“Wait, I’m not done. It gets better. So there’s another goose and she only has one egg. So the goose takes care of it until one day the egg cracks and a little beak comes out.” David looked up at his dad, who nodded, encouraging him to continue. “So the little goose gets out of the egg and the mother goose loves her goosling, and she—” David stopped when he noticed his mother giggling. “What?”

“Nothing, go on,” she said.

“No, why are you laughing?”

“It’s called a gosling,” his dad said.

“Oh yeah, right. Gosling. So the mother goose loves him a lot, but she can’t take care of him the way she wants. So she meets this other goose who didn’t have any goos—goslings of her own. And so the goose becomes a mom. And that’s pretty much the end of it.”

David looked up at his mother and noticed she was staring at the pond. Then she turned and rubbed at her eyes.

“I’ll bet the mama goose takes good care of the little one,” she said.

“Yeah,” David said, mimicking his father. “She loved him like he was her very own.” David reeled his line in and instead of casting again, he looked at his dad. “You know, that’s kind of like the story you tell of the fish.”

“What story is that?” his mother said.

“There’s a mama fish and a papa fish who don’t have any baby fish and one day they find a baby fish and they take him in and he swims with them. Isn’t that how it goes?”

“Something like that,” his father said.

His mother leaned forward so she could see David’s dad. “Sounds like a recurring theme.”

“What does that mean?” David said.

“It means the same thing happens to the characters in different stories. Like in the Bible, when David goes up against Goliath. There are lots of stories about facing giants and overcoming them.”

David cast his line into the water and it sailed high and fell with a plop. “Did you see that, Dad? That’s farther than you cast it.”

“Perfect timing on the release. That was excellent.”

A silence fell between them and there was nothing but the sound of the water gently lapping the shore and the honk of passing geese. Somewhere a lawn mower droned and struggled in tall grass. And there came the call of frogs and crickets welcoming the evening.

David crawled into bed later that night and pulled the covers up. His father entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Did you have fun at the pond today?”

David nodded, then frowned. “But we didn’t catch anything.”