Land of Bones and Tears

Chapter Three

Little Girls

As much as I considered myself the greatest living expert on O’Keefes, they still managed to surprise me. This little girl of Mary Fran’s looked like a typical O’Keefe girl, but I was beginning to find that there was a bit more grit to her than most of the females. Which was good, because if I were stuck on this long a trip with some of the other type, I’d be up on manslaughter charges at the very least.

Not that I’d kill a girl. It would be Luke I’d be after, for getting me to agree to this in a weak moment. As it was, I’d been expecting non-stop chatter, the usual passes that seemed to be required on the part of O’Keefes of all sexes when they were around me, and an energy level that was enough to exhaust a new squadron of Green Berets right out of boot camp and looking at their first leave in months. 

This O’Keefe girl sat quietly staring out the window once we took flight. If I asked her to do something – check on Vasha or get me a drink of water from the cooler – she did it promptly and with a smile. But her attention was somewhere else. Truth was, I wasn’t used to that from anyone, and especially not from a female. Even if I should be thinking of this one as a niece. No if about it, I definitely should be thinking of this one as though she were my own niece, I told myself firmly, pushing out of my head all thoughts of how she’d felt pressed up against my back, long firm legs wrapped around my waist. Damn, Luke would have conniptions if he knew the way my mind was wandering.

I found myself trying to get a rise out of her just to kill the time during the long flight. And because I wanted to figure out what made this O’Keefe tick.

“So, little girl, you heading off to help the Indians? Are you sure you’re up for that? Those reservation redskins can be pretty uncooperative.”

She chuckled. I waited to hear what she found so funny but she didn’t say anything back so I had to prod her. I put on my scariest face – which has scared more than one man who thought he was a tough guy. I glanced over. A faint smile was dancing over her lips, one of those dimples appearing and disappearing in her cheek.  Glancing down at the instruments and making sure everything was okay for the time being, I shifted around in my seat. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared.

“I’m amusing you, little girl?”

She turned to look at me. A light appeared in those dark green eyes. “Yes. I’m finding being called ‘little girl’ a bit amusing, I have to admit. It’s certainly a novel experience.  I mean, take another look. I can’t stand up in here but I daresay my legs aren’t a whole lot shorter than yours!”

She laughed as she stretched out one jean clad leg next to mine. Since she was wearing boots with a couple inch heel on them, it was likely that she would be almost eye to eye to me if we were to stand up. 

I laughed. “Those boots don’t make you a grown up girl – though I will grant you are tall.  And you’d better get a better pair of boots than those fancy things. Those won’t last long in Montana.”

She sighed. “I know. I should have put on my hiking boots but I wanted to enjoy the chance of wearing these. It’s so rare to be around someone not related to me or gay who is taller than me.”

Something in what she said made her sad. It washed over her features and all the animation left. I pretended that the plane’s controls needed my attention to give her time to regain her composure. I’d wanted to rile her up, not bring back sad thoughts. I’d been part of the rescue team down in Haiti. She and her twin sister had gotten trapped in a small hotel that had collapsed in the earthquake last January, sustained bad injuries. This one had a badly broken leg among other things. But what we’d learned during our search for them was that they’d ended up there because they’d been out with two young men on their youth ministry team – two guys who’d thought their outing to a dance club included all the benefits – through to breakfast after a shared night in one room. The girls had balked and walked. They survived – the guys didn’t. Sometimes something as random as that can lead to guilt. You see it in battle all the time. You turn to pick up your jacket from the backseat of the Humvee and somehow a bullet misses you and hits the guy next to you. Random.

Luke would call it fate. Grandfather would call it Destiny – the capital D kind. Me, I called it random. Small r; long as it wasn’t at the beginning of a sentence, of course.

Random.

“Not too many tall guys who aren’t cousins around Pittsburgh, I guess,” I offered.

“Or basketball players, which you’d think was worse, to listen to my family.”

“You’re a basketball player. How’d you get away with that?”

That smile with the dancing dimple again. “After Uncle Danny came out, those of us who came along in his wake could do pretty much anything that was forbidden before. Colette swears that someday my cousin Johnny will commit murder and the family will shrug and say, well, if we survived Danny being gay, we’ll survive this. Of course, now she probably says....”

Her voice trailed off.  The dimple went away. I found myself wanting to see it again. Which was not like me at all. I liked women who...well, a very different type of woman. I told myself I was just being nice to Luke’s niece, Mary Fran’s daughter. What was the word Linton would use? Avuncular. Yeah. That was me. In a few dozen years maybe. After I’d been six feet under for twenty. But even after calling myself on my own bullshit, I didn’t stop.

“So, what would the quick witted Colette say now?”

Silence.

Hmm, trouble between the twins. Well, I sure weren’t no dear Abby, but I would think you wouldn’t need to look much further than that for the cause of the problem. Twins, closer than two peas in a pod, go through a life and death situation. Both come out with serious injuries but they survive, yet one stays close to home and the other one goes her separate way.

Grandfather was too old to be bothered with the problems of young people, hell, young girls were never his specialty, but I wished I had some of his wisdom. He’d helped me so much when I’d helped Luke after his long captivity in Afghanistan. But at least then, I understood what he was going through. And I was his best friend. I was supposed to help. He’d do the same for me. Here, I was just supposed to be delivering this girl, his niece, to the reservation so she could do her work there. Be a social worker. Wasn’t supposed to be her friend.

But she sure looked like she could use one. Especially if her best friend, her twin sister, was falling down on the job for whatever reason. But that was a minefield I was not walking into with my size fifteens.

“We’ve only about two more hours till we get to the border town where I’m leaving you and Vasha for the night. You’ll be okay until tomorrow with her?”

“Sure. She’s a great little girl.” 

Her dimple danced out again as I laughed at the notion of my overgrown wolfhound as a little girl. The flight went by in no time, even without much more conversation. 

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