Read Yesterday for Free Online Page B

happily. “What are you, Bode?”
    “He’s our brother. Isn’t that right, Bode?” Brie demanded.
    “It’s pretend. You need to know the difference,” Bode said.
    “Is that the same as belonging together? I want to belong,” Sela said stubbornly, tears sparkling in her eyes.
    Callie jumped up, and shouted, “Bode is mine—I saw him first. He lives here. He’s mine! He belongs to me.” Sela and Brie started to cry. Bode flapped his arms in dismay.
    “A long time ago people owned people. They don’t do that anymore. I can’t belong to you, Callie—it’s the law. We go together, but nobody owns anybody else. The only way you can belong to someone is to your mama and your papa. Maybe when I get married I will belong to someone. I have to ask the preacher. I don’t want to be telling you wrong,” he said solemnly.
    “Will you marry us?” Brie demanded.
    Out of his depth, Bode said, “Sure.”
    “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” Brie chortled. “We’re getting married. When?”
    When? “When we get old and go to college and make something out of ourselves.”
    Brie started to cry again. “What if Pearl says we can’t get married? What will we do? We have to mind Pearl, or she won’t love us.”
    Bode thought about his response. Finally, he said, “I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll get smart when we go to college and maybe we can do it then.”
    Callie hated to be put off. “What if we can’t? Will you marry some other girl?”
    “I don’t know, Callie,” Bode said fretfully.
    “You can lie and say you don’t want to,” Sela said.
    “It’s a sin to tell a lie,” Brie said.
    “I don’t want to think about it today,” Bode said. “We said we’re going to do whatever Brie wants to do. We promised, and you aren’t supposed to break a promise.”
    “Let’s go cat fishing. Whoever catches the biggest fish gets a prize.”
    “What’s the prize, Bode?” Sela asked, her eyes shining with happiness.
    “If I tell you it won’t be a surprise. Get the fishing poles and I’ll meet you by the pond.” Now he had to come up with two prizes, one to put under Brie’s pillow and one for whoever caught the biggest catfish. His shoulders slumped with the weight of his dilemma.
     
     
    Bode hopped from one foot to the other, his face a mask of misery. He was waiting for Pearl to finish picking up the picnic basket. “Mama Pearl, I think maybe I told a lie. I told the girls I would marry them. They pester me. I don’t know what to say to them. Is it a bad lie?”
    “Not for now. When you start to grow it will be a bad lie. You can’t marry three girls. You get that notion right out of your head, Bowdey Jessup. Someday when you is growed like a man, you’re going to meet a girl who will love you like Pearl does. She’ll give you fine children that you will love and squeeze, but it can’t be them girls down at the pond. You hear me now, Bode?”
    “I hear you, Mama Pearl.”
     
     
    Bode finished the coffee, his eyes damp with his memories. Seeing Brie yesterday and again this morning had been such a shock. She looked so fragile, so vulnerable. Her tart tongue, her “tell-it-like-it-is” persona was still the same, though. Coming back here for Callie’s wedding would heal her, even everything out for her. It wasn’t that Bode was a mind reader, it was just that he’d been so close to all of them, that he knew instinctively when things were right and when they were wrong. It was almost as though all four were extensions of one another.
    They were grown now, living hundreds of miles apart, but it didn’t matter. They stayed in touch with letters and phone calls, but he only called and wrote on birthdays and Christmases. He didn’t know which he hated more, writing letters or talking on the phone. He did his best to avoid both whenever he could.
    Bode wished for yesterday the way he always did when his memories took him back to his childhood. So many years ago. He could remember the day