“You’re not a Sheeter,” she says.
I bark out a laugh. “I’m not what, now?”
“A Sheeter. It’s what locals call themselves. At least the ones in old Sheet Cake. New Sheet Cake is a whole different town.”
“Sheeters?”
“Yup. It was that or Cakers. I personally would have gone with Caketonians.” She props her elbow on the table and rests her chin on her hand. “I’m sure the town founders had a lively debate before settling on it. Anyway, the point is—you’re not local.”
Her voice is clear and strong, filled with a poise and a vocabulary that belies her age. She looks no older than five or six, by my best guess. She’s adorable and precocious and I could talk to her all day. There’s just something about her I can’t quite pinpoint, like a word stuck on the tip of my tongue or the hazy part of a dream hanging on the edge of my consciousness.
If I were living a different life—one in which I’d married my dream girl instead of losing her—I could see myself with a whole herd of children, ones with green eyes just like this.
“Seeing as how we aren’t Sheeters, shouldn’t you be concerned about stranger danger?” I tease.
“I’m Jo. Just J-O. Now we’re not strangers.” Jo smiles and exchanges her gray colored pencil for bright pink. “Anyway, Mari has a shotgun behind the counter. And Big Mo—he’s the cook—keeps his knives extra sharp. I feel pretty safe.”
I glance over at Tank, who is watching me with quiet amusement. He must not have heard the comment about the weapons.
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Jo says. “Though Mari does have a shotgun.”
I clear my throat. “Good to know. Is Mari your mom? Or … grandma?”
Jo’s pencil pushes so hard against the paper it’s about to make a hole right through the middle. “I don’t have a mom. Or a dad. Mari is kind of like my grandma. And I have the best aunt in the world.”
Well, now I feel like the biggest jerk in the world. I look up to find Tank giving me a dirty look and Mari giving me a worse one. This is, and has always been, my problem. I do and say things with no thought as to the consequences. Until those consequences smack me in the face.
“I bet your aunt is amazing. What are you coloring?”
Jo holds up her book, showing me the cover. I can only stare. It’s a Jaws coloring book. The cover is a cartoon version of the iconic movie poster, thankfully with dark waves blurring the details of the nude woman swimming above the shark’s open mouth.
“I just finished reading the novel,” she says. “Chief Brody is my favorite, but I also love Quint. I like to think the shark just needed a friend.”
I have no response to this. Literally, none.
Jaws is one of my favorite movies—it’s as much about the relationships as it is about a killer shark. But I’ve never read the novel. And this little girl did? Shouldn’t she be into, like, board books or something? I can’t help but be impressed. And maybe a little unnerved.
“Are you coming, son?” Dad gives me a look that says I need to stop overstepping boundaries.
“Yep.”
Before I can walk away, Jo tears out the page and holds it out with a dimpled smile. “I’m not done, but it’s close enough. Keep it.”
I take the page, looking down to see a pastel-hued version of the scene where the shark pops up behind Chief Brody, just before the iconic line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Jo has used the black pencil to tilt the shark’s mouth into a sharp-toothed smile, and she’s drawn and colored white and yellow daisies around his neck. It manages to be terrifyingly adorable.