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“I know what this is,” Sofia said pertly, as she sat down at the table at the diner beside Catfish. “It is a B-R-I-B-E.”
Pope tried to look serious, but the laughter leaked out from him anyway. “Why do you say that?”
“We’re at Belle’s. Tía says I’m un-bearable after sugar and we are going to have sugar so.” Sofia studied Pope with a surprisingly keen stare for a tiny child. “You’re army.”
“Oh, you can tell?” Pope asked, even as Catfish motioned for a waitress to bring over the menus.
“Uh-huh. Papá doesn’t have any other friends,” Sofia said, with the utter conviction of the religious or the young.
Catfish glowered at Pope as Pope chuckled. “Yeah, well. Most people suck, and you will learn that as you grow older, young lady. Now you may have either a milkshake or the key lime pie, but not both. Because yes, otherwise you drive your aunt up the wall and I still need her to babysit you since your various uncles are hopeless.”
“Even Miguel?” Pope asked, naming Catfish’s lawyer brother, the pride of his sprawling family.
“Miguel is the worst,” Catfish said, even as Sofia brightened and said, “He’s the best. He said he’d buy me a pony.”
“What? When was that?” Catfish said, aghast.
“A secret,” Sofia said, grinning sweetly. “And I want pie.”
“Burger for me, you know which one,” Catfish told Pope, fishing out his phone and furiously texting someone. Presumably Miguel.
Pope ordered even as Catfish scowled at his phone and started muttering under his breath. As he looked absorbed, Pope observed Sofia. The anxious tension that’d been eating at him on and off since the morning was back. He’d faced down cartel lords and sniper fire and insurgents and more in the tours he’d done in the SOF and beyond, but nothing had shaken his nerve as this meeting had. The cute little girl with the dark hair and fierce eyes did look kinda like Pope. Something in the jaw, in the eyes. She was wearing a black shirt with a golden Wonder Woman logo over the chest and a bright green skirt that looked like Isabella’s work.
“Why are you called Pope?” Sofia asked.
Catfish must have given her some background. “Uh, well, it’s a nickname. Just like how we call your Papá ‘Catfish’.”
“He doesn’t look like a fish,” Sofia said, very seriously.
“That’s the nature of nicknames,” Pope said, with a glance at Catfish. Nope. Still being ignored. “They don’t always have to make total sense. Usually, they don’t.”
“Why doesn’t tía like you?” Sofia asked.
Catfish looked up sharply. “What? Why’d you say that?”
“You argued with her yesterday at night. Also when you were away, all her friends came over when they thought I was sleeping and she said if she knew that cabrón Santiago was back she’d have stabbed him in the balls.” Sofia frowned to herself. “Like, basketballs?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Catfish said, after a brief horrified silence. “You’re not to say that word.”
“Basketballs?” Sofia looked at him in surprise.
“Cabrón. You cannot say that word. Not until you’re older. No. No arguing,” Catfish told her. “And what were you doing eavesdropping on us? When you’re meant to be in bed, you should stay in bed.”
“I did! For five minutes,” Sofia shot back. “Then I got out of bed.”
“You’re meant to stay in bed until the morning,” Catfish said, rubbing his temple.
“That wasn’t in the terms,” Sofia said.
Catfish glared at Pope as he started to laugh. “Where the hell do you even learn how to talk like that?”
“Tío Miguel says I have to know my rights.”
“F— Goddamned Miguel,” Catfish growled. He started texting again, even as Pope took a long gulp of water to calm down.
“Anyway,” Sofia said, leaning back in her seat, “I know you’re my other papá.”
Water went down the wrong way and Pope sputtered, choking and gasping even as Catfish yelped. “How…?”
“I can read. Duh,” Sofia said.
“Read what?” Pope asked, still coughing.
“I asked Papá before who my other parent was and he didn’t want to tell me, and tía didn’t want to tell me, so I asked Tío Miguel, how does anyone know you exist, and he said, usually there is a ‘birth certificate’. He showed me a picture. So I looked in all the papers in Papá’s room until I found one with my name and Papá’s name on it and yours was on it too.” Sofia took a sip of water and beamed as the food arrived. She cut enthusiastically into the pie even as Pope and Catfish shared a long, speechless stare over the cooling chips.
“You don’t have a safe for important documentation?” Pope asked, rubbing his temple. “Do you even have a filing system or, is something like our daughter’s birth certificate just lying around?”
“It was in a locked drawer!”
“He has a key under one of the plants,” Sofia stage-whispered.
