June 9

Monday morning began with Mom relating the events of the weekend. This included spending Saturday evening with her cousins and their kids. One of them, Leo’s sister, Zoysia, was marrying a guy in August who worked on a cruise ship, and stood a little shorter than her at six foot, five. Zoysia herself must have been six foot, six, or six foot, seven. Her dad had been six, eleven, before he passed away at 47.
It had been a good time in a small Missouri town.
“Yeah, I could drive from one side of town to the other in five minutes,” Linus had told Lucia over the phone.
“And we are officially related to Alexander Hamilton,” Mom told Collette. “Pretty closely, actually. Your great-grandmother was a Hamilton.”
It was a Trader Joe’s day, and Puck hitched a ride. He had learned how to brush his hair, how to whisper “hot” when he saw a candle burning, and Mom had been teaching him the word “tree” in the late of the afternoon as the storm clouds piled in the west.
By the evening, the rain had begun a drizzle white OLeif sat in the living room chopping sharp white cheddar cheese for fondue.