Page 91 of Moonshine Lullabies

The new batches were going, the recipes accordingly tweaked, and the house was finished. The new fence was up around the property and the sturdy gate was in place. It was fancy, needing a garage door clicker thing to open it automatically when you arrived home and it was sturdy as fuck.

Cy and I had fronted some money, and Cy and his daddy had fronted a lot of the seafood to do a big crawfish boil to entice the rest of the club and the folks around these parts to help put the house to rights with us. Moving everything in from out in the garages.

A sort of ceasefire or unspoken truce had gone up between the Voodoo Bastards and the Bayou Brethren after Swamp Daddy’s had gone up in fire and vengeance and come rainin’ back down in the form of matchsticks.

I had a feelin’ it would kindle some other form of retaliation but for now, things had cooled off an’ we had bigger fish to fry.

“This looks nice!” Alina cried at the back porch and Jess glowed with pride as we passed them up with Jess’s armoire for the bedroom.

Jess had the idea of replacing the curved panel window things with piecemeal reclaimed windows that’d been carefully nailed, glued, and in some places welded together by some of the boys. It wasn’t pretty in places, but that was part of its charm.

It ended up saving money and was way cheaper than the custom window job we’d been quoted, and we’d been able toat leasttake care of the bathroom floor.

It was a long day of work bringing everything back in the house, including the new used furniture for Tate and for Cy’s room that’d been carefully brought together off of places like secondhand apps and social media marketplaces by Jess.

Tate liked his new digs, and so did I. We gave each other a high fived once it was all in place, both of us red-faced and dripping sweat.

“I’m getting too old for this,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”

“Grandma’s cooking,” he said, patting his flat stomach.

Jess died laughing out in the hallway, having overheard us on the way back to our room with a box of stuff.

It was a good day with good food, family, and friends – which unfortunately, by late afternoon, included Hamblin for a hot minute. Jess’s dad and brother mostly kept him corralled and Jess stayed the hell away from him, sticking with the women in the kitchen and in her spaces with Cor and Alina working on stuff.

She and Alina were becoming thick as thieves and Cor was in on that, too but she was fixated on some friend of hers from Texas coming out for a visit in the near future.

Finally, the house was cleared out except for a few brothers passed out on the couch or in a hammock in the backyard.

“Shower?” I asked my girl, and she rolled her eyes gratefully.

She said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Am I going to lose my skin?” I asked with a grin and a wink and she laughed at me.

“Not this time,” she said, coming in and wrapping her arms around my waist. “Ain’t nothing fixing to bring me down today. Thanks for checkin’ on me, though.”

“Always,” I said and kissed her.

“Gross,” Tate said, coming around the corner and Alina pulled back, rolling her eyes.

“You’ll be doing it in no time, too,” she said and her tone was exasperated.

“Mom, I’mfourteen!” he cried and she brought her chin down and glowered at him.

“An’ I’m twenty-eight, what’s your point?” she demanded.

He dragged his head back and gave a confused look and said, “What’s that have to do with anything?”

I laughed. “What’s twenty-eight minus fourteen, bud? C’mon, now. You can do that math.”

He worked it out in his head and his eyes went wide and Jess and I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on his face.

“Well, whatever. I gotta go, my rideshare’s here.” He grabbed a soda out of the fridge and went right back to his room.

“Rideshare?” I asked and Jess wiped tears from her eyes.

“I guess it’s something the kids say nowadays. I don’t know.”

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