After the women finished cleaning the kitchen and putting away the food, they joined the men in Miss Bernie’s lived-in den/game room. Soon the photo albums came out and Dominique was regaled with colorful stories of Jake’s childhood. It quickly became evident that Jake adored his brothers, and that Harold had assumed the father role with ease.

“I might not have been able to hunt,” Mike said to Jake after Jake told Dominique that Mike couldn’t shoot the side of a barn. “But back then, you couldn’t drive. Harold, tell her about the driving lessons.”

“Oh, man,” Harold said, clutching his heart. “That boy like to gave me my first heart attack.” He turned to Dominique and continued. “See, I’d spent a year saving up to buy me a brand-spanking-new Chevy Camaro. Let me tell you, baby girl, that ride was tight! Black on black with a wide white racing stripe down the middle, dice swinging from the mirror, fur on the seat, and Cameo blasting from the speakers. You couldn’t tell a brothah that he wasn’t cool! I’d had it for about a month, and Jake had bugged me every single day about driving it. You were what, Jake, twelve, thirteen?”

“About to turn thirteen,” Jake said, smiling at the memory.

“Well, one day we were out at our grandparents’ farm and I guess I was feeling generous because after about an hour of his begging, I told Jake to get behind the wheel. There was this long stretch of dirt road right next to the house so I figured not much can happen, right? Man, I’d barely showed him how to work the gas and brakes when the next thing I knew, brothah man had started the engine, thrown that puppy into drive, and before I could grab the wheel we were off the dirt road, racing across Grandma’s field—”

“And headed straight for Mama’s prized vegetable garden,” Miss Bernie finished with a gleam in her eye.

“Seems like I blinked and there were tomatoes on the windshield, cornstalks whipping past my head ...” Harold couldn’t finish the sentence for laughing.

“Grandma came running out to the back porch with a broom in her hand,” Mike continued, amid his own peals of laughter. “In the meantime, Harold finally got the car stopped. Jake knew he was in trouble and just took out running down the road.”

“With Grandma on my heels waving that broom,” Jake finished. “By the time Mama got through whipping me I’d rather have had that broom upside my head.”

The whole room burst into laughter, and then they were on to Jake’s twin, Johnny, and his shenanigans with stealing the chicken’s eggs.