Free Beyond Summer by Lisa Wingate

giving the play-by-play while I headed to the front door. “. . . across the living room . . . out the door . . . over the porch . . . down the steps . . . across the . . . my yard. . . .”
    “Oh, my gosh, you got a house!” Dell squealed. “Already? Three weeks ago you were just trying to figure out how to get Cody to think about a house.”
    Was that really just three weeks ago? “Well, you know us. We don’t think for long. We just jump right in.” If I said that to my mother or one of my aunts, they would of tried to hammer some sense into me, but Dell never judged anybody. She wasn’t like everyone back home, who thought that just because you were smart in high school, you had to go make some big-deal life to impress everyone. Dell understood why I wanted my own family and my own place. “I caught a TV commercial talking about these Householders deals, and they mentioned the Blue Sky Hill area, and I knew it was a sign.”
    “Blue Sky Hill?” Dell chopped off the last word like she was holding her breath on it. I’d kind of expected her to react like that.
    “Yeah, guess who helped us move in?” She didn’t answer, but I didn’t wait for her to, either. “Your biological daddy-o. Mr. Terence Clay. We just looked him up when we drove over here to hunt houses. He was actually kinda helpful about it. He showed us around the neighborhood. Our house is, like, five or six blocks from his house, and his studio is, like, right around the corner from here in the back end of what used to be a gas station, but there’s some kind of used bookstore in the front part. You’d think a guy who’s had art in the Amon Carter Museum and his face on D magazine would have a fancier office than that, but that’s where he works—in this big old garage building with the doors open and no air-conditioning.”
    “You called him?” Dell was about a half mile behind me. Most people are.
    “Yeah, I figured, why not? We don’t know anybody else in Dallas. He’s from Pushmataha County; we’re from Pushmataha County. He’s Choctaw; we’re Choctaw. Him and Cody are cousins way back. You’ve got to network where you can, right? If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t’ve found this house. They’d just finished the paint job on it, and there wasn’t even a sign up yet.”
    “ I don’t even call him.”
    “Maybe you ought to. He’s not a bad guy.” Dell had found out about her biological dad, like, three years ago, and in all that time, all she’d done was trade a few e-mails and send him a card at Christmas. If my daddy left a door wide open, wanting to be in touch with me, I’d of been through it so fast the hinges would of been swinging like the front of a saloon. “Terence came over and helped us move in. I said that already, didn’t I? He just showed up. He’s kind of . . . quiet, like he doesn’t say much about anything, but he’s nice. He let me put my pottery stuff in his studio. He said it could stay there for however long we needed—until we were ready for it, which’ll be a while. There’s a ton to do on this house, and, of course, Cody’s gone, and if he’s not gone, he’s studying or crashed out. You know who’s going to be the one unpacking all this junk, and kid-proofing all the plugs, and tying up all the cords on the window blinds? Me. Yesterday, I showed Cody this big old oleander bush by the porch, and, so I’m, like, telling him those are poisonous, and we’ve got to rip it out because of the kids, and he’s, like, ‘Well, duh, just tell them not to eat it.’ Like you can count on little kids to do what you say, and . . .”
    It hit me that I was standing on the curb holding the boxes and blabbering on, and Dell wasn’t making a sound on her end. I had the feeling that always came right before my mama would say, Shasta Marie, don’t you ever think?
    Maybe getting in touch with the biological dad your friend hadn’t really warmed up to in three years wasn’t such a good