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The whole table goes silent. Jalen’s fork is frozen halfway to his mouth. Daddy’s arms are still crossed, but he’s stopped chewing.

I look at Nik. He squeezes my hand under the table.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “We’re having a baby.”

My mama screams.

She screams so loud the neighbors’ dog starts barking. Then she’s around the table and pulling me out of my chair and hugging me so hard my back cracks, crying, laughing, rocking me side to side, and saying “my baby’s having a baby” over and over into my hair. Then she lets go of me and grabs Nik’s face in both hands and kisses him on each cheek, and the big scary monster who’s been terrifying humanity for three hundred years just stands there and lets her, blinking like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“A grandbaby,” Mama sobs. “I’m getting a grandbaby. Curtis! Curtis, we’re getting a grandbaby!”

We all turn and look at Daddy.

He hasn’t said a word. He hasn’t moved. He’s just sitting at the head of the table, staring at Nik with no expression on his face at all.

My heart’s pounding so loud I’m sure everybody can hear it.

Then Daddy puts his napkin down on the table, real slow, and stands up.

“Nik,” he says. “Come help me with something in the garage.”

“Daddy, no…”

“It’s fine, baby girl.” He doesn’t even look at me. He’s still looking at Nik. “We’re just gonna talk.”

Nik stands up. He towers over my father by a whole foot, maybe more, and my father doesn’t look even a little bit scared. Nik leans down and kisses the top of my head.

“Be right back, Red.”

Then the two of them walk out the back door, and it shuts behind them, and I sit down hard in my chair.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Daddy’s gonna kill him.”

“Girl, please.” Mama sits down next to me, wiping her eyes, and pats my knee. “Your daddy’s not gonna kill that man. Your daddy cried when Jalen’s goldfish died.”

“I heard that,” Jalen mumbles.

“That’s different!” I whisper-yell. “That was a goldfish!”

They’re gone for twenty-two minutes. I know, because I watch the clock on the microwave the whole time while Mama talks about cribs and baby showers and whether I’m too young to be thinking about breastfeeding, and I can’t hear a single word she says.

When the back door finally opens, I’m out of my chair before it’s all the way open.

Daddy walks in first. His eyes are red. He’s got his arm thrown across Nik’s shoulders, which means he has to reach up to do it, and he’s grinning so big I can see the gap in his back teeth.

“This boy,” Daddy announces to the whole kitchen, “doesn’t know how to change a single diaper.”

“Daddy!”

“Not one!” He slaps Nik on the back. “Grown man, rich as all get-out, can’t change a diaper. We’re gonna fix that. He’s coming up every other Sunday ‘til that baby gets here.”

Nik looks at me over my father’s head. His face is perfectly calm. His eyes are glowing, just a little, just for me.

I burst into tears.

We’re thirty minutes up Highway 1 with the ocean black on our left before I finally ask.

“What did he say to you?”