“It depends on my mother’s mood,” Lila Mae said. “Sometimes it’s both. We always do it in the formal living room, in the same place, with the five of us facing the front window for natural light. Momma and I sit on a couch that she keeps in storage and only gets out for the portrait. Daddy stands behind her with my brothers behind me. Momma hangs each one in an identical gold frame in the hallway upstairs that leads toward my father’s private study.”
“That’s incredible,” Trap said.
“My momma had a picture done every year while she was having kids. It is quite incredible to see myself going from in my momma’s belly, to a baby on her lap, and then a prim two-year-old, then three, and then four. After that, Momma decided every five years was enough.”
She gave Trap a smile. “So I’m immortalized as a nine-year-old, fourteen, nineteen, twenty-four, and twenty-nine. We did the last one last year.”
Thankfully, she added silently to herself.
“Do they expect you to come home in four years and sit for the next portrait?”
“Absolutely, they do,” Lila Mae said. She took another bite of noodles and looked out into the twilight. “My family is steeped in tradition, and one does not break easily from it.”
Trap sat with her in the silence while they both ate, and then he moved his chair even closer and wrapped his arm around her again. “Not all traditions are bad.”
“No,” she said. “I actually like them. They give me a firm foundation upon which to build.”
“I like that,” Trap said. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
She curled into his chest, feeling small and insignificant under the vast sky spreading out before her. She’d often felt like this in Atlanta and then Baltimore, and she waited forthe paralyzing fear and sheer overwhelm to sweep through her, reminding her of how very tiny she was, and how very little she mattered.
But tonight, safe in Trap’s embrace, those feelings did not come.
“I miss them,” she whispered. “At least in quiet moments like this, all I seem to be able to remember are the good things.”
“That’s a blessing then,” Trap said.
While Lila Mae had never thought about good memories as blessings, now she always would. She’d noticed Trap doing that a lot in the past couple of weeks—making her think about something in a different way, and actually changing her view on things. She felt like she was changing for the better, and that was exactly what she wanted for this reinvention stage of her life.
She turned toward Trap and looked up at him. “Thank you for being here with me tonight,” she said. “I’m glad we didn’t go to town.”
He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, his touch searing and hot, his movement urgent, and then fading into something sweeter, more gentle, and yet just as meaningful.
As Lila Mae kissed him back, she was so glad she didn’t have to go through all of these changes alone, and learn hard life lessons about Texas wildlife by herself, or navigate any part of Feline Friends solo. She wasn’t sure what that said about her and Trap, if anything, but she let the stillness and tenderness of the moment flow through her and anchor her to Trap in a way she’d never been tied to someone before.
20
Trap sat almost against the wall, his sister, Laurel, beside him in the pew. She sat next to his momma, and then Daddy took up the end of the row.
As children, their whole family could fit on these side pews, but Trap enjoyed a little bit more room for his adult-sized body and wide shoulders. He stayed seated as everyone else stood when the choir came out and started to sing. His mother threw him a Look-with-a-capital-L, and Trap clapped along to appease her. He usually enjoyed church just fine, but he felt buried by work right now.
When Lila Mae had texted him early that morning and said one of their new stray cats had torn apart the cat room, and she wouldn’t be at church, Trap had wanted to skip immediately. He normally didn’t sit with his family either, but over by Ty and Winnie, Colt and Jonas, and Jake and his brother Carson. They sat a couple of rows back, in the middle, and Ty wished he’d driven himself and sat with his friends.
Jonas sat with his grandmother that day, because Colt had brought Sariah to church with him. Trap thought he was moving even faster than him and Lila Mae, while at the same time hisheart beat out some happiness for Colt, who hadn’t gone on a date with a woman he liked this year—until Sariah.
The song ended, and whispers and shuffling moved through the chapel as people retook their seats and got their kids settled again. Pastor Knowlton collected his notes and took off his reading glasses before he started to approach the microphone.
“Trap,” Daddy hissed, and he looked over to his father. No one in his family had regained their seats yet, because Lila Mae was currently squeezing past his daddy and the pew in front of him.
Trap jumped to his feet, surprise running through him
“Sorry. I’m so sorry,” Lila Mae whispered as she moved past Momma, and then Laurel. His sister scooted down to make room for her on the bench, and Trap ran his hand along Lila Mae’s waist as she arrived in her pretty pink dress.
The soft pink fabric shone, reflecting the light from her hair, and she’d painted her lips a paler shade of rose to match. Everything inside Trap roared into an explosive fire.
“Wow, you look nice,” he said right out loud.
“Travis,” his mother chastised him in a loud whisper that she might as well have shouted. Still, she rarely used his full, given name, and his adrenaline spiked.
