Page 43 of But For You

“But I was gonna ask Miss Ginny about Cain again,” Kola told his father.

He turned from hanging up his suit beside mine to look at his son. “What about him?”

“Well, last Sunday, I asked Miss Ginny who Cain had babies with when he had to go away, and she said she’d tell me this week.”

“Why did you have to wait a whole week?”

“Because she was gonna look it up,” Kola explained. “I told her it was the evolution people, but she didn’t like that answer.”

Sam squinted and looked at his son. “The evolution people?”

He nodded. “The last time I was at the museum with Pa and Aunt Dyl, we learned about Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man, and so I told Miss Ginny that even though Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were supposed to be the only people in the world, that outside of where they lived, evolution was going on. It had to be.”

“I see.”

“And I told her that’s where Cain got his wife from.”

“But she said you were wrong.”

“Yeah, so I told her she needed to show me.”

Sam sighed. “You know, some things you have to take on faith, buddy.”

“Like God?”

“Yes, like God.”

“Yeah, but maybe God made the evolution people, too, to see which one would work out better. Maybe the evolution people didn’t kill their brothers.”

“I would never kill Kola,” Hannah told Sam. “Maybe I’m a”—she looked over at her brother—“emolution people?”

“Evolution.”

“Evolution,” she parroted.

Sam looked at me.

“What?”

“Can you help me with this so we can go downstairs? I’m starving.”

“Me too!” Hannah said. “I want ice cream.”

“I want Honeycomb,” Kola informed me.

“You can have something much better than cereal.”

“Like what?”

“Like fruit and an omelet or⁠—”

The retching noise he made cut me off.

Normally, I would unpack all my different hair, face, and body products and put them in place in the bathroom, but Sam assured me we certainly didn’t have time for that. I was going to argue, but Hannah announced that she, too, was starving, just like her daddy. I couldn’t very well make my baby wait for sustenance.

Back down in the lobby, everyone else was there so we could walk to the west lawn. It turned out to be a lot closer than we’d thought, and there were white tents set up everywhere with a banner that read Miller-Kage Family Reunion.

Thomas’s oldest brother, Frank—who had planned the whole thing and was much wealthier than his other three brothers and two sisters—came barreling up to us to say hello. A representative from the hotel went to the podium on the dais and welcomed the families to a great time in the valley of the sun. It was assigned seating because people were supposed to mix up and mingle and not just stick to their own family clusters. I walked around, looking for our names, until I found them at a table with an older couple and two beautiful women who had to be their daughters.