talking over Chris.
Maddie is talking over everybody.
And Ashton is eating like somebody is about to take his plate away.
An absolutely ridiculous amount of food.
I watch him pile pot roast, potatoes, carrots, and a dinner roll onto his plate.
Then go back for another roll.
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing.
Some things apparently never change.
Growing up, Ashton was always hungry.
Not normal teenage boy hungry.
Starving hungry.
The kind of hungry that made him show up at the diner fifteen minutes before closing and ask if there was anything left over.
The owner let employees take one meal home at the end of a shift.
Most nights Ashton and I split mine.
Depending on who was cooking, we'd usually get extra.
Some cooks were generous.
Some weren't.
Sometimes dinner was a cheeseburger.
Sometimes it was chicken fried steak.
Sometimes it was whatever somebody accidentally made too much of.
And occasionally...
Well.
You'd be surprised what people leave on their plates.
Usually fries.
Sometimes half a sandwich.
Once an entire slice of pie.
I am absolutely not admitting how many abandoned french fries Ashton and I ate as teenagers.
Some memories are better left buried.
I started working at the diner when I was fourteen.
Bussing tables.
Refilling drinks.
Cleaning ketchup bottles.
My dad was on the road most of the time.
Which meant I spent more evenings than not at the Rhodes' trailer.
Especially when Adam was home.
Adam cooked.
Not because anybody asked him to.
Just because somebody had to.
And somehow he was good at it.
Really good at it.
Spaghetti.
Chili.
Breakfast for dinner.
Whatever ingredients happened to exist that week.
Adam was four years older than Ashton.
But he was never just Ashton's brother.
Not to me.
He was mine too.
In a lot of ways, the Rhodes brothers were my family long before I met Chris.
The thought settles heavily in my chest.
Not painful exactly.
Just true.
Across the table, Chris and Ashton have somehow found their way into a conversation about investments.
I have absolutely no idea how.
One minute we were eating pot roast.
The next they're discussing portfolios.
I tune out almost immediately.
Chris is in lawyer mode.
Ashton looks mildly confused but determined to keep up.
And for the first time all evening, I find myself smiling without meaning to.
Some things change.
Some things don't.
Apparently Ashton Rhodes eating enough food for three grown men falls into the second category.
I looked down at the pot roast on my plate.
Adam's recipe.
His secret ingredient was soy sauce.
For years he'd refused to tell anybody what made it taste different until one day he finally admitted he'd dumped half a bottle of soy sauce into it by accident and somehow it worked.
After that, everything went into a Crock-Pot.
Pot roast.
Chicken.
Pork.
Soups.
If it could fit in a Crock-Pot, Adam would cook it in one.
Which made sense.
College baseball didn't leave a lot of time for standing around a kitchen.
"Mommy, did you hear me?"
I looked up.
"What, baby?"
Maddie pointed dramatically at her plate.
"Have I eaten enough?"
I glanced down.
The potatoes were gone.
The carrots were gone.
The meat was still sitting there untouched.
"Maddie."
She frowned immediately.
"Maddie, you have to eat your meat."
"But I ate my carrots."
"And your potatoes."
She nodded hopefully.
I nodded back.
"You still have to eat your meat."
The child looked personally betrayed.
Getting this girl to eat meat was a full-time job.
Unless it was a hot dog.
Or a chicken nugget.
Then suddenly she was starving.
I swear if left unsupervised she'd survive entirely on processed meat products and spite.
Honestly, I hated hot dogs.
Couldn't stand them.
Growing up they were basically their own food group.
And during my first pregnancy I'd eaten so many cold hot dogs straight out of the package that even thinking about them now made me a little nauseous.
Especially the cheap ones.
The kind that left a greasy film on the roof of your mouth.
Absolutely disgusting.
Maddie picked at the meat with her fork before finally sliding the smallest, most offended piece imaginable into her mouth.
I watched her wash it down with a huge gulp of milk.
Then she immediately stabbed a much larger piece and shoved it in her mouth whole.
"Maddie."
She froze.
"You're going to have to chew if you're taking bites that big."
She continued staring at me.
"You should chew it anyway. It helps you digest it."
She shook her head dramatically.
"I don't want to eat the meat. It's yucky."
"Madeline."
She sighed like I was the unreasonable one.
"Your Grammy sent pie home with Daddy."
Immediately interested.
"But if you think you're getting any of it, you're going to finish every bite of that meat first."
Her eyes widened.
Without another word, she shoved the entire piece into her mouth and started chewing.
My child was feral.
Completely feral.
At least she was eating the meat.
Topher jumped into the silence before his sister could change her mind.
"I helped make the pie."
"Oh yeah?"
"It has blueberries and cherries."
"Fancy."
"It was for Fourth of July."
Apparently Grammie had found a recipe everyone liked and now it was simply The Pie.
The official Thompson family pie.
I could live with that.
"We need whipped cream," Topher announced.
"We do need whipped cream."
If I tried to put Cool Whip on that pie, my husband might file for divorce.
Chris had grown up with real butter and real whipped cream.
Not margarine and frozen tubs of mystery topping.
Once you switched to the real thing, honestly, it was hard to go back.
I pushed my chair back and stood.
"I'll go whip some cream."
Chris looked up from the conversation he'd been having with Ashton and smiled.
The two of them were still talking.
Investments.
Portfolios.
Rental properties.
Something about tax advantages.
I had stopped listening ten minutes ago.
They both looked deeply fascinated.
Which somehow made it even more boring.
I grabbed the mixing bowl from the cabinet and started pouring cream into it.
Behind me, Chris and Ashton were still talking.
Something about investment properties.
Retirement accounts.
A portfolio.
I honestly had no idea.
The conversation had crossed into aggressively boring territory ten minutes ago.
