we were chopping up the veggies for the roast and was done before we were. Ain’t that right, Mama?”
Mama Louise nods, spooning another bite into her mouth and watching me and Willow much more closely than Shayanne is. I see the little smile on Mama Louise’s face, though, and that makes me feel like she’s onboard with my thoughts about Willow. I don’t need her to be, considering I’ll do what I want either way, but her approval will make things a whole lot easier when Willow is here. And I’m hoping she’ll be here a lot.
The evening cornhole tournament begins, and I’m immediately challenged by Cooper because we haven’t played in a bit. “You’re going down, Uncle Bobby! Six feet under,” he taunts.
A laugh tries to burst out, but I fight it down, glaring at Cooper instead. We have a stare-off, something the pipsqueak is getting better at, much to Allyson’s dismay, until Brutal says, “Let’s go, boys. The rest of us want to play tonight too. Ain’t got time for your trash talking, dick measuring pre-game ritual.”
I snicker, fighting valiantly not to laugh, but I lose the battle when Mama Louise says with a long-suffering sigh, “Could we not talk about penises tonight, please?”
At least I’m not the only one because everyone else has a moment of shock at Mama Louise, the one who always corrects our language, popping out with ‘penis talk’ like it’s no big deal. Technically, it’s the anatomically correct term, but I can definitely say that she’s not the type to use the term unless it’s talking about one of the farm animals.
The laughter is enough to get the game rolling, with Mama Louise already in the lead without picking up a single beanbag. Cooper kicks my ass, as we all expected he would, me included. “Good game, kid,” I tell him, ruffling his hair. He might win at cornhole, but I can still irritate him a bit in return. It’s good for him, keeps him from getting too big for his britches. For now.
When I try to find Willow’s eyes, I see she’s behind her phone again. She lowers it slightly and smiles. She tilts her head toward Mama Louise. “She said it was okay.”
I sit back down beside her and whisper in her ear, “I told you, sweetheart. You can take all the pictures you want, of anything you want. Especially me.”
The games rage on, cobbler long forgotten and no one paying any attention to Willow or her phone’s camera. She’s turned it on silent and is capturing my family in a way I’ve never seen them. It’s interesting to silently sit back and watch her work, to see how she frames things to give them an intimacy that evokes emotion even through the screen.
She captures Mark and Katelyn talking, their faces close together and the love readily apparent. She snaps away when Cooper loses and flops into the grass in exaggerated pained defeat. She clicks the moment when Sophie and James have a silent conversation, agreeing that they’re ready to go to bed, complete with a yawning Cindy Lou in James’s lap.
I move behind Willow and press the button on the screen to flip her camera. Framing both of us, I look to the screen and see her surprise at seeing us together like this. With her eyes on me, I take the picture. Then she smiles at the camera, and I turn to her, letting every bit of what I feel shine through. I might not be able to find the right words easily, but I know what I’m feeling. It’s early, but it’s the beginning of something deep and powerful.
I know she sees it in the resulting shot because she looks back to me, her eyes wide and unguarded. Without her walls up, I can see the doubts lurking in their swirling depths. “Willow.” I start to say something, though I don’t know what, but instead I see the screen flash out of the corner of my eyes as she takes another shot.
“I know,” she says softly, just between us. “I want a picture of this moment right here so I always remember the moment I knew.”
Fuck. She gets me. Even without words, she gets me. I wrap my arms around her, hugging her tight as though I could crawl into her skin through our clothes, right here in the heat of this summer night.
Somehow, the Earth’s axis hasn’t shifted for anyone else. They’re playing on as though nothing