Page 64 of Final Down

Are we really about to gamble on my baby’s gender?

“It’s a twenty-dollar buy-in, and you can pick a blue ticket or a pink one. Whatever the gender is, I’ll draw the winning ticket from that color bucket. You can enter as many times as you want, and the winner gets the whole enchilada.”

My stomach growls in response to my uncle’s choice of idioms, but I’m soon distracted by the sudden flash of cash every member of my family seems to have brought along for this game.

“Hey, do I get to play?” I fish out a twenty from my wallet and wave it in the air until my uncle acknowledges me.

“I don’t know. You might have some special intuition that gives you an edge, being the mom and all. Reed? What do you think?”

My eyes zip to focus on my dad, and he twists his lips in thought before lifting his chin a touch.

“What color would you pick?” my dad asks, his eyes dimmed with suspicion.

My brow crinkles.

“If I really have some special power and I say my opinion out loud, isn’t that like securities fraud or something?” I reason.

“Hmm.” My dad rubs his chin and continues to stare at me.

“Ugh, fine! I think it’s a boy. I think I’m having a boy. I want to buy a blue ticket. Happy?” I hold my twenty out for my uncle to take, but he consults my dad through a mutual glance for a few seconds. Suddenly, the two of them laugh, and my uncle takes my cash, then scribbles my name on a blue ticket and drops it in the bucket.

“What’s so funny?”

“You.” My uncle chuckles.

“Right? She thinks this family can produce a boy,” my dad adds. “No way she has special insight.”

I know they’re joking, but also,ouch!Maybe I do have insight. Maybe thatisa thing, mother’s intuition and all that. Maybe?—

“I’ll take ten blue tickets, please,” my grandpa says, craning his neck as he holds two hundred-dollar bills over his shoulder.

The laughing stops when he throws in his two cents, or two hunny, rather.

“That’s interesting,” my uncle says, rubbing his chin.

“Are you serious?Hisintuition counts more than mine?” I’m baffled by the logic, but I give up and decide my grandfather issimply adding to the pot. And when I move to sit in the seat near him, he reaches to his right and pats my knee.

“When we win this bet, the cash is yours, sweetheart,” he says.

I hold his gaze for a second, my lip inching up on one side as his does the same.

“Thanks, Grampa,” I say.

He winks and mumbles what sounds like “a bunch of idiots,” and the two of us laugh until the Cyclones take the field for pre-game.

“What about me?” My sister waves a hand from the first row of seats.

“Do you have twenty bucks?” my uncle asks.

She shakes her head.

“Then maybe you can save up for the next family baby pool,” he laughs out.

Ellie’s brow furrows, but when our eyes meet, I mouth that I’ll share my winnings. She seems happy with that, popping her ear buds back in and turning her attention to the field.

“I love that he does that,” my dad says over my shoulder. He reaches over and points out to the field, where Wyatt is taking his time to talk to every player and shake their hands.

“I wonder where he got that from?” It’s something my dad was always good at when he played. He does it still, at practice with the high school kids, and when he’s playing a charity exhibition.

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