Page 35 of Moonshine Lullabies

“House smelled so fuckin’ good,” he told me as I slung the tote of rabbit heads over my shoulder and climbed on behind him. I’d set dinner to cook in the slow cooker before we’d left that mornin’ and he’d helped me cut things up while we’d talked. It’d been nice, and I was lookin’ forward to not havin’ to deal with a whole lot of cleanup or work when I got home.

“Think y’all can wait until I get a shower to eat?” I asked. “I feel frozen to the bone today.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll make you some hot tea while you’re in there.”

I smiled and couldn’t seem to stop all the way home. If it wasn’t so damn cold, I’d probably have bugs in my teeth from it, but it was the right time of year to avoid that.

When we got off the bike, I asked, “You wanna see me feed these rabbit heads to the beetles or can I give ‘em to Tate to dump in the tank?”

“I would very much like to see how all that works, but let’s get you warm. I can always come out here with Tate and have him show me.”

“You ain’t wrong,” I said. “And I rightly appreciate that. I was in the damn freezer a good part of today, takin’ inventory for the front counter and I just can’t seem to warm up!”

“Let’s get you on into a hot shower, then.”

We went into the house and Tate was hard at work at the kitchen table again, which was different. Usually, he did his homework at the desk in his bedroom, but I wasn’t complainin’. It was nice to see my kid. He was a teenager now, and it wasn’t as cool to hang out with his mom.

“Hey, Tate,” Collier said, taking the tote from me. “How about you show me these beetles and help your mom out with feeding ‘em these rabbit heads?”

“Oh, cool! You’re gonna love this,” he said getting up from his seat eagerly.

The boys piled back out the back door and I sighed in contentment.

This was nice. This was real nice.

I hung up my purse and my coat and went on down to my room to get undressed and put on my robe.

The shower was luxurious. I was hungry, and Collier had been right, the venison stew I had cookin’ smelled amazing. Hot stew was just what the doctor ordered when it came to finishing up warming up from the inside.

I threw some garlic Texas toast on a pan from the freezer and got it nice and crisp under the broiler to go with it. I went to switch my electric kettle on to get some tea going only to find it was piping hot and a cup and the things to fix it up were ready to go.

Collier slipped in my way and shooed me off to finish makin’ me a cup like he promised. Boy, didn’t that hit the spot for me?

Dinner was lovely, the boys going for a round of video games. I went on in and put on some old clothes and took myself out back into my little art studio. Putting on my apron, I masked up. Sliding the safety glasses over my eyes, I turned on my lamp and took up my Dremel to work on the skull I’d put down when all hell had broken loose the few days before.

I jumped slightly when I went to quit and realized that Collier had taken up my seat, over in my reading nook to watch me.

“That’s pretty impressive,” he said when I pulled off my ventilator mask.

“I don’t know how or why I got started doing it,” I confessed. “But there’s just somethin’ about makin’ something beautiful from death.”

“Looks elegant,” he said, coming over.

I smiled and asked, “Want to see somethin’ real cool?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. I took up my light and stuck it under the skull and turned it on, the incised loops and knotwork glowing faintly.

“It gets brighter once I get the stone in there,” I said.

“What stone you got picked out for this one?” he asked.

I handed him the gray-green chunk of labradorite with its deep blue iridescent shimmer when you tilted it in the light just right.

Collier gave a low whistle. “That’s somethin’ else… damn.”

“Costs a pretty penny for the stones sometimes, but it’s worth it,” I said.

“There’s this place back home,” he mentioned. “Big ol’ knife store but it had a load of rocks like this down in the basement part. I always remember ‘em being pretty cheap at that place.”

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