Page 21 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"I haven't said anything."

"You're thinking it loud enough. I can hear it from here." He adjusts the hat with the seriousness of a man correcting a crooked picture frame. "This is heritage. This is culture. You wouldn't understand. You're wearing a plain shirt like a coward."

"I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't have suspenders sewn into shorts."

"Your loss." He hands me a pretzel the size of a dinner plate without asking if I wanted one, which is exactly the kind of thing Gunny does, and goes back to heckling a rival brewery's booth two spaces down with the enthusiasm of a man who's been waiting all year for this exact opportunity.

I find the twins by the ring toss, and I know it's them before I even see them, because I can hear Eli narrating his own performance to a growing cluster of amused strangers.

"Watch this. I have a system."

"You said that about the Christmas lights too," I say, coming up behind him.

"This system's better." He lines up a ring, throws it, misses by a wide margin, and doesn't miss a beat. "That was a warmup throw. The real throw is next."

Josie's turn comes a minute later, and her ring sails clean onto the third bottle from the left, a perfect, almost accidental arc that makes the booth operator actually applaud. She claims her prize with both hands, a stuffed bear roughly the same size as she is, brown and slightly lopsided in the face in a way that makes it look permanently confused.

"His name is Biscuit Junior."

"Biscuit's going to have feelings about that."

"Biscuit doesn't read." She hugs the bear against her chest like it might otherwise escape. "He's got a little brother now. It's happening."

"Can you hold him? Just for a minute." Josie thrusts Biscuit Junior into my arms without waiting for an answer, already distracted by a face-painting booth two stalls down. "He doesn't like crowds either. You'll understand him."

I end up standing in the middle of Main Street holding a stuffed bear roughly the size of a toddler while Josie gets a butterfly painted on her cheek, and I catch at least three separate people slowing down to stare at the sight of me, arms still full of the lopsided bear, before I decide I've stopped caring what any of them think.

"You're good with him," Eli informs me solemnly, watching me hold the bear like I've passed some kind of test. "Not everyone can hold a bear right."

"There's a wrong way to hold a bear?"

"You'd be surprised."

For the next several hours I get dragged, with genuine physical enthusiasm, from booth to booth, Eli's hand wrapped around one of mine and Josie's around the other, the two of them narrating the entire festival like tour guides who've never once questioned their authority to do so.

"This is Rafe. He owns the brewery." Eli says it to anyone who'll listen, to strangers, to the funnel cake vendor, to a man selling handmade knives who clearly didn't ask. "We work there."

"You don't work there."

"I counted supplies once. That's basically working there."

Half the town watches this parade with open curiosity, eyebrows raised at the sight of Rafe Montgomery being towed through Oktoberfest by two eight-year-olds like he's their personal event coordinator, and I catch more than one knowing look aimed my way, the kind that used to make my skin crawl and today mostly just makes me tired in a way I don't fully mind.

"They've adopted you," Maggie says, appearing at my elbow somewhere near the pie contest with the amused expression of a woman who's been watching this unfold all day. "Might want to get used to it."

"I'm aware."

"You don't look upset about it."

Nothing I could say would improve on the truth, so I don't try, and Maggie laughs like she already knew I wouldn't.

The afternoon wears on in a blur of small, ordinary things I can't quite believe I'm enjoying. I judge exactly one round of the pretzel contest at Eli's insistence, disqualifying his own entry for what I call structural creativity concerns and he calls robbery. I lose two dollars to Josie at a ring toss booth she's suspiciously good at, for someone who claims she's never played before. I eat a funnel cake standing up in the middle of the street, powdered sugar down the front of a shirt I'll never get clean again, and at some point in all of it I stop checking the exits every few minutes the way I usually do in a crowd this size.

"You've got sugar on your face," Eli tells me, delighted, pointing.

"Where?"

"Everywhere. It's very embarrassing."