Tyler gave me a huge hug and Tommy threw him a little grief.

“Hugging your best friend?” Tommy sang it in baby talk.

Tyler spun around on his heel and said, “Oh, yeah? Well, who bought you a cake?”

“No one! I see your point, sir!” Tommy said.

“I’m Brian,” Brian said. “And I would like a piece of cake, please.”

“Brian has the best manners in our class,” Tommy said solemnly, as though this was simply a goal beyond his reach.

“Well, I’ll tell you what. If you boys will go tell everyone there’s cake and water bottles, I’ll give you the corner pieces! They have the most icing.”

It didn’t take two minutes for every kid on the playground to appear, hovering like locusts.

“Okay! Anybody got a peanut allergy?”

No one said a word.

“Anybody gluten free or vegan?”

Sounds crazy, but you had to ask these days.

There being no allergies or health concerns that fessed up, I had one last announcement.

“When you’re done, what are you going to do with your plate and napkins?” I pointed to the giant trash barrel to help them out with the answer.

“Put them in the garbage!” came the loud response.

Two of the other women there supervising their charges stepped in to help me.

“Hey, I’m Alice,” one of them said. “This is so nice of you. How can I help?”

“I think we need more cake in our lives,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. Pass out cake to all these varmints?”

“Happy to! More cake in our lives sounds excellent!”

“I can give out water bottles? Hi! I’m Maureen Thomas,” the other woman said.

“That would be great,” I said.

I thought to myself then that these were two ladies I’d probably like to know. They had just stepped right up to help. I liked that. It wouldn’t kill me to have a few friends. But, as we all know, ever since Leslie married Charlie, I’d been captive. Well, enough of that. Momma was completely ambulatory. She didn’t need a nurse. What she needed was the same thing I needed—more fun. Plain and simple. We both needed more fun.

“So do you live on the island?” I asked Maureen.

“Yes. My husband and I just moved here from Nashville. He’s working for Boeing.”

“Wow, that’s a heckuva commute for him.”

“Well, we wanted Matthew to be able to attend Sullivan’s Island Elementary School,” she said. “You know, you make all sorts of unbelievable sacrifices for your kids, right?” She sort of laughed.

“Yeah. Living on the island is a terrible sacrifice.”

And she added, “And I inherited this big old house on the beach when my grandmomma went to her great reward.”

“How cool is that? Well, the school is absolutely idyllic, like something out of a dream.”