“Jesus, Frankie,” Pope said.
“She’s your kid all right,” Catfish grumbled. “No boundaries and way too smart for her own good.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean? I don’t even.” Pope wasn’t sure if he still wanted to laugh or if he was meant to feel horrified. Was fatherhood this disorienting all the time? “Sofia. Your aunt does have a good reason not to like me. But I hope… well. That maybe, given time, we could get along.”
“That’s it?” Sofia asked.
Pope cleared his throat. “I mean, I know I haven’t been around—”
“Papá’s army friends reaaallly want me to like you,” Sofia said, cutting another precise triangle from her pie. “Uncle Benny said he’d give me ten dollars if I tried.”
“What the hell,” Catfish said.
“Uncle Tom said you might seem like a very serious person at first but you’re actually very nice,” Sofia said, chewing slowly. “He said that a lot.”
Tom. Redfly. Pope ate a chip to cover how the reminder affected him, swallowing the lump in his throat. He looked up to Catfish’s sober stare. “When did they say all that?” Catfish asked Sofia.
“Christmas.” Sofia looked reproachfully at their untouched burgers. “You’re wasting food.”
“Everyone else knew?” Pope picked up a burger without much enthusiasm, his appetite having fled.
“I didn’t tell them. But I guess it was kinda obvious,” Catfish said, after a moment’s thought.
“Really?”
Catfish shot him an amused look. “We started doing… what, a week after we first met?”
“Four days.” That hadn’t been one of Pope’s finest moments, tempted into a quick and dirty fuck under the tarp of a jeep, equally horrified and turned on by the audacity of the new omega attached to his team. Catfish had gotten under his skin quickly and had stayed there, getting only more comfortable over the years.
“They came to see me in the hospital after the birth. No wonder they were so weird about it,” Catfish said. He studied his burger briefly and began to eat.
It disappeared in a few bites, magic as always, and Catfish started to suck the grease off his fingers. It looked a hell of a lot like Catfish was sucking slick off his fingers. The way he had before, many times, years ago, each time to taunt Pope into fucking him again. It usually worked. Pope looked away quickly, keeping his breaths even. No getting turned on in the middle of a goddamned diner, in front of their kid.
“Weird how?” Pope asked.
“Asking all kinds of questions. Whether I’d told you, stuff like that. Then Benny made a joke about keeping it ‘all in the family’, Bill tried to strangle him, and Isabella kicked them all out of the ward.” Catfish stared at Pope soberly. “The Captain, he… A lot of Sofia’s stuff, it’s secondhand. Used to belong to Tess.”
“All in the family,” Pope said softly. He couldn’t finish eating and was contemplative through the rest of lunch.
Pope drove Catfish and Sofia home, and as he pulled up at the sidewalk, Catfish asked, “You wanna come up?”
“Don’t think Isabella was kidding about stabbing,” Pope said, because he’d met Catfish’s sister and she had never liked him. As the oldest sibling, she’d perhaps naturally turned out to be a bit of a den mother, the boss of her chaotic pack of brothers.
“Probably not,” Catfish said.
Sofia perked up. “I want to watch.”
“You’re getting out of the car,” Catfish told her, without looking back. She scowled at him and obeyed, pushing the door open and sliding out. Catfish sat in the car in an increasingly uncomfortable silence, then he started to get out. Pope leaned over quickly before he could talk himself out of it, pecking Catfish on the cheek. That got him a surprised look and a faint smile, then Catfish twisted in the seat and kissed Pope hard on the mouth.
“Blech,” Sofia told them from the door. Catfish laughed as he pulled back, letting himself out of the car and scooping Sofia up. Pope watched them go, his hands twisting over the wheel.
#
Despite Isabella’s best efforts, things settled into a routine. Pope saw Sofia twice a week and saw Catfish whenever Catfish had the time. It was erratic. Catfish was still appealing his suspended pilot’s license and was working two jobs, pointedly ignoring Pope’s offer of more money. The monthly contribution was just going into a savings account. Sofia’s college fund, Catfish had called it. That hadn’t been a surprise. Catfish was SOF, and the SOF prized self-reliance.
It didn’t mean that things sat well with Pope. Benny was out of work as well—recovering from his injury meant he was locked out of the fighting ring for now. Ironhead was back to doing pep talks, though he was doing far fewer than before. “Not like we tried to hide flying out like we did,” Ironhead said, when Pope called to check in on him. “And well. All those questions from what happened to Redfly. They probably put two and two together.”
“You’re being punished?”
