carried her around on his shoulders through the woods.
“You used to laugh the whole time. He would jog and turn circles with you way up there. And one time you laughed so hard you wet your pants right on his neck.”
“Oh no! I didn’t.” Kya leaned back, laughing.
“Yes, you did. He squealed some, but he kept on going, ran right into the lagoon until he was underwater, and you still riding his shoulders. We were all watching—Ma, Missy, Mandy, and me—and laughed till we cried. Ma had to sit right down on the ground, she was laughing so hard.”
Her mind invented pictures to go with the stories. Family scraps and shreds Kya never thought she’d have.
Jodie continued. “It was Missy who started feeding the gulls.”
“What? Really! I thought I started it on my own, after everybody left.”
“No, she fed the gulls every day she could get away with it. She gave them all names. She called one Big Red, I remember that. You know, after that red spot on their bills.”
“It’s not the same bird, of course—I’ve gone through a few generations of Big Reds myself. But there, the one on the left, that’s Big Red today.” She tried to connect with the sister who had given her the gulls, but all she could see was the face in the painting. Which was more than she’d had before.
The red spot on a herring gull’s bill, Kya knew, was more than decoration. Only when the chicks pecked at the spot with their bills would the parent release the captured food for them. If the red spot was obscured so that the chicks didn’t tap it, the parent wouldn’t feed them and they would die. Even in nature, parenthood is a thinner line than one might think.
They sat for a moment, then Kya said, “I just don’t remember much about it at all.”
“You’re lucky, then. Just keep it that way.”
They sat there like that, quietly. Not remembering.
* * *
• • •
SHE COOKED A SOUTHERN SUPPER as Ma would have: black-eyed peas with red onions, fried ham, cornbread with cracklin’, butter beans cooked in butter and milk. Blackberry cobbler with hard cream with some bourbon Jodie brought. As they ate, he told her he would like to stay a few days, if that was okay, and she said he was welcome as long as he liked.
“This is your land now, Kya. You earned it. I’m stationed at Fort Benning for a while yet, so I can’t stay long. After that I’ll probably get a job in Atlanta so we can stay in touch; I’d like to see you as often as I can get up here. Knowing you’re okay is all I ever wanted in my life.”
‘‘I’d like that, Jodie. Please come whenever you can.”
The next evening, as they sat on the beach, wave tips tickling their bare toes, Kya chatted in unusual fashion, and Tate seemed to be in every paragraph. There was the time he showed her the way home when she, as a little girl, was lost in the marsh. Or the first poem Tate read to her. She talked about the feather game and how he taught her to read, how he was a scientist at the lab now. He was her first love, but he had dropped her when he went to college, left her waiting on the lagoon shore. So it had ended.
“How long ago was that?” Jodie asked.
“About seven years, I guess. When he first went to Chapel Hill.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“He came back to apologize; said he still loved me. He was the one who suggested I publish reference books. It’s nice to see him now and then in the marsh, but I’d never get involved again. He can’t be trusted.”
“Kya, that was seven years ago. He was just a boy, first time away from home, hundreds of pretty girls around. If he came back and apologized and says he loves you, maybe you should cut him a little slack.”
“Most men go from one female to the next. The unworthy ones strut about, pulling you in with falsehoods. Which is probably why Ma fell for a man like Pa. Tate wasn’t the only guy who left me. Chase Andrews even talked to me about marriage, but he married someone else. Didn’t even tell me; I read it in the paper.”
“I’m so sorry. I am, but, Kya, it’s not just guys who are unfaithful. I’ve been duped, dropped, run over a few times myself.