She also couldn’t believe the turn her life had taken since that day. She and her father had done a complete one-eighty. The only bit of satisfaction Kelsey could take from this otherwise infuriating situation (and infuriating was definitely the word she’d assigned it) was that at least her non-relationship with Ian would no longer be playing into her father’s hands. She could kiss him without feeling like she’d let herself be used in some ridiculous scheme.
“And now I’m telling you that you don’t have to do any of those things,” her father said. “You seemed resistant before, so what’s the problem?”
If he really wanted to go there, she’d come prepared.
Kelsey took a last long inhale, savoring the scent of a dinner she wasn’t likely to be invited to partake in for some time. “The problem is that I never had to do any of those things. I might have chosen to do them for the family’s sake, but I never had to. And you know what? I did become friends with Ian. I saw how hard he and Micah are working. And now I see that you aren’t treating them like people but like chess pieces in a fight with the Lipins. They’re outsiders. They shouldn’t be forced to be involved in your petty feud.”
He gaped at her, color rising to his cheeks. “It’s my petty feud?” He practically spit at her description of it. “No. It’s this family’s obligation. Our duty to those who came before us. I can’t believe the words coming out of your mouth tonight. What happened to you?”
“I grew up and grew out of believing that being at war was a fun game with no repercussions to innocent people. I’m tired of being treated like a pawn in someone else’s hundred-year grudge.”
Wallace stared at her, his mouth open. Kelsey strained her ears, but she couldn’t hear anything from the kitchen. If she were her mother, she’d be setting out the bottle of bourbon and going for a walk until her husband calmed down. Her father wouldn’t take out his anger on her mother—he had plenty of faults, but not that one—but he wasn’t exactly fun to be around when he was upset.
“Is this because of Josh?” Wallace asked when he seemed to regain control of his voice. “I know you’re upset because I’m angry at your cousin for dating that Lipin.”
Dating was hardly the correct word, seeing as Taylor had basically moved in with Josh. But there was a strong possibility that neither her father nor anyone else in the family besides Kelsey and Kevin knew about that, and she wasn’t going to enlighten them.
She swallowed, trying to get her voice under control. “You know I support Josh. I also support Ian and Micah. And I cannot support the feud anymore. I’m sick of living this way, and I suspect I’m not the only one, although I might be the only one brave enough to say it out loud.”
Kelsey didn’t really have a lot to back that up; it was more of a gut feeling. But both her brothers had also stood by Josh, and as far as she was concerned, they were the Porters who mattered the most.
Her father was a healthy shade of pink, and she seemed to have stunned him into silence. Eventually he’d get over that and she’d have to deal with the fallout, but that was for another day. “Enjoy your dinner. I’m going home to have the last of the homemade chicken soup Ian brought me.”
Kelsey left in a hurry before her father could sneak a last word in, but while she got out the soup, she discovered her father had made other plans. Since she’d hightailed it home, he’d called her brother. The big older brother.
Now Nate was on her case, and he’d sent a video chat request.
“This ought to be fun,” Kelsey said to three unimpressed dogs. She hit the accept button. “I can’t imagine why you’re calling.”
Nate grinned on her phone screen. The connection wasn’t the best, and his image was highly pixelated, but he looked the same as ever. Which was to say, almost nothing like her or Kevin. He took far more after their mother’s side of the family.
“You want to tell me what you said to Dad that had him calling me and blustering about you losing your mind?” her brother asked.
Kelsey propped her phone up against the wall so she could continue to move around. “He didn’t tell you?”
“I was having a hard time following. You know how he gets when he’s upset. What did you do, Kels?”
“I told him I was sick of the feud.”
A moment of silence passed on Nate’s end of the connection while Kelsey got out the dogs’ dinners. “Say that again?” he finally asked.
“You heard me.”
“No wonder Dad was losing it. His favorite child has gone rogue.”
Kelsey couldn’t be sure, because Nate was moving around on the screen, but her brother appeared to be laughing. “You’re his favorite, not me.”
“Bullshit. You were always daddy’s little girl.”
“And now you’re the heroic firefighter, and I’m just some writer whose job he doesn’t think is important.”
“I left town. Lost a lot of points for that.”
Kelsey snorted. “Why are you arguing with me? It’s irrelevant.”
“It is,” Nate agreed. “But it explains a lot.”
If he said so. She didn’t see the point in continuing to argue, and she scooped out the dog food instead. All three huskies charged into the kitchen like they hadn’t been fed in weeks. They watched attentively until Kelsey gave them the okay to go eat. Another reason to prefer dogs to people—they knew what was important in life.
“So what made you confront Dad?” Nate asked. “He said something about the brewery?”
Although she didn’t feel like rehashing it, if she didn’t, Nate’s only source of information would be their father’s biased summary. So Kelsey gave her own synopsis of everything that had happened over the last few weeks.
Almost everything. She left out some key points about the nature of her time with Ian.
“So you like this Ian guy?” Nate said.
Kelsey blinked. Possibly she hadn’t done as good a job at leaving out those bits as she’d thought. “I consider him a friend.”
