“I think your sister will have to go in on Zeke’s shoulders, too.”
Rosie shook her head. “No, me not!”
“We’ll see, cheeky girl,” Tank said. “Maybe it won’t be too deep and you won’t mind the spiders.”
“Me no mind,” Rosie said emphatically.
Leah laughed softly. She had a feeling her little one would mind very much, but she kept that to herself. “This is amazing. I’ve never seen a cranberry bog up close.”
“They’re harvesting the cranberries. See the equipment by the water?” Zeke pointed to the trucks on the far side of the canopies.
“I see it!” Junie shouted. “What’s hawvestin’?”
Zeke went into an explanation about how cranberries grow. “When the cranberries are ripe, the bog is flooded, and that big machine reaches into the water and shakes the cranberries loose from the vines. Cranberries are empty inside, so they float up to the top.”
“They gwow in a circle?” Junie asked.
“It would be cool if they did, but they don’t,” Zeke said. “See the black thing around the berries? That’s called a rubber boon, and it keeps them in a circle. They’ll use a big hose to suck them out of the water and onto a conveyer belt, where they’ll be rinsed and loaded into a truck.”
“Then what?” Junie asked.
Zeke smiled at Leah, obviously not minding Junie’s questions. “Then they’re packed and sold in stores so you can make pies, sauces, preserves, muffins, and about a thousand other things.”
“I wanna make muffins!” Junie looked at Leah. “Can we? Please?”
Zeke chuckled. “Sorry, Leah.”
“Are you kidding?” Leah exclaimed. “I want to make muffins, too.”
They ate lunch by the bog and spent the rest of the afternoon checking out all the arts and crafts and tasting cranberry cookies, muffins, and candies. The bandstand was surrounded by hay bales, pumpkins, mums, and other fall decorations. They danced as a group, taking turns picking up the girls to dance with them. They took loads of pictures, and Zeke pulled both girls into his arms, allowing Tank to dance with Leah. The music was fast, but Tank held her close, and they danced slowly as they gazed into each other’s eyes.
He whispered about how beautiful she was and how happy he was to be in their lives. “We’re going to be dancing at this festival when the girls are old enough to make fun of us and tell us it’s gross when we kiss. I’m falling hard for you, darlin’, and every day those feelings get bigger.”
Leah felt like she might cry, but he stole her thoughts with a tender kiss. For a spine-tingling moment, the rest of the world fell away, and there was only the two of them, dancing at a festival, without shadows of lost loved ones or responsibilities. And then two giggling girls barreled into their legs, and they scooped them up, the four of them dancing together as Zeke took their pictures, and that moment was even better than the first.
When they were done dancing, the girls got their faces painted, and they made their way to the bog. They rented waders, and Rosie ended up wanting to ride on Zeke’s shoulders after all. As they stood in the sea of berries close together so Leah could take a selfie of them, a frog leaped at her, landing right in front of them. The girls squealed with delight. Leah moved, but the frog followed, and when she stepped away again, it stayed with her, sending the girls into fits of giggles. She couldn’t help but feel like it was a sign from River, as if he really was with them. But she knew that was silly and quickly dismissed the idea. A nearby couple offered to take their picture, and as Leah moved between Tank and Zeke, the frog jumped again, landing on the bib of her waders, sending everyone into hysterics and warming her to her core. Sign or not, this was a day to be remembered, and Leah couldn’t wait to get the pictures printed out.
After doing everything there was to do and promising Tank and Zeke she’d forward all the pictures to them, Leah and Tank picked up the tuckered-out tykes and got ready to leave. Leah shifted Rosie in her arms as Tank started following Zeke toward the parking lot. “Tank, don’t we need to go back the way we came?”
“No. Zeke parked here and walked over to meet us so he could drive us back to the truck. I figured the girls would be tired.”
“Our dads used to do