Page 97 of Wildflowers and Wide Receivers

“At home with Tyler. He said he’d stay as long as I needed him to.”

She nods her head, then picks up her own bowl, filling it almost to the top. I add some salad to my plate, cut us both a piece of bread, and we both sit in silence as we go through the motions.

“Wow, this is delicious,” I say after taking my first bite. And it is. I can see why this is a family favorite and easily know it could become one of mine.

“Thank you. I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough salt.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” I assure, and I feel these words in the deepest part of my heart. I hope she reads between the lines. If she wants this, us, there’s nothing I won’t do to make it work.

“Want to see something funny? Here, look at this.” I pull out my phone and pull up the video from yesterday. She takes it from me and hits play. I watch her, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she touches a few things on the screen and then her eyes come back to mine.

“What is this?”

“It’s Vivi teaching Molly to dance.” Did she not see? It’s such a cute video too. Vivi holds her hands in the air, palms facing down and she waves them up and down like she’s pounding on a drum. Molly stands on her back legs when she does this and starts dancing.

“I see that, but what site is this?”

Oh, now I understand what she’s asking.

“I made a website for Vivi. Well, I guess it’s for me too.”

She looks back at my phone and then at me. “Why?”

I want to tell her I don’t know, but I do. “John was always taking pictures of her. I used to make fun of him and he took it in stride every time. He used to tell me that one day I would understand. That all the little moments are what mean the most. When he died, I don’t know, I kind of became obsessed with making sure I documented every little moment. I was afraid I would miss something, for him, for me, or for her. And then one night, after scrolling through hundreds of photos, I decided to create a website. I guess it’s my version of a photo album, but I’ve tried to capture everything. Maybe she’ll want it someday; maybe she won’t. Maybe John can see it wherever he is; maybe he can’t.” I shrug. “It felt important to me.”

Her eyes turn glassy.

“You titled this website, Wildflowers and Wide Receivers.”

“I did,” I answer, blushing.

“Why is it plural?”

I chuckle. “Because Wildflower and the Wide Receiver didn’t sound good to me. It sounds hippie and, I don’t know, intimate. It felt wrong, and the plural version felt better. Plus, wildflowers aren’t just her nickname—they’re kind of a mascot for our life. The memories, the painting, the annual pictures, they’re all around us. As for wide receivers, outside of me, we’ve received a lot of love from far and wide over the last two years. I tried not to be so literal with the title.”

“I’m speechless,” she whispers as she looks back at my phone and scrolls through the images.

Other than Vivi, Tyler, and my uncle, I haven’t told anyone else about this site. It’s not that I need to keep it secret, I just want to. It belongs to us, and I don’t need the world to know it exists.

“Am I on it?” She glances back at me.

It never occurred to me that she might not want to be, and uneasiness burns its way into my lungs. Everyone I’ve put on the site has a tag: Sophie, the guys, Kelli. That makes it easy to pull each one.

“Yes,” I tell her hesitantly, again rubbing my hands across my thighs. “I can take you off if you don’t want to be.”

Please don’t make me remove you.

“No, that’s fine. Jonah, I think this is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen.” She slowly hands me back my phone. Now that she knows the site address, I wonder if she’ll go on and look at all the photos? Deep down, I hope she does. I want her to know everything about me.

I scoff. “You won’t think that once you see the one I posted of you eating that giant slice of pizza from Madison Avenue Pizza.”

She smiles a real smile and leans back in her chair.

“Obviously, I’ve seen you taking photos and wondered what you were doing with them. I thought maybe an Instagram account or something, but this is so much better. This is thoughtful and amazing.”

“Thank you. I know a lot of parents have scrapbooks and such, but I get lost when I see how many pictures there are and this makes everything so much easier. I can make categories for each school year, one for back-to-school photos, Halloween costumes, holidays, all of it. Every night before I go to bed, if I have a photo, I upload it. It takes no time at all. Like right here.” I lean over and show her where the categories are and the tags.

“For her whole life,” she whispers. “Does she know?”