“A friend you like.” This time when he emphasized the last word, it was clearly not a question.
Swell. Her brother was fixating on the one thing she did not want to talk about. “What is it to you?”
“Nothing. I’m just curious about this guy. He’s the one who helped you move furniture, right? You don’t like many people, never mind like many people.”
Kelsey groaned as she set her soup on the stove for reheating. “You sound like you’re in middle school. There’s nothing to be curious about. Just because I’m not on a mission to sleep with every single guy who comes across my path doesn’t mean my friendship with Ian is noteworthy.”
“Hey, I’m not on a mission to sleep with every guy. You’re confusing me with your other brother.”
“You mean my other brother who’s in a stable, loving relationship and getting married, while you can’t commit to more than two nights in a row?”
“Harsh, Kels.”
“Accurate.”
Nate grunted.
Honestly, Kelsey had never considered it before, but the fact that neither of them did relationships, yet handled their determinedly single statuses so very differently, was odd. She had her reasons, and for the first time, she wondered what Nate’s were. Not that he would tell her anything if she asked.
“So what did Ian, who you definitely don’t like, do with the Lipins that’s got Dad so worked up?” Nate’s question returned Kelsey’s thoughts to the present.
“He struck some sort of marketing deal with the Bay Song,” she said, getting out a spoon.
“Is Lydia still running that?”
Kelsey shrugged before recalling that Nate couldn’t see her while she was stirring the soup. “As far as I know. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“You’re curious about an awful lot tonight. What’s gotten into you?”
>
“Me?” Nate scoffed. “You’re the one freaking out Dad with your heresy. I’m only trying to gather all the facts.”
The soup was still cool, so Kelsey turned up the heat. She was not exactly pleased by the so-called facts her brother was gathering, and she was a little confused about his angle. Nate had left about ten years ago and never returned, which was not something typically done by Porters or Lipins. They might leave temporarily for school, but they came back to help their families stake their claim on the town. Of course, Nate had always lived for adventure, so it hadn’t been surprising that he’d felt stifled in their small town. What no one had expected, however, was that he’d apply to the Forest Service and take a permanent position as a firefighter in the lower forty-eight. Kelsey didn’t begrudge him doing a very necessary and risky job that he loved, but as far as she was concerned, he’d lost his right to question her actions when it came to the tricky side of living in Helen.
“Are you going to lecture me or tell me to apologize?” she asked. “Because my dinner is almost ready, and if we’re going to argue, I’d like to do it before eating.”
“I’m not arguing with you, and I need to get my own dinner. I’m checking in because I told Dad I would; that’s all. I’ve concluded that you are fine. In denial or lying to me about this Ian guy, but otherwise acting normal.”
Kelsey let out a breath. That was a relief, and smart of her brother. She’d have hated to have to yell at him about judging her when he’d skipped town. “Good. Want to see your dog nephews and niece before you go?”
“Of course.”
Kelsey gave the soup another stir, then brought the phone over to the huskies. Hearing Nate but only seeing part of him on the small screen never failed to confuse the dogs, and their reaction never failed to amuse Kelsey. Naturally, her brother only hung up once the dogs were good and riled, leaving her to calm them down so she could eat.
Annoying as that was, it was something like normal when so much else was anything but.
22
TRADITIONALLY, YOM KIPPUR was considered a holiday of atonement. It was a festive, joyful time but also one spent in prayer. Ian didn’t pray, but there was a lot he liked about the general concept of the holiday. No work, no eating or drinking—for him, it was a time to reflect on the past year. What he’d gotten right. What he’d done wrong. How to do better.
The evening before, he’d sat through an online service Micah had found, and today, while his friend participated in additional services the same way, Ian tried to focus on the prior year’s decisions and whether the choices he’d made had been for the overall good.
It was proving difficult. The better part of the previous year had involved his move to Helen and opening the brewery. By its very nature, those thoughts led him to think about work, and contemplating work led to him actually doing work. In his head if not in his spreadsheets.
Mixed in with that were his thoughts about Kelsey and the choices he was making regarding her. He should never have let things progress between them the way they had. It had become too much like a romantic relationship, and regardless of what they called it (or whether they refused to name it at all), such an entanglement came with expectations. The issue hadn’t arisen yet, but it would. Worse, it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t feel those expectations himself or subconsciously demand she meet them. Right this very moment, if Kelsey decided to date someone else, he would seethe with jealousy. If she said she couldn’t see him for weeks because she was too busy with other things, he’d be gutted that she didn’t prioritize him.
Since Ian already had expectations about her time and attention, he had to assume she had similar ones of his—ones he had a history of not being able to meet because his work had to come first. Yet he didn’t want to hurt her, and he didn’t want to be hurt himself.
It was probably too late for either of those to be possible.
If Ian had made one major screwup this past year, it wasn’t choosing Helen as the place to open the brewery or striking an exclusive deal with the Lipins. It was letting himself get too close to Kelsey.
