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“Gotta be fate Whitley Mae Belington.” He had said when we’d both been assigned that number.
Even though I’d let myself soar on that cloud way to many times, on cloud 22, I never thought he really meant it the way I took it.
I wake in the same position I fell asleep with the cord attached to the phone lying on my chest—the phone that is vibrating. I pick it up and see a text.
John Gregory Paul:
Good morning, Whit. Mark, Danny, and I are headed to the lake. Pastor B and Mrs. B are planning to make the trip. You and Nora up for some fishing?
“Mommy”—Nora, who has become a morning person in a week’s time, slides across the hardwood floor and into my room—“Popa B said he and Gram are going fishing. Can we go? Huh, can we?” She dives on the bed and wallops me in the nose with her stuffie as she goes in for a hug.
“Isn’t it too cold for fishing?” I ask, pulling her in tight as my eyes water from the impact.
“Popa B said it’s too cold for swimming, but he didn’t say nothin’ about fishing.” Her little mouth opens in an O before she asks, “How can the fish swim if it’s too cold?”
From my open doorway, Popa B chuckles. “Certain ones swim year-round.”
She moves off of me, grinning. “Which ones?”
“If I remember correctly, at Danny’s family’s lake, there are lots of speckled trout and spotted ones too.”
She jumps up and down. “Are they pretty?”
Popa B gives me a look, which I read as, You wanna handle this one?
“It’s not about how they look, little slugger; it’s about how they taste.”
Her nose scrunches up.
“We eat fish almost every Friday.” Popa B laughs. “These days, we usually catch them at the store.”
When York shows up at the house at eight thirty in the morning, it suddenly hits me that we planned to take Nora out for a girls’ date because she didn’t want her to think Pope was cooler or more fun than us, and I agreed.
“You forgot,” she says, walking in.
“It was set as a reminder on my phone,” I admit.
“Your phone that you mailed in to get fixed.”
“Exactly.”
“Morning, Miss Gwen.” Nora—who is the only one I ever hear calling York by her first name—beams as she walks into the kitchen. “Mommy let me eat cereal in the living room in front of the TV, like she did, when she was little like me.”
“That’s so cool.” York squats down at eye level, and I take the empty bowl with a built-in straw from Nora—it’s the only real way to get her to drink milk in the morning. “You know what else your mommy thinks you’re grown up enough to do?”
“Go fishing?” Nora jumps up and down. “Can we, Mommy? Can we?”
York grabs her hands and looks at her nails. “We’re doing something way cooler than fishing. We’re going to have a girls’ day at the spa and get our nails and toes painted.”
Nora’s little face scrunches up. “Then, can we go fishing at Uncle Danny’s lake?”
“I mean, maybe, but do you really want to get fish yuck on your pretty nails?”
Undeterred, Nora states, “Yeah.”
“Guts and scales and?—”
“What’s guts and scales?” she asks York.