“Sort of,” Ironhead said, his voice neutral. “Slap on the wrist. We’re lucky we didn’t get dragged before a military court. Think the higher-ups figured we’d been punished enough.”
“That’s not really how they work,” Pope said.
“I’m guessing they figured someone, not naming names, likely covered his ass by having a secret packet of files ready to go to the major newspapers from a shell company should we end up disappearing into secret trials,” Ironhead said. He waited for a while. When Pope said nothing, Ironhead added, “You should lie low for a while. No offense.”
Pope tossed the phone aside when Ironhead hung up. He had his feet up on the couch, his laptop on his knees and his notebook on his belly as he studied the latest CIA satellite map of the Andes. Thought about transportation and enemy lines and the rate of snow cover. He was still absorbed in the details when the door opened and hit the security latch.
“Little help here,” Catfish said.
“Shit.” Pope set his stuff aside, loping quickly to the door. “I didn’t know you were coming over. Don’t you have a shift at the bar?”
“Bar closed early. There was a shooting nearby.”
Pope unlatched the door and let Catfish in. “You okay?” Catfish didn’t look hurt.
“Yeah, it was just down the block. Life is funny that way,” Catfish said, as he wandered over to the couch. “Makes you think. You spend years of your life hauling ass in the messy bits of the world, getting told that you’re doing it to make America safer. Then we come home, and some guy can walk into some cafe with a gun that he bought legally and shoot four, five people, just like that.”
“Beer?” Pope asked. Catfish didn’t look or sound upset either. Just maybe mildly irritated. That was one other thing about coming home from the war that they didn’t tell you about when you signed up. War rapidly desensitised people to the violence of strangers.
“Yeah, why not.” Catfish sat down on the couch while Pope checked his ‘fridge for anything drinkable. He found a couple of bottles of Heineken in the back and opened them up by the sink. When he walked back over to the couch, Catfish was flipping through the latest pages of his notebook. “Really?” Catfish said.
“Really what?” Pope set Catfish’s beer down on the coffee table and took a swig of his own.
“Thought you’d given up on the cash.”
“It was just an intellectual exercise,” Pope said. A lie, or maybe not. Catfish’s jaw tightened. He tossed the notebook onto the table and took a long gulp of his beer.
“The same kinda intellectual exercise that got the Captain dragged into your last mess, with the rest of us along for the ride?”
That hurt to hear. Pope grit his teeth. “All right, I deserve that, but all of you could have gone home if you wanted to. The money was real, and—”
“And it didn’t matter to you,” Catfish cut in. “You wanted Lorea.”
“Like I said from the start. But. The money was there. And you—”
“I wasn’t there. For. The fucking money,” Catfish said slowly. He drank. “I was there because. Someone. Said they needed me.” He glared at Pope. “And I thought. Hell, I might as well try and make sure that you didn’t get yourself killed before Sofia even got to meet you. Because I knew things would go FUBAR.” He slammed the bottle down on the table. Pope flinched. “So not again, all right? You and your goddamned bullshit… Not fucking again.” Catfish got to his feet.
“Frankie.”
Catfish’s lip curled. “Don’t even call me that. I know.”
“What?”
“People like you. I know the look. You and Bill. Except he calls himself Ironhead still. In his mind. You look at the rest of us and you still see our callsigns. Inside your head. The war’s over for us, Pope. Hell, it should’ve been over for everyone, if the world was remotely… you can stop. You can, but you won’t.”
“What are you talking about?” Pope set the bottle down and got to his feet.
“I don’t even know where to start. I thought maybe now that you’ve met Sofia, the way you are around her… I thought maybe that finally broke you out of it. This.” Catfish gestured at the notebook. “I thought maybe, just maybe, you’d finally decided to try living in the real world.”
“I am,” Pope said, trying to hold on to his temper, to his writhing instincts. He’d never forgotten what it was like to have Catfish get angry with him, rare as that tended to be, but he’d forgotten how bad it could get. Still. It wasn’t in his nature to give in to anything easily. “I look at a world where the best people I know are struggling to get by, where if any of us ever got sick we would be fucked over, where our kids are gonna have to put themselves in debt to get through college. The money in that ravine could make that all go away.”
Catfish choked out a laugh. He shook his head, holding up a palm as he looked away. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“It’s true.”
“True doesn’t mean that it’s right. That money. We killed over that money. Shot villagers… people died. All over that fucking money. And where did that kind of money come from, huh? Was it ever ours to keep? I think it’s fitting. All that blood money, drug money, death money, all of it buried in the mountains of the land it was squeezed from.”