But damn did he like her. The thought of calling a stop to what they had was beyond painful already, and Ian didn’t know what to do about it. It was so tempting to tell himself that it was always better to try than to not, but that was a lot of nonsense. Some tries, like a small test batch of beer, were harmless. Other tries, like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, were best left as assumed failures. Ruining things with Kelsey was unlikely to be as lethal as the latter, but it could hurt every bit as much as breaking an entire body’s worth of bones.
Of course, it was entirely possible they were beyond that point already. They were sure getting close to it, which was why he had to reach some kind of decision.
His phone rang, and Ian grabbed it, glad for the excuse to put aside these troublesome musings for a while.
“Hey, Izzy. What are you up to?” Ian glanced at the clock, trying to do a quick time zone calculation in his head.
“Stuffing my face with knishes. Oh wait, you can’t eat yet for how many more hours? I’m sorry.” She sounded gleeful.
Ian shut his bedroom door so as not to disturb Micah and glared at the phone. He’d been doing fine with fasting until now. The very idea of one of the cheese knishes his bubbe bought from the Jewish deli near her house made him want to weep with jealousy. “Glad to see you’re already working on the list of things you’ll need to atone for next year.”
“Let it never be said that I’m a slacker.”
“Never.” They’d both heard enough of that over the years from their father. “It sounds noisy.”
“It is. The whole gang’s here. I’ll pass the phone around in a moment, but I wanted to check on you first. Everything okay?”
Ian propped his feet up on his bed, frowning. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. I keep having these worries. You and Micah up there in the cold north, all by yourselves.” The background noise quieted slightly. Isabel must have walked into another room.
“So the last time we talked and you said your spidey sense was tingling—that was just you worrying?”
“I was right to worry then. Am I right now?”
Ian picked at the thick wool of his socks, contemplating his response. So far the brewery had lost two contracts because of the feud, and there might be more. But as Micah had pointed out, they were getting more demand than they could meet, and they’d been in the process of scaling up operations. As yet, there was no need to think that was a mistake.
That said, the Lipins’ Save Helen Society hadn’t gone away, so there was the potential for more trouble ahead.
Ian’s desire to tell Isabel the truth warred with his desire to prevent her from worrying.
“I don’t think so,” he said at last. “But things are still challenging here. I still worry about you wanting to make the move.”
Isabel clucked her tongue. “And I keep telling you not to. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve started a whole list of places I want to visit and things I want to try when I get there.”
Ian could only imagine. He was probably the most boring person in the world for spending most of his days buried in work rather than going off exploring. Maybe once Isabel was here, he could make the time.
“Like dog sledding,” his sister was saying. “I know you won’t want to go with me, but it looks like so much fun.”
The words I could go with you danced on Ian’s tongue, but he held them in with a smile. Possibly he could surprise his sister when she arrived after all.
If she arrived. Obviously, just like she couldn’t stop worrying about him, he couldn’t stop worrying about whether her moving to Helen was a good idea. He didn’t want his sister dragged into the feud along with him and Micah if he could help it.
“Is that Ian?” The sound of his bubbe’s voice carri
ed, distant but clear. “Pass the phone around.”
Isabel groaned. “Everyone’s holding out their hands. Ready to be interrogated?”
“It wouldn’t be a family dinner without it.” He cringed in anticipation, but his heart ached for the familiarity of it, too, and for all the people he was missing. Sometimes it seemed impossible to understand why he’d traded all that familial Southern warmth for the cold, foreign shore of Helen. Even the promise of seeing Kelsey later couldn’t dull the ache in his heart, as happy as she made him, or drown out the worry that he would never truly be a part of anything here like he had back home.
* * *
* * *
UNFORTUNATELY, WITH NOTHING to do until sundown but reflect on life and everything he was missing, Ian was in a morose sort of mood by the time he and Micah left for Kelsey’s. His friend tried cheering him up via commiseration about missing his own family, but that turned out to be an awful plan that made them both feel worse. So then Micah tried to cheer him up by teasing him about Kelsey, but that brought up the anxiety Ian had regarding their situation. Ultimately, it was for the best that the drive to Kelsey’s was short.
There were two unfamiliar cars parked in front of her house, and when she opened the door, Ian discovered four unexpected faces. Before Ian could ask who the two he didn’t recognize were, three dogs charged over to him and Micah. They were so excited to see him, with their tails wagging and their happy barks, that some of his dour mood slipped away in the chaos.
Once he would have backed out the door. Now, Ian smiled at the energetic distraction. It was nice to be wanted, and he petted each of the huskies in turn. Romeo especially demanded his attention, and Ian bent down so the husky could place his paws on his shoulders, and he gave the dog an awkward hug as if to say, Just look at the two of us anxious folks bonding at last.
It wasn’t the first time Ian had greeted the dogs this way, but it was the first time he’d done so without any trepidation. He’d needed stress relief, and he finally understood why Kelsey insisted her “babies” could provide it. Neither Kelsey nor Micah said anything about his reaction, but he could feel their gazes on him—one proud and the other shocked.
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