Pop Tart. Kira Coplin

let a man know you’re interested.’

      Interested or not, boyfriend or not, the Intracoastal Waterway divided her life from his in Riviera Beach, an area known for its high crime rates and levels of poverty. Her parents, as Mrs Dianne put it, were ‘less than pleased’ by the frequent and most times unexpected visits from the wrong side of the tracks.

      ‘She was from another world. Her parents thought I was no good.’

      ‘Yeah, well it turned out that the jerk I was dating at the time was the one that was “no good.”’ She rolled her eyes and fell silent for a moment and I realized she was talking about Brooke’s biological father. Willy grabbed her hand and let out a sigh.

      ‘Said he was too young to handle the kind of responsibilities that come along with havin’ a kid,’ she continued. ‘I’ll never forget that day. I was just sittin’ there crying on the porch of my parents’ house when, lo and behold, Willy stops by…and I needed someone to talk to–told him all about it.’ She smiled warmly at him. ‘I’ll never forget what he said to me that day…“What kind of man would be crazy enough to leave a beautiful woman like you? Shit, and a baby on the way? It’s like getting a two for one deal…”

      From that point on, no matter how much her parents resisted their union, Mrs Dianne and Willy were inseparable and eventually eloped to Miami.

      ‘And then during Desert Storm,’ he said, ‘I lost this damn thang.’ My eyes widened, as he held up his arm, revealing the ‘damn thang’ to be his right hand. Almost more shocking than the stump itself was the fact that I’d spent the last day with the Parkers without even noticing. Then again, with all of the pressures and demands brought on by life on the road, I barely had time to sleep let alone pay any attention to Willy’s extremities.

      ‘Shrapnel?’ I asked. Willy sat there stone faced for a second before erupting into a throaty laughter so boisterous that tears came to the corners of his eyes.

      Answering calmly, as if it were her job to bring him back down to earth, Mrs Dianne spoke up. ‘He never made it overseas.’

      ‘That’s right, I was all ready to enlist–bein’ that I come from a military family–then a damn gator bit the thing right off.’ Willy explaining that he’d ‘been trappin’ gators’ since he was a teenager, though he’d only been ‘state-certified’ since ’90. ‘Lookin’ back, best thing that ever happened to me–my country needed me, but turns out my two-for-one needed me even more,’ he said, looking at his wife. Like the expression Willy was fond of saying–‘you win some, you lose some’–in the very same week his dreams of being a war hero were chewed up and spit out, the couple received an unexpected addition, unexpected because she had arrived two months early.