Page 147 of Van Cort

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t we be?” Preston didn’t know what Marshall was talking about. Twins were twins. Nothing was right unless the other one was there somehow. “Never getting rid of me.”

Marshall grumbled and kicked some pebbles across at him. “Whatever.” But they both smiled.

“Where have you been?” Mom shouted. “The s’mores are ready.”

“No time for that,” Dad Rhett said as he got up. “We’ve got a ball game to play.” The boys both looked at each other.

“In the dark?”

“It’s barely dark. Besides you two should be able to feel where you are by now.” Dad West chuckled about somethingand picked up a ball, kissing their mom’s hand, before both dads began running with it and throwing it to each other.

Dropping their logs onto the pile, the boys sprinted after their fathers.

Laughter echoed between them all, as their dads cut in to catch the ball from them easily. It didn’t take long for one of them to lift Preston up and swing him around, and before much longer, Marshall was in the other dad’s arms, and they were all splashing and crashing around in the shallow part of the foreshore.

Dad West left at some point, and for the first time in a long time, the boys just played in the water with Dad Rhett. They ducked him, and he ducked them. And then he somehow managed to lift them both and wade back to the shore, with both of them laughing and giggling about some made-up story that he was talking about. They didn’t know what. Didn’t care either. It was just a moment. A moment that showed them what they already knew about Dad Rhett. He might have been stern, but once work was over and he’d been back a while, he relaxed. He became fun again. More fun than Dad West sometimes.

By the time they got back, more s’mores were ready, and both boys sat and devoured all the chocolatey goodness. It dripped from their fingers, stuck their tongue to the roof of their mouth, but neither of the boys stopped until the last one was nearly gone.

“Enough chocolate for you?” Mom asked, as Preston munched through the gooey mess he’d made.

“Umm hmm.”

“That’s all, though. It’s not my fault you stuffed everything in between one cracker. You two will never get to sleep tonight.” She shook her head, but had a smile on her lips as she took another sip of her drink.

They both looked at Dad West as he got up and went into the cabin. “Who wants hamburgers?”

“Hamburgers after s’mores?” Marshall asked.

Dad Rhett chuckled. “Hmm.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We can do whatever we like here. Including eating backwards if we want.” Mom laughed beside him and reached her hand over to hold his.

“You promise? That we can always do whatever we want here?” Marshall looked at Preston and then at their parents.

Both dads looked at each other, and Preston wondered if they still felt that odd feeling, like the shadow of a feeling he had about what Marshall was thinking. Maybe it was a twin thing, but perhaps it was a Van Cort thing.

“We promise.”

THE END