The day passed with feasting, swimming, and dancing. Peg didn’t swim in front of others because it required him to take off his prosthetic and that was something he wasn’t comfortable doing, so he appointed himself as DJ. Foxy didn’t know how to swim, so she played his assistant. Those two kept the music pumping nonstop.

Surprisingly, Miss Wise could swim like a fish and spent the day racing Morty from one side of the lengthy pond to the other. Both sets of twins kept to the shallows, giggling and frolicking as children should do at their ages. Pa, Vance, and Tripp entertained us with their daredevil flips and dives off the rock ledge lining the backside of the pond. It made me nervous, but Pa hadn’t worn a smile for that long at a time since before Mama passed away, so I wouldn’t be doing anything to take that away from him. And that included sitting back while he risked breaking his neck.

I spent the day staying along the edges of the celebration, just soaking it all in. Each one laughing and playing and chatting freely, that was the harvest for me. It was as if the weight we had all been bearing lifted as easily as the smoke rising from the large grill, wafting up to heaven.

As night drew near, the swimming slowed down and the dancing picked up. The small beach became our dance floor. It was pretty comical watching Walynn get shot down by Pa. She would dance close, but he continuously evaded her advances.

Peg cackled as we watched on. “Watch him . . . There!” He cackled again when Pa patted Walynn’s shoulder and turned away from her. The exact same brush-off move he used with us kids when he’d had enough of us but didn’t want to hurt our feelings.

Walynn was a beautiful woman, and the more time that passed, the less tight her clothes became. I still wouldn’t refer to her as modest, but she had become more tasteful in her attire. And she doted on the younger twins in such a loving way that I wished Pa would pay her attention for the kids’ sake if nothing else. Even though it seemed he’d woken up that year, he remained closed to that woman’s affection.

“Poor Walynn,” I said on a snicker.

Peg wrinkled his nose. “Poor Walynn? Shoot, she’d be better off dancing with me.”

“You dumping me for her, Peg?” Foxy tsked.

That was all it took for Peg to put in the Tina Turner cassette tape and drag Foxy to the center of the dancing.