“Did you—are you—what is going on?”
“If you have to date someone, at least you picked someone who’s a thousand times better than Dad.”
“Get, Earl,” Flint growls.
Parsnip yells at the bear too.
And Earl finally gets the hint, glaring at all of us as he moseys back toward the creek.
I look at Junie.
“Phew,” she says. “I didn’t have to climb on your back this time. That’s a relief.”
“Junie.”
She looks out the window at Flint, who’s watching the bear meander back toward the old cabin while stealing glances at the two of us through the window. And then she looks back at me. “You should be happy. Even if it’s only for a little while.”
“Thanks, June,” Flint says.
She rolls her eyes, but my cranky, lonely, angry teenage daughter is smiling as she does it. “I know you’ve done worse for a lot longer,” she adds to me.
“You—you know you come first,” I stutter.
“Mom. I’m sixteen. And sometimes dumb. And sometimes ridiculous. But I’m still less than two years from being able to run away for real. If I can leave you in good hands, then I want to. Also, youdoknow it’s really stupid to keep telling me I come first when you never put yourself first, don’t you? Which lesson am I supposed to learn here? Do as you say, or do as you do?”
“This is not the speech she told me she was going to give,” Flint says through the window.
Junie smiles at him again. “I’m improvising.”
Flint shakes his head, then he looks at me. “You wanna go for a ride?”
“Now?”
“Better now than after it gets dark.”
“Go on,” Junie says. “At least decide for yourself instead of for me. But I really don’t want to ever call anyoneDadagain. For the record.”
I grab her in a hug and squeeze her tight. “Do you have any idea how amazing you are?”
“A little bit,” she replies. “Go on. But don’t fall off, or I really will run away again so I don’t have to live with my sperm donor.”
“Junie.”
“I get time to deal, too, Mom. This is today’s method.”
She shoves my boots and a coat at me and shoos me out the door, and honestly, she doesn’t have to shoo very hard.
Flint and Parsnip meet me around front. He dismounts just off the front porch and holds out a hand. “Help you up?”
“You’re here.”
“Been down the driveway all week.”
“Junie—”
“Is a smart, kind, determined tribute to having a really good mother.”
Here I go again, getting all wet in the eyes for the umpteenth time this week.