“Poetic,” Pope said flatly. “Poetic justice doesn’t solve anything.”
“Doesn’t start more problems, is what I’m thinking. I… forget it. Fucking. Forget it.” Catfish stalked over to the door. Pope caught up in quick strides, spinning him around. Snarling, Catfish jerked back, but Pope held on to his wrist. “Let me go,” Catfish hissed, “or I swear to God—”
“You’d what, huh? You know I’m right. And I wasn’t going to ask any of you to come along. You’ve all been through enough, I see that.”
Catfish shot him an incredulous stare. “You still don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
“Will you stop trying to get yourself killed? I don’t want you to die,” Catfish yelled. He pulled free with a sharp tug. When Pope reached for him Catfish bared his teeth and swung a punch at Pope’s jaw. He’d gotten slower. Pope stepped out of the way, blocked the next swing.
“Frankie,” Pope said, ducking out of the way of a jab. “Calm down.”
“I’ll get you fucking calmed down,” Catfish snapped. He kicked at Pope’s knee. As Pope stepped to the side he realised it was a feint—Catfish barreled into him, grappling him to the ground with a loud thump. They struggled on the ground until Pope twisted free and onto Catfish’s back, yanking an arm behind his back to pin him.
“Calm down, Catfish,” Pope said.
Someone from the floor below knocked loudly against the ceiling. They both froze. In the long silence that followed, Catfish squirmed. “I used to hate that nickname.”
“I hated mine too. At the start.” Pope carefully let Catfish go, but he didn’t get off him. He could smell Catfish’s sweat on the air, the lingering omega scent. “I wasn’t going to just… fly off by myself. I’d have had a plan.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen those.” Catfish sounded unimpressed. “Can I go now? Get off, pendejo. You’re heavy.”
“Calm down. I don’t… I don’t like it. When you’re mad at me,” Pope confessed. He’d never admitted it to anyone, though the Captain probably knew. “I can’t stand it. If I didn’t watch myself, I’d just try to do whatever it takes. To make that go away.”
Catfish was silent for a while. He twisted around and pushed himself up into a sitting position with Pope in his lap. “Hasn’t happened often,” Catfish said.
“Yeah,” Pope said. He was instinctively starting to relax now that Catfish was relaxed. They’d been out of each other’s lives for years, but Catfish had always been right there, a part of who Pope was.
“We’re not bonded,” Catfish said, after another long silence.
“Maybe not,” Pope said. He kept his hands to himself, even as his fingers twitched. “But it’s close. Been that way for years.”
“I didn’t even… I guess I should’ve known.” Catfish stared at him, wary. “How long have you known?”
“I’ve suspected it for a while.”
Catfish huffed. He stared up at the ceiling. “And you still came back to pull me right onto your bullshit. Even though I told you I had a kid, you. You are such an asshole.”
“Never denied that,” Pope said. Catfish didn’t move, but he only huffed again and fell silent. “I wasn’t sure how I felt. When you told me you’d had a kid with someone else.”
“Wasn’t sure?” Catfish glanced at him, amused.
“Okay, fine. I was pretty jealous.”
“Yeah, I saw that.” Catfish clapped a hand against Pope’s knee. “Hypocrite. Given the company you were keeping in Colombia.”
“I wasn’t sleeping with Yovanna, Christ.”
“You don’t have to lie or anything. I’m not the jealous type,” Catfish said, grinning slyly, “because I’m actually mature.”
“I haven’t slept with anyone other than you since I met you,” Pope said. It was harder to admit than it should’ve been.
Catfish stared at him in disbelief. “Bullshit. Can’t be for lack of trying.”
“Ha ha.” Pope got off Catfish and onto his feet, giving Catfish a hand up.
“I wasn’t gonna mind,” Catfish said, still looking surprised. “I mean, I really didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“You have a habit of doing that,” Pope said. He stepped closer. Leaned in, telegraphing the move slowly, giving Catfish time to push him away. When Catfish just didn’t move, Pope pressed a careful kiss on Catfish’s mouth.
“I’d say you were lying to me for points but I don’t think you are.”
“I just never felt like it,” Pope said. He nuzzled Catfish’s jaw. Breathed him in, greedy for his scent. “I wish you told me about Sofia. Earlier.”
“She was an accident that I wanted to keep,” Catfish said, curling an arm around Pope’s waist. “Thought she deserved better than being used as something to tie you to me.”
“I would’ve liked to have the option.”
