Three years into our marriage, Vance finally talked me into the idea of having a child. I emphasize a child. I should have known I’d end up having twins, boys at that! After getting those two kicking boys out of my body, I declared two children was my limit and Vance agreed. I did get a little even with them over the whole two-baby trickery, naming them after cities in Texas. Vance thought I’d lost my mind, and we had a pretty heated argument when the nurse came in with the birth certificates, but I’ve never been one to back down and won out in the end.

Brookshire Vance Cumberland was born three minutes before his brother Beckville Archer Cumberland. Brook and Beck may never completely forgive me for their names, but they will learn to appreciate the sentiment behind them, just as my siblings and I did. I love that my mother gave us odd names, and I love that it’s unique to us.

“I’ll call Beck here shortly. Brook is still on phone restriction, correct?”

“Yep. That punk has two more days until his sentence is complete.” I laugh in spite of myself. Even though Brook and his twin are blond carbon copies of their daddy, Brook reminds me so much of their mouthy uncle Phoenix, always popping off at the mouth before thinking it through. For Peg, it appears that becoming an international pilot for a major airline has calmed my brother’s temperament to a more agreeable level. “And you have a meeting, so I’ll call Beck before I start home. I think I’m going to kidnap Boss from the farm.”

Even though Pa leases the farmland to other farmers to work these days, Boss runs the produce stand. Foxy turned him into one fine gardener over the years. He likes to keep close to the farm and our father, but he’s always game for coming out to the lake for a week or two at a time. The weather is perfectly warm and humid, so I think it’s time for another kidnapping, as we’ve come to call it.

“Sounds like a plan, my wife. Tell Dave and Walynn I said hello if you see them.”

The fact that Pa married Walynn took me quite a bit of getting used to. But it turned out that learning the truth of Pa’s imperfection seemed to be the perfect reason for Walynn to finally be able to admit her feelings for him. She stepped into the mother role for not only Knox and Nash, but also for the rest of us Fosters, as if Mama had somehow reached down from heaven and passed her the maternal torch.

I flick the blinker light on and make a left. “I hope Nash and Knox are around too.”

“Be there in a minute,” I hear Vance tell someone, probably his secretary. “Are they back from Zambia?”