PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
“Uncle David, when I get enough old, will we be able to get married?” seven-year-old Tashia asked as he drove her home from school. She stared at the blur of trees, trying to catch one distinct one in her view. Her dad had to take her mother to another appointment and they would not have been home in time to pick her up, although they should have been at the house by the time they arrived. Tashia heard her uncle’s cough which brought her attention away from the outside environment. She noticed that his face looked funny, kind of red.
“W-what?”
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot. How old do you have to be to get married? About 14?”
“Much older than that,” he chuckled.
Tashia frowned but then decided that 15 might not be a problem. “Well, you remind me a lot of my Daddy. I know I can’t marry him because he’s my daddy, but I thought, maybe you. So, what do you think?”
Her uncle stammered a bit, and she began laughing, finding this to be quite funny, as she had been the one having trouble talking earlier in life. “Tashia,” he finally said, “we can’t get married.” She wanted to know why not. “For one thing, I’ll be far too old by the time you’re ready to get married.” She requested that he narrow things down for her and let her know when was the soonest she could get married. “I think the earliest will be when you’re in your twenties.”
“Twenty?” she gasped. “You’re right, Uncle David. You will be really old by then.” He smirked, and she sat a while considering this. “Actually, that might not be too much of a problem.”
He laughed and she asked him why. “Tashia, sometimes when I’m talking to you, I feel like I’m talking to a grown lady.” She sported her toothless grin at him brought on by the loss of her four front teeth. “There are other reasons, the most important one of which is that I’m already married to your Aunt Kyana.” Tashia folded her arms with a frown. Now that was something she had never considered. “And,” he continued, “family members don’t marry each other.”
Nodding, she conceded that those would be problems they could not overcome. “I guess I’ll just keep being your niece, but that’s real good, too.”
Uncle David squeezed her little hand. “Yes, Tashia, that’s the best.” After a few seconds he added, “And one day, you’ll make some man very happy. …You’ll keep him on his toes, too. One day far from now.” Tashia resumed trying to spot one distinct tree as they continued to ride toward home. She wondered how long it would be until that day came and what that man would be like.