“Yeah, right. It would’ve gone wrong. Besides. I was hoping you’d get all that shit out of your system first.” Catfish nodded over at the notebook. “All that fugazi we learned about using our guns to solve other people’s problems, it doesn’t work. When we got out I thought, maybe you were telling the truth about Lorea being the last. That’s why I finally told you about Sofia.” His eyes were hard. “You sure as hell turned right around and showed you hadn’t changed that much.”
Fear was seeping into Pope, a novel sensation when there wasn’t a calculable risk of death around the corner. Was Catfish thinking of cutting him loose? “Frankie.”
“I should’ve waited longer to tell you. Just. When you said you were gonna follow that woman and her brother to Australia. I thought it was now or never.” Catfish blew out a frustrated sigh. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“It’s not about you or me,” Catfish said. He stared at Pope. “I just always make bad calls where you’re concerned.”
“So make one more right now,” Pope said, slipping his hands up over Catfish’s shoulders. “Give me another chance.”
“To do what, change? You’re not gonna change. We’re both too old for that. I see that now.”
“To be the kind of father that you think Sofia deserves,” Pope said. Catfish blinked. He let out an unsteady breath and didn’t jerk away as Pope pulled him into a kiss.
They stumbled over to the bedroom, impatient with their clothes, nearly tripping over the shoes and socks they toed off, the belts that they pulled away. Pope could still taste the anger on Catfish and it twisted his instincts, made him want to make things right. It was a good sentiment to hold on to. They weren’t bonded—couldn’t do that outside of a heat, and Catfish was back to being meticulous about his pills—but they were almost there. Close enough. Pope had never wanted anyone as much as he’d wanted Catfish, never felt lust as viscerally as he did whenever he had Catfish pinned under him like this on the bed, the both of them naked and panting.
Pope started to shift down, nipping as he went, only for Catfish to catch him across the back of his throat and tug him back up. Pope shot him an inquiring glance. The last few times they’d had the time for sex, Catfish had wanted Pope to be thorough, to bring him off at least once with his mouth. Pope didn’t mind. Liked it, even. Liked listening to Catfish whine and curse and come apart on Pope’s tongue, with Pope’s mouth sealed over his slick opening or with his cock jammed down Pope’s throat. Catfish kissed him, shoving in his tongue as he spread his legs and thrust up against Pope’s belly impatiently. Pope got the message. He pressed his fingers inside Catfish and found him already slick, squirming impatiently as Pope started to spread him.
“Come on,” Catfish growled. He tugged at Pope’s wrist. “I can take you like this.”
“Maybe, but I don’t want you to,” Pope said. Just as he couldn’t stand Catfish being mad at him, he wouldn’t be able to bear hurting him either. Catfish scowled at him but didn’t push, rocking pointedly over Pope’s fingers instead and clenching down. He grinned sharply at the moan that clawed out of Pope and kissed him, curling a leg around Pope’s waist to urge him on.
Pope tugged up Catfish’s knees when he was satisfied, spreading him wider, taking a moment to look his fill as Catfish licked his lips and smirked. “You gonna start sometime this century or?” Catfish asked.
“Maybe,” Pope said. He started to reach over to the side table for condoms and Catfish slapped him on the flank.
“I’m on the pill,” Catfish said.
“You’ll complain about the mess again,” Pope said, though his voice hitched.
“Yeah, well, this time you’re gonna eat it out of me,” Catfish said, and laughed as Pope sucked in a thin breath. He kept laughing as Pope bit him on the shoulder, digging his nails into Pope’s back as Pope pushed into him.
Catfish wrapped his thighs around Pope’s waist and growled as Pope tucked Catfish’s ankles over his shoulders. He fucked into Catfish in steady, deep thrusts. Catfish moaned each time Pope thrust deep, scratching blunt nails over Pope’s arms. He wailed as Pope tucked fingers between them to touch them both, the root of his wet cock, the sensitive stretch of Catfish’s opening, pulled tight. Pope wished he could freeze time, or slow it down. Hold them both like this outside it, empty the world of everything but themselves. They could spend an age unlearning their mistakes, then another relearning each other, take all the time they needed. Catfish was right. Pope was ill-suited to the real world because he’d never had to live in it. He still wanted to try. For Sofia, for Catfish.
“Harder,” Catfish said, tugging impatiently at Pope’s hips, “like you mean it, harder.”