What surprised me wasn't that Chris was interested.
That was expected.
My husband genuinely enjoyed things like financial planning.
The surprising part was Ashton.
He wasn't nodding along pretending to understand.
He was actually participating.
Asking questions.
Giving opinions.
Talking about long-term investments and backup plans and something called a diversified portfolio.
It felt strange.
Not bad.
Just strange.
The Ashton I remembered spent every dollar he had on gas station food, CDs, and guitar strings.
Then again, that Ashton had also been seventeen.
People changed.
Seven years was a long time.
Still.
There was something oddly comforting about discovering that underneath all the tattoos and album covers and ridiculous amounts of eyeliner, he'd apparently become a functional adult.
At least financially.
Emotionally was still very much up for debate.
I came back carrying the pie and a bowl of freshly whipped cream.
My mother-in-law really did make beautiful pies.
Normally the Fourth of July version had little stars cut into the top crust.
This one was plain.
Just a golden crust covered in fork marks and bubbling fruit filling.
Still beautiful.
I set it down on the table and started cutting slices.
Chris.
Topher.
Maddie.
Me.
And Ashton.
Somehow his slice ended up bigger than everybody else's.
I didn't think about it until after I'd already put it on the plate.
Old habits.
For years the answer to "How much food should Ashton get?" had always been "more."
I added an extra spoonful of whipped cream.
Then another.
He was a growing boy.
A twenty-five-year-old growing boy.
I set the plate in front of him.
He immediately took a bite.
Then made a noise that should probably be illegal.
"Oh my God."
Topher started giggling.
Ashton pointed dramatically at the pie with his fork.
"Lou."
I was already laughing.
"What?"
"This is the best pie I've ever had in my life."
"It is not."
"It absolutely is."
He took another bite.
Closed his eyes.
Looked briefly religious.
"Chris."
My husband was already smiling.
"You need to bribe your mother for this recipe."
Chris laughed.
"I'm pretty sure she'd just give it to you."
"No."
Ashton shook his head seriously.
"That woman would know I don't deserve it."
Another bite.
"I'd open a diner that exclusively sells this pie."
"A diner?"
"Nothing else."
"Just pie?"
"Just pie."
Topher laughed.
"That sounds dumb."
"It sounds brilliant."
"It sounds dumb."
"It sounds delicious."
He pointed his fork at my son.
"You have no vision."
Topher looked personally offended.
"I have lots of vision."
"Then explain why you're arguing with me while I'm clearly right."
Topher opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Maddie took advantage of the distraction to steal whipped cream off his plate.
Nobody noticed except me.
My daughter was a criminal.
Chris finally lost it and started laughing.
The deep genuine kind.
The kind that made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
Across the table Ashton was still happily destroying his pie.
Some things apparently never changed.
Somehow we'd gone from pie to tacos.
I wasn't entirely sure how.
One second Ashton was complimenting my mother-in-law's baking and the next he was passionately explaining a taco truck five blocks from his house.
"They're open twenty-four hours."
Chris frowned.
"Why?"
"Because they're heroes."
I laughed.
Ashton pointed his fork at me.
"You laugh now, but you've never had these tacos."
That was true.
Honestly, I'd barely had tacos.
Not real tacos anyway.
We had Taco Bell.
A couple Mexican restaurants in Wichita.
One place that had opened recently that everybody argued about because apparently nobody could agree if it was authentic or not.
That was the extent of my taco expertise.
Which felt increasingly embarrassing as Ashton continued talking.
"The best ones are at three in the morning."
"Why?" Chris asked.
"Because that's when they make the weird stuff."
"Weird stuff?"
"The good stuff."
He sat forward.
"The regular menu is great."
Dramatic pause.
"But if you ask for a bag of tacos..."
Topher immediately perked up.
"A bag?"
"A bag."
"What kind?"
Ashton shrugged.
"Whatever they decide to give you."
Topher looked amazed.
Chris looked alarmed.
I was honestly somewhere in the middle.
"That sounds risky."
"It sounds delicious."
Then came the part where he explained barbacoa.
Which apparently was cheek meat.
Actual cheek meat.
Chris nearly dropped his fork.
I wasn't doing much better.
"People eat that?"
"People love that."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Chris."
"No."
Ashton looked personally offended.
"I have never felt more judged in my life."
"You are trying to feed me face."
"It doesn't taste like face!"
"How do you know?"
"Because I've eaten it!"
Topher was laughing so hard he could barely breathe.
I was starting to understand why people liked having Ashton around.
He could make an argument about tacos sound like a religious experience.
"You have to order in Spanish."
Chris immediately looked horrified.
"You lost me."
Ashton laughed.
"I'm serious."
"You speak Spanish?"
The question slipped out before I could stop it.
For some reason that surprised me more than the taco truck.
Ashton looked over at me.
Then shrugged.
"Yeah."
"Since when?"
"Since California."
He took another bite of pie.
"I mean, I speak Spanish like a gringo."
Topher looked confused.
"A what?"
"A gringo."
"A gringo?"
"White boy."
Topher immediately burst out laughing.
"You called yourself a white boy."
"I am a white boy."
"You have tattoos."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
Topher thought about it.
"Nothing."
"Exactly."
I couldn't stop smiling.
"You really speak Spanish?"
He shrugged again.
"Enough to order food. Enough to survive."
Then he pointed his fork toward me.
"Everybody speaks Spanish in California."
"Not everybody."
"Enough people."
"You make it sound like you moved to Mexico."
"The taco truck guy would probably appreciate you saying that."
Chris groaned.
"Please stop talking about tacos."
"No."
"Please."
"No."
"You've been talking about tacos for fifteen minutes."
"And I'll do fifteen more."
"I believe that."
Ashton grinned.
"I know."