Chapter 47: George's Resentment
Mike got back to Meadowlark Lane a little after ten-thirty.
Georgie was in the front yard when he came through the gate, setting up the folding table that Mary kept in the garage for outdoor occasions. He was moving with the specific energy of someone who had returned from an evening that had gone differently than planned and was processing it through manual labor.
He looked up when Mike came up the walk.
"Did you and Regina have a thing tonight?" he said. "Like — an actual thing? Or was that just Regina being Regina?"
Mike stopped. "What happened?"
Georgie set down the folding leg he'd been adjusting. "About forty minutes after you disappeared with her, she came back downstairs, told everyone the party was over, and started turning off the lights." He paused. "Not mad exactly. Just — done. Like someone had flipped a switch."
Mike considered this.
"I think we had a miscommunication," he said. "About what the evening was."
Georgie looked at him with the expression of someone who had suspected this answer and wasn't sure what to do with it. "Are you guys — is that a thing now, or—"
"It's not a thing," Mike said.
Georgie nodded slowly, processing. Then, with the pivot of someone who had been waiting to ask something else: "What about Karen?"
Mike looked at him.
"I saw you two talking by the fence for a while," Georgie said, with the elaborate casualness of someone who had definitely been paying attention. "Just talking?"
"We talked," Mike said. "It was a good conversation."
Georgie studied him for a moment. "You're not going to give me anything, are you."
"I'm going to go shower," Mike said. "You're doing great with the table."
Georgie looked at the table. Looked at Mike. Accepted the redirect with the dignity of a man who knew when a conversation was over.
"Hey — how'd it go with that cheerleader you were talking to?" Mike said. "The one from the sophomore class."
Georgie's expression went through several things quickly. He picked up the folding leg again.
"She was asking me questions about you," he said flatly. "The whole time. She wanted to know if you were seeing anyone."
Mike was quiet for a moment.
"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it.
"It's not your fault," Georgie said, in the tone of someone who knew that and was still working on believing it. He snapped the table leg into place with more force than necessary. "Go shower. Mom wants everyone out here in twenty minutes."
Mike went.
Connie was in the kitchen when he came through the back door, standing at the counter with a large bowl of marinating beef and the focused, satisfied expression of someone doing something they were genuinely good at and knew it.
She looked up when he came in.
"There he is," she said. Then she tilted her head slightly, reading him the way she read most things — quickly and accurately. "Party wind down on its own, or did something happen?"
"Little of both," Mike said.
She nodded once, accepting this as a complete answer, which was something he appreciated about her.
"Go get cleaned up," she said. "This needs another twenty minutes and then we're taking it next door."
Mike went upstairs, showered, changed into a clean t-shirt and shorts, and came back down to find Connie covering the bowl with the efficient movements of someone who had done this particular preparation many times and had a system for it.
He sat down at the kitchen table.
"Connie," he said. "What's in this recipe?"
"Family secret," she said, without looking up.
"I won't tell anyone."
"That's what everyone says."
He watched her work for a moment. "How long have you been making it?"
She considered this. "My mother taught me when I was about twelve. She learned it from her mother." She smoothed the plastic wrap over the bowl with her palm. "Some things you don't write down. You just make them enough times that they live in your hands."
"George is going to ask for the recipe tonight," Mike said.
Connie looked at him. "He asks every time."
"What do you tell him?"
The corner of her mouth moved. "Depends on my mood."
The Cooper backyard had been transformed by the time they came through the gate — Mary had been working since the party ended, apparently, because the folding table Georgie had been setting up now held a full spread: cornbread, potato salad, coleslaw, a pitcher of sweet tea, and a bowl of Mary's deviled eggs that George Sr. had clearly already been hovering near.
George had the grill going with the focused, reverent energy he brought to this specific task. He was a man who took Texas barbecue seriously in the way Texans took it seriously — as something that mattered, that had standards, that was worth doing correctly.
He looked up when Connie came through with the marinated beef and his whole face changed.
"Give it here," he said, already reaching.
Connie handed it over with the ease of someone who knew exactly what was about to happen.
George lifted the plastic wrap, inhaled once, and closed his eyes briefly.
"Every time," he said, to no one in particular. "Every single time."
He carried the bowl to the grill with the careful movements of someone transporting something valuable and began laying the beef across the grates with the practiced attention of a man who had been waiting for this specific moment all afternoon.
Mary led the grace.
She kept it simple — gratitude for the win, for George's health, for the family around the table, for food that someone had clearly worked hard on. Sheldon bowed his head with the composed seriousness of someone honoring a commitment. Missy held her juice glass with both hands. Georgie sat with his eyes closed and the patient expression of a teenager who had made his peace with this particular ritual.
George Sr., at the head of the table, had the specific quality of a man who was exactly where he wanted to be.