Pope nodded, gasping. The bed thumped and rattled against the wall as he obeyed, fucking Catfish in brutal little thrusts. Catfish gasped something, an unintelligible curse. His heels slid off Pope’s shoulders and he rolled them over, arching his back with a sigh as he got Pope deeper inside him. Catfish braced himself on the bed and rode Pope roughly against the bed, the springs creaking under them both as Catfish got closer and closer to what he wanted, quieter and quieter. Pope dug his nails into Catfish’s hips, braced his heels and fucked into him. The air burned in his lungs. Release was wrung out of them both in waves. Pope barely registered his knot thickening over the sheer savage ecstasy of having Catfish squeezed down tight around him as he came.
Catfish started to laugh hoarsely once he caught his breath, loose-limbed and heavy over Pope’s lap. “Man,” he said, scratching at his jaw, “I miss smoking.”
“Bad habit,” Pope said. He’d quit it himself during the gig in Colombia, and hadn’t missed it.
“Nine months. No smoking, no alcohol. It was hell at first.” Catfish rubbed a hand absently over his flat belly, through the mess. “Shit.”
“Can imagine.” Pope stroked Catfish’s thighs. He tried to imagine it. This lean, gorgeous omega, pregnant with Pope’s get. “Kinda wish I could’ve seen it.”
“You say that now,” Catfish said, “but I was a mean motherfucker for all of it. Pissed off all the time. Pissed off my brothers, my sister, hell, I even managed to piss Benny off. The only person who just rolled with all my shit and stayed patient through it all was the Captain.”
“He would,” Pope said softly.
“And yet.” Catfish gestured helplessly. “The way he got. Out in Colombia.”
“It was my fault.”
“What? No.” Catfish smacked Pope on the elbow. “Wasn’t anybody’s fault but his, what happened. The way he got. Human greed. It got the better of all of us. Even me. That’s what scared me back there. That for one moment I lost sight of what was really important to me. Flying when I knew we were overloaded… hell, flying through that flight path you picked when I knew it wasn’t gonna work… We could’ve gone through Peru with your informants. Didn’t have to chance that dicey route over the mountains with the weight we had. We—”
“Frankie.” Pope pushed himself up until they were face to face. He kissed the side of Catfish’s mouth when Catfish turned away, his jaw, his throat. Soothing him, the way his body knew how, rubbing his cheek over the graceful line of Catfish’s shoulders. “The bad calls. We all made them.”
“Yeah.” Catfish tipped up Pope’s chin to look him in the eyes. “That’s why. That ‘intellectual exercise’ of yours? Just stop it, all right? Stop. Enough. Surely this is enough.”
“Okay,” Pope said. He tested the word over his tongue, and it didn’t feel like a lie. It was easier to say than he thought it would be, buoyed in wary relief. “Okay. Whatever you want.”
#
“Only one puppy?” Sofia asked. She looked devastated.
Pope wavered, but Catfish cleared his throat and elbowed Pope in the ribs. “One,” Catfish said. It was sunny in the field where the animal rescue was having a meet and greet as part of its open day. “And nothing huge, our place doesn’t suit a big dog. You’re going to need to help take care of it.”
“You already said that. Eight times,” Sofia told him.
“I see you’ve been talking to your Uncle Bill again,” Pope said.
“He owed me fifteen dollars,” Sofia said. She cooed as a small fluffy white puppy ran past beyond the makeshift paddocks.
“Really? Why’s that?” Catfish asked.
“He bet that I couldn’t get the two of you to move in together,” Sofia said, “so I told him, bring it on, and now I have ten and fifteen dollars.”
“Which makes…?” Pope prompted.
“More money than fifteen dollars,” Sofia said.
“Twenty-five dollars, and what do you even need money for?” Catfish leaned over the low fence to tickle a spotted dog behind the ears. It panted and wagged its tail, then rushed on, barking.
“I’m saving money. To buy a spaceship,” Sofia said, absolutely seriously. Pope started to laugh, even as Catfish lifted her up into his arms.
“That’s gonna cost you a hell lot more than that,” Catfish said, amused. “How about that brown one with the white ear?”
“Only one?” Sofia persisted. At Catfish’s nod, she let out a loud sigh. “I want to pet all of them first.”
“Only the ones you’re allowed to pet. Then we’ll do the tour if you want to. After that, you’re going to have to pick. One,” Catfish told her. He drifted over toward the gate of the fenced off paddock and paused when Pope stooped to tickle a curious puppy instead of following them. “Santiago, stay on the ball.”
“Yes sir,” Pope said, chuckling as Catfish pulled a face at him. He caught up.