Bree tagged Jannie's shoulder. “Where exactly did you pick that one up?”

    “Cherise J. She says her mom says you two are, you know, living in sin.”

    I exchanged a look with Bree over the top of Jannie's head. I guessed this was bound to come up in some way or another sooner or later. Bree and I had been together for more than a year now, and she spent a good amount of time at the house on Fifth Street. Part of the reason was that the kids loved having her around. Part was that I did.

    “I think maybe you and Cherise J. need to find something else to talk about,” I told her. “You think?”

    “Oh, it's okay, Daddy. I told Cherise her mom needs to get over herself. I mean, even Nana Mama's down with it, and her picture's in the dictionary under 'old-fashioned,' right?”

    “You wouldn't have any idea what's in a dictionary,” I said.

    But Bree and I had stopped trying to be politically correct with Jannie, and we just let ourselves laugh. Jannie had that “crossroads” thing going on these days; she was right at the Intersection of girl and woman.

    “What's so funny?” Ali asked. “Somebody tell me. What is it?”

    I scooped him up off the sidewalk and onto my shoulders for the last half block of our walk to school. “I'll tell you in about five years.”

    “I know anyway,” he said. “You and Bree love each other. Everybody knows. No big deal. It's a good thing.”

    “Yes it is,” I said and kissed his cheek.

    We dropped him at the school's east entrance, where the rest of his class of minicuties were lining up outside. Jannie called to him through the fence. “See you later, alligator! Love you.”

    “In a while, crocodile! Love you back.”

    With their older brother, Damon, off at prep school in Massachusetts, these two had grown closer than ever lately. On weekend nights, Ali often slept on an air mattress at the foot of his sister's bed, in what he called his “nest.”