"Is that why you and your siblings have botanical names?"
"Babe, you should hear our middle names. Magnolia got off easy with Lynn but Ash's middle name is Indigo."
"That's precious. Bless him and his bespoke-suited heart." Jasper stopped, turned to face me. "And what about you?"
"Wolf."
"What?"
"Yeah. I know. Wolf is a crazy name."
She gave me an owlish stare, her dark eyes round and her lips parted. "That can't be true."
I nodded. "Wild, isn't it?"
She turned her stare to the ground. "No, I mean—wait. I don't know how to explain this."
"Don't tell me your middle name is also Wolf. That would be weird."
"No, I don't have a middle name but you have a very wolfish way about you." She glanced up. "I've thought this for weeks. Since I met you."
"Tell me how you want me to take that, Jas."
"There's no particular way I want you to take it," she replied, her fingers on her temples because she found something about my response exasperating. "Just know that your parents got that one right and I won't be able to sympathize with you on their countercultural ways since it's worked out quite spectacularly for me."
I brought my hand to her shoulder, tugged her close. "I like the sound of that."
"I…I am just trying to process this new bit of reality. You should probably finish your story about dinners and traditions and everything while I have this existential moment."
"Well, my parents made a big deal about making the old ways fit into their lives and getting rid of anything they found unnecessary or overly formal. I've never paid much attention to the details but I know there's a holy war over the right time to eat on Sundays."
"There's a wrong time to eat?"
We continued down the trail, Jasper tucked under my arm and the sun shining down on us. "That's what I've gathered but I gotta be honest, I dipped out of those debates early on. All I know is my parents are on the side of regular evening mealtimes and my grandparents are on the side of post-church services, mid-afternoon mealtimes."
"You know what's funny? We used to do all this ethnographic research to prep the candidate in advance of campaign stops outside Georgia. Regional customs and moments of local culture, even the little things like how it's soda in St. Louis, pop in Omaha, and Coke in Little Rock, even if it's not actually Coke. We can't send a candidate to New England and have them order a milkshake, you know? It has to be a frappe unless you want to get dragged on social media over some local speak. But I don't think I've ever tuned into the demographic divide over mealtimes for Sunday family gatherings. I wonder if anyone has picked up on that."
"It might just be my family."
She sawed her teeth over her bottom lip as she thought about this. "Probably not. You'd be surprised how far seemingly small divides, especially the ones that track back to ethnicity and faith, spread."
"What about you? What are your strange old family traditions?"
Her shoulders went up in a shrug but they never fell. "Don't really have any."
"What do you mean? I thought the South was all about traditions."
"Mmhmm."
She shook out of my hold and moved ahead quickly, leaving me several steps behind. Since my quads were still overworked from all our time spent between the sheets, I didn't match her pace. It seemed like she needed the space, even if I didn't understand. She'd asked about this, hadn't she? Wouldn't she expect me to ask about her family in return?
"Hey. I found your fungus."
I looked up ahead and spotted Jasper beside an old oak. She circled the tree twice before dropping her knees to the ground. I figured it was another chicken of the woods clump because chanterelles didn't grow directly on wood.
"Are you sure about that?" I called.
She didn't respond while I caught up to her and it seemed like I'd earned that, either by questioning her foraging ability or prying into topics she wasn't prepared to discuss with me. When I came up on her, I asked, "What did you find?" Before I let her respond, I closed my hand around her elbow and yanked her up, away from the oak. "Those are not chanterelles."
"What are they?"
"Jack-o'-lanterns and jack-o'-lanterns are poisonous."
She stared down at the large spread of orange fungi. "Oh."
My heart was pounding. It didn't make any sense, not really, since these weren't lethally poisonous. Unpleasantly poisonous, yeah, but that was it. She wouldn't even get sick from touching them. She'd have to eat them before things turned hairy. But I should've warned her not to touch anything. Should've told her what to avoid. What the actual fuck was wrong with me?
I relaxed my hold on her elbow, smoothed a hand up her arm and over her shoulders. "Here's a quick rule for you. Don't touch anything until you've confirmed its identity from two sources."
"Okay but"—she had an indignant set to her jaw, like she objected to me calling foul on her find—"these look exactly like the photos you showed me."
"They do look similar but they're different, babe. These are growing in clumps, see? And they're directly on the base of this oak. Chanterelles don't grow on wood and they tend to pop up without friends nearby." I bent down, grabbed a stick, and angled up one side of the orange caps, pointed to its underside. "See here? These little wrinkles that stop at the base of the stem? They're called gills. Chanterelles have fine ridges that cover the underside and stem."
"You know, I thought we were just wandering around and looking for little orangey things in the forest. I didn't realize this was going to be so complicated."
I looked up at her. I didn't realize it was going to be complicated either.
I pushed to my feet, looped my arm around her waist. "Do me a favor and don't touch anything. Okay?"
She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Under most circumstances, I'd argue with you about that kind of limitation but I'm going to let this one slide."
"Good plan," I said. "Let's turn back, okay? It's probably too late in the season for chanterelles anyway."
I didn't lie to Jasper when I said I wasn't concerned about introducing her to my family today. It wasn't as though I was bringing her home in some significant way. This wasn't like the time Magnolia brought her now-husband Rob home and that was it, the real deal, the this is happening announcement. This wasn't like the time Ash brought Zelda home and they nearly set the backyard on fire with all the sexual tension sparking between them.
This wasn't like any of that. This wasn't permanent and it wasn't complicated either. It didn't have to be. Even if I had a whole lot of fun with Jasper and I was getting pretty good at saving her from herself, this had an expiration date.
"Okay, let me give you some advice." I pulled in behind my brother's Porsche and killed the engine. "My mother is a collector. She picks up broken furniture off the side of the road and takes hand-me-downs from everyone. She'll try to collect you too."