I decide to smoke one of them expensive cigars she bought me back from London. This only the second one I even lit. I tasted the first one on my birthday and finished it when Chanterella got here a few hours later. Howie say she look like me even if she ain’t mine. But it don’t make no difference one way or the other, she my daughter, my brand-new baby girl. And, speaking of Howie, here he come. Just can’t let a man have no peace.

“Cecil, you missing the last quarter of the game, man. It’s Detroit thirty-five, Buffalo twenty-one.”

“I’ll be in there in a few minutes, Howie.”

“All right,” he say. He clean up good. Howie woulda been spending the holiday by hisself, so I asked Paris if he could come with us, since we got plenty room in our new Dodge van, and she said no problem. She a whole lot nicer than I remember. Maybe it’s this Randall fella who done put the sparkle back in her eyes. He is a nice young man, no doubt about it. During the first quarter, he told me straight out that not only did he love my daughter, but why he loved her. I ain’t used to hearing no man be so honest with his feelings like that, and I’ma see if I can try it. The one thang he said that I truly prized was how much respect he had for her. “Respect” is a strong word. If I didn’t know no different, I’d swear Paris gave birth to his little girl, Summer, ’cause, first off, they downright favor each other, and, plus, she been all up under Paris since they got here. Paris been stroking that girl’s head, and seem like, the longer she did it, the closer Summer leaned in. She must need a woman to touch her soft like that. I don’t know what her own mama’s up to, but it ain’t none of my business.

They say ain’t no accidents in life. Chanterella was born on my birthday and Paris was on her way back from some health club in Arizona and drove all the way to Vegas just to see her. Then Janelle and Shanice turned right around and drove up the next day, and to top it all off, Charlotte went and did something that almost gave all of us a heart attack: took a train to Vegas to give me Viola’s half of that lottery money and helped me finish sorting the rest of Viola’s belongings since the house finally sold. I took her down to Thomasville and she went and bought the very same dining-room set Vy had on layaway and shipped it back to Chicago.

Charlotte asked me to use some of that money to reopen my barbecue joint so I could stop working at the casino. I told her the only way I’d even thank about doing that was if she was to be my partner. She said that would be kinda hard, living all the way in Chicago, but I told her that weren’t necessarily the truth, ’cause this time around I’d be getting me a certified accountant and a real bookkeeper so we can keep track of the money the way them IRS like folks to do. I told Charlotte she could trust me. That I would send her her cut as long as there was something to cut. She said she’d trust me. I liked hearing that.