"Amen," Mary said.
"Amen," said everyone, in the overlapping, slightly uneven way families said things together.
George raised his beer — Mary had allowed him one, with the measured generosity of someone managing a budget — and looked around the table.
"To the team," he said.
"To the team," Mike said.
They clinked.
The beef, when it came off the grill, produced the kind of reaction that good barbecue produced in people who knew what good barbecue was.
George cut a piece, tasted it, and set down his fork with the expression of someone receiving confirmation of something they'd already known but needed to hear again.
"Connie," he said.
"Mm," she said.
"I need this recipe."
"I know you do," she said pleasantly, and ate her cornbread.
George looked at Mary. Mary looked at her plate.
"Connie." He set his elbows on the table with the posture of a man making a formal appeal. "I've been your son-in-law for eighteen years. I have mowed that yard next door seven times this summer. I fixed your gutters in April. I have never, not once, asked you for anything—"
"You ask me for the recipe every time I make it," Connie said.
"—anything significant." George adjusted his argument without breaking stride. "I'm asking now. As your son-in-law, as a man who loves your daughter and your grandchildren, as someone who has genuinely tried—"
"Oh, alright," Connie said, in the tone of someone conceding something they'd been planning to concede for five minutes and had been waiting for the right moment. She held out her hand to Missy. "Give me some paper, shug."
Missy produced a notepad from somewhere — she always had one, for reasons no one had ever fully established — and a pen.
The table went quiet.
George watched Connie write with the focused attention of a man receiving something he had wanted for a very long time. Sheldon watched with academic interest. Georgie leaned slightly to the side to try to see.
Connie wrote for about thirty seconds.
Then she folded the paper, handed it to George, and picked up her fork.
George unfolded it with the careful movements of someone handling a document.
He read it.
His expression started warm and moved, slowly, through a sequence of stages.
He looked up.
"Keep dreaming, you big softie," he read aloud, from the paper, in the flat tone of a man reading his own fate.
The table was quiet for one second.
Then Missy laughed — a real one, the full-body kind.
Georgie pressed his lips together and looked at the sky.
Mary made a sound that was supposed to be sympathy and wasn't entirely.
Sheldon looked at his father's expression and then at the paper and said, with genuine analytical interest, "The handwriting is consistent with genuine effort. She planned that in advance."
"I know she planned it in advance," George said.
Connie was eating her potato salad with the serenity of someone who had no regrets.
"Mom," Mary said, in the voice she used when she was telling her mother to stop without expecting her to stop.
"He asked," Connie said.
"You could just give him the recipe—"
"He's not ready," Connie said. She looked at George across the table. "Barbecue this good requires patience, George. You're still working on patience."
George looked at his wife.
Mary looked at the sky.
"Connie," he said, in the voice of a man with genuine feeling underneath the exasperation, "I just want to make something for this family. The way you do."
A beat.
Connie looked at him across the table — really looked at him, with the unhurried attention of someone setting down a long-held position and picking up something else.
"Get me another piece of paper," she said.
George was on his feet before she finished the sentence.
He came back with the notepad. She wrote. Longer this time — a full page, working steadily, the pen moving with the specificity of someone transcribing something they knew by heart.
She handed it to him.
George read it. His expression moved in the opposite direction from before — something opening up in it, something that had nothing to do with barbecue.
"This is the real one?" he said.
"Don't make me say it twice," she said, and looked away.
George folded the paper carefully. Held it. Put it in his shirt pocket.
"Thank you," he said. Quietly. Like he meant more than the recipe.
Connie picked up her beer.
Mike had been watching all of this from his end of the table.
He looked at Connie.
She caught his eye briefly, and her expression had the specific quality it got when she'd done something she didn't want to explain — the warmth underneath the deflection.
He looked at George, who was patting his shirt pocket like he was checking it was still there.
He looked at the grill, still going, the smell of the evening settling around the table.
True Texans, Coach George had said once, have three great loves. Christianity, football, and barbecue. The order depends on the season.
Mike looked at the family around the table — the grace, the game, the grill — and thought that seemed about right.
He reached for the cornbread.
Later, while Georgie and Missy carried dishes inside and George stood at the grill finishing the last pieces, Mike came to stand beside Connie at the edge of the yard.
She had her Lone Star and the evening air and the satisfied expression of someone who had reached the good part of the day.
"You gave him the real recipe," Mike said.
"Don't know what you're talking about," Connie said.
"Connie."
She drank her beer.
"He loves her," Mike said. "He's been trying to earn your approval for eighteen years."
"I know that," Connie said, with the specific quietness of someone who had known it longer than they'd acted on it.
They stood there for a moment.
"He's a good man," Mike said.
"I know that too," she said.
She didn't say anything else.
She didn't need to.
(End of Chapter 47)
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