I brought Walter and let him roam free. He chose to go run around and play with the little kids, occasionally yapping loudly enough that I knew he was still nearby.

I was on a set of bleachers with Pearl to my left and Old Mr. Ashford to my right. He had Billy and Molly, the young kids who had been running the counter, to his right. They were rowdily cheering for their dad, a man named Greyson, who I learned was Harper’s husband. But the kids weren’t Harper’s. Over the last two days, I’d had more small town back stories unloaded on me than my brain could handle. All I knew was some serious soap opera shit had gone down here in Fairhope, and maybe it wasn’t all over yet.

As far as I could tell, the outcome of the basketball games wasn’t really the point of the gathering. Mostly, people were just socializing on the side, snacking, drinking, and doing anything but actually watching.

There were a few notable exceptions. Pearl’s Grandma Bobo had discovered there was a tournament where a bunch of sweaty, athletic men would be running up and down the court. She had her little chair pulled right up to the edge of the concrete and was leaning so far forward I worried she might tip over. She wasn’t cheering when someone scored. Instead, she was cheering when the action came her way and she got a better look at the men who were playing.

Curtis and Lane were leading an intense game of volleyball off to the side with a group of teenage kids from town. Based on the amount of arguments breaking out, it seemed like they all wanted to win very badly.

“I thought this kind of stuff only happened in TV shows,” I said, nudging Pearl. She’d been unusually quiet so far this morning. I figured maybe she was getting nervous about the upcoming wedding.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “It’s pretty wild.”

“Everything alright?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Everything’s super fine. Perfect.”

Hmm. Her words spilled out one after another, and I didn’t believe a single one of them. “Want to take a quick walk?”

“We don’t have–”

“Come on.” I took her hand, leading her out of the bleachers and down the sloping grass hill behind all of the action. Every step took us farther from the hum of conversation and the squeak of sneakers on the court.

We walked a few minutes in silence until we reached the abandoned town square where the river ran beneath the tiny footbridge. It seemed like the entire town had cleared out for the game. We wandered up to the bridge and leaned on the railing, watching the water lazily drift by, dodging the smooth rocks and bubbling as it went.

“You can talk to me. You know that, right?” I said.

“I know. But it’s nothing, really. I’ve just been thinking a lot about the future, I guess.”

“What about it?” I asked.