He nodded.
“Only our mama spells his name R-e-i-g-h-v-y-n,” the girl explained. “And I’m Paloma, and that’s Wryn.”
“A whole family of birds!” Dove exclaimed excitedly.
Paloma bobbed her head. “Yep, and our last name is Bloom. Like what your flowers do.”
That made Dove smile even brighter, and her heart danced in her chest. That was what made him so unique. God had created him special, just like her. They both had bird names, pretty last names, and they were seven in the second grade. Besides, nobody had ever taken up for her before and protected her like this boy had—nobody but her daddy.
“Do you want to be my best friend, Reighvyn?” Dove asked.
“Yep,” Reighvyn replied shyly.
“This is the first time he’s talked since we left home with Mama,” Paloma explained.
That also made Dove smile.
“We’d better go,” Wryn declared, opening the door and shoving his siblings inside.
Dove hoped she and Reighvyn could be best friends forever.
ELEVEN YEARS LATER
“It’s gonna be different.” Dove pouted.
“No, it won’t.”
“I’m not ready for you to go, Reigh.”
“What’s gonna make this time any different, Dove?”
“I don’t know. It just will.” She pouted as she picked the toenail polish off her big toe. She hadn’t been happy when she selected the color anyway. Her other best friend, Kandi Grace, told her that the pale pink was pretty against her skin. She hated it. She hated summers, end of the school year, new beginnings, and transitions; she hated everything.
Reighvyn nudged her shoulder and smiled at her. “We’ll still be in touch, girl.”
“Why couldn’t we go to the same college?” she asked.
“Because we weren’t accepted at the same college.”
“We applied for the same ones.”
He turned his lips down. “Yeah, I know. It just wasn’t meant to be, you know. You’ll have Myracle and Kandi Grace,” he said of her other two best friends. She had met them the year after meeting him.
“You’re gonna go to college and forget about me.”
“Have I done that in all the years that we’ve been knowing each other?” He scowled at her.
“It feels different.”
“How?” he asked, taking her hand into his.
“You know how. All those times, you were going back home to your mama across town. This time, you’re going to the other side of the country.”
“No different really. I could have not come back all those times. We could have lost touch, and it would have been out of our hands. We’re adults now basically. We can choose to keep in touch or not.”
Dove looked at him. Between the two of them, they both knew after he returned to the Reeds the second time that he would never stay with their mother permanently. By the time they turned ten, they both had a basic understanding of what schizophrenia was, and they knew enough to know that his mother wasn’t emotionally stable and never would be.
“Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, we knew that I would be in and out of foster care, but it didn’t mean I was coming back to the Reeds. On two occasions, I didn’t.”
