Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I looked over at Lucas. “Your grandmother knows you’re reading this?”
He frowned. “She said to learn everything about my mom and then do the opposite. Said it would help me get to know who you are better, too.”
Fucking Fanny. What was she up to? “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for you to be reading these right now. Maybe when you’re a little older.”
He shrugged. “I just started. She talks about you a lot. You taught her how to stop throwing like a girl.”
I smiled. “Yeah. We were close.”
I couldn’t remember the specifics of the parts I’d read a long time ago, but I was reasonably certain it wasn’t something an eleven-year-old should be reading about his dead mother.
“What do you say I hang on to these for you for a while and maybe pick out some parts for you to read? I don’t think you’ll want to read your mom talking about boys and stuff, and that’s what girls usually write in journals.”
Lucas scrunched up his face. “Keep ’em. It was kinda boring anyway.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
“Are we going fishing today?” he asked.
“Did you make us new lures?”
He ran to his bed and crawled under until only his feet were sticking out. His smile was ear-to-ear when he came back out with the wooden box I’d given him and opened it.
“I made a woolly bugger, a bunny leech, and a gold-ribbed hare’s ear.”
I had no clue what the hell any of them looked like, but I knew if I Googled them, his lures would be made to perfection. Lucas was obsessed with everything fly fishing. About a year ago, he’d started watching some reality TV show about it, and his enthusiasm hadn’t dimmed. Which meant I’d had to figure out how to fly fish.
Once I’d been watching a YouTube video about lakes in Northern California to fly fish in, and when I’d mentioned I was thinking of taking him up for the day, he started to recite all the best spots to fish for different things around the lake. Apparently, he’d watched the same video I’d stumbled upon—only about a hundred times.
I took the lures from the box and checked out his handiwork. They looked no different than the ones you’d buy in the store.
“Wow. Good job.” I held up one. “I call dibs on using the woolly bugger first.”
Lucas chuckled. “Okay. But that one’s the bunny leech.”
“I knew that.”
“Sure you did.”
***
“So how’s school going, buddy? We’re getting close to summer break.”
“School’s okay,” he frowned. “But I don’t want to go to Minnetonka.”
My body turned rigid. I knew Lucas’s dad lived there. But I didn’t think anyone else knew that. “Why would you go to Minnetonka?”
“Grandma’s making me go to her sister’s. She lives in the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen pictures. And when she comes to see us, all she does is sit on the couch and watch dumb soap operas and ask me to rub her feet.” He paused. “She’s got onions.”
“Onions?”
“Yeah. On her feet. They’re like weird bumps that are all bony and stuff, and she wants me to rub them. It’s gross.”
I chuckled. “Oh. Bunions. Yeah, they can be pretty gnarly. How long are you guys staying?”
“Grandma said a whole month. Her sister’s having…” Lucas held his fingers up to make air quotes “…lady-parts surgery.”
His delivery would have made me laugh if we’d been discussing anything other than him leaving for a month and going to a place his mother never had any intention of taking him. “She said I’m gonna meet a whole bunch of family. But I’d rather stay home and go to soccer camp.”
What the hell was Fanny up to now? The two of us definitely needed to have a talk when I dropped Lucas off this afternoon. She hadn’t mentioned anything to me about missing any visits, and I’d already paid for the summer-long soccer camp it seemed he would miss. But I’d learned better than to promise Lucas I could make his grandmother see what was best for him, so I attempted to put the topic on the backburner for later and not let it ruin our Saturday.
“How’re things going with Lulu?” Girls were a new topic of discussion lately.
Lucas cast his line out into the lake, and we watched it plunk down into the water at least sixty feet away. I’d be lucky to reach half that. He locked the drag and looked my way. “She likes Billy Anderson. He’s on the football team.”
Ah. Now it makes sense. Two weeks ago when I came to pick him up, he’d asked me if I could talk to his grandmother about him trying out for the football team. She’d told him it was too dangerous of a sport. He’d never expressed an interest in anything but soccer before, and God knows I tried to get him to throw a baseball and football around. But he was almost twelve now—about the age I was when I discovered twelve-year-old Cheri Patton would jump up and down and cheer for me if I scored a touchdown. Damn, that girl had great pom-poms.