Boston was quick to let Phoenix know he looked like a pirate and renamed him Peg. No one, not even our newly ornery brother, ever disagreed with the Boss, as Pa had nicknamed him, after Boston’s favorite singer, Bruce Springsteen. So the name Peg stuck better than the first prosthetics he had to wear. Thankfully, the doctors finally got that right with the help of the Shriners.

“We want to ride the carousel,” Charlotte spoke up for both her and Raleigh as she always did.

I looked over at my little brother. He was nodding his head in agreement. “The carousel it is.” Holding their hands, I moved through the crowd and started my night at the fair with most of the other tiny tots and mamas.

After riding the carousel twice, we took a moment to watch the bumper cars. Each time a car crashed into another, the impact sent the twins into a tizzy of gasps and giggles. Right in the middle of the action was the mayor’s son, Vance Cumberland, steering his car into others as Malorie Fitzgerald sat beside him, clinging to his arm. Her father owned one of the only two law firms in Magnolia and was also kin to the Duke’s Mayonnaise makers, so of course the town had Vance and Malorie betrothed before they could crawl. I didn’t get it. A political family joining forces with a condiment empire? No. How about Duke’s Mayo and the Merita bread folks? Add a tomato farmer in the mix. Now that would be a union made in heaven.

Even though Vance was a grade ahead of me, I knew more about him than any boy in my own grade, and it was Malorie’s fault. She and I were in the same grade. With our last names beginning with the same letter, we were destined to always have lockers beside each other. Well, doomed was more like it, because I’d already had my fill of all things Vance Cumberland. It was Vance this and Vance that.

Vance just completed his Eagle Scout.

Vance was the best first baseman this county has ever seen.

Vance did volunteer work at the Y.

Vance, Vance, Vance . . . Yuck, yuck, yuck . . .

Malorie squealed and playfully popped Vance in the arm when he rammed two other cars head-on. I rolled my eyes and began leading the twins away from the perfect couple’s obnoxiousness and toward the snack vendors.

Time passed quickly with me helping the twins on and off all the kiddie rides, buying more sweets and then popcorn to tamp down the sugar. We shared a grape slushy while I stealthily watched my classmates run around in freedom from one wild ride to the next. The ring-toss game became the highlight of my night, using the rest of our money to ring three of those crazy-tall soda bottles with the curvy necks.