Land of Bones and Tears

Chapter Eight

Author's Notes: This story takes place at a fictitious reservation, although Montana is home to several of the largest Native American Reservations in the United States today. While this is not intended to be a study of life on reservations, it is intended to be a dramatization of certain issues that do exist there, and to bring attention to those problems. To truly do justice to the culture and religion of these people would be the work of many years; instead, with the greatest of respect, I am hoping to attain the spirit of the subject matter and apologize now for any mistakes in subject matter).

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Early December, Montana

I swore. I’d looked all around the school but saw no sign of Colleen and we were due at the county office, which was thirty minutes away, in twenty minutes.

“Try looking up,” Tommy said. I hadn’t paid any attention to the kid after exchanging hellos with him. He was working on some brickwork in the side yard.  I shot him a stern look as this one always seemed to have a bit of attitude to him.  He flushed and quickly added, “Sir.” I nodded and did as he suggested. Then I swore again, earning an admiring look from the boy. Reminded of watching eyes, I decided to skip yelling at the fool girl and instead sent a text message to Grace telling her that I was delayed by some work matters, would she mind pushing our meeting back an hour or would she prefer rescheduling?  Her quick reply told me that she didn’t mind the change in plans and whenever I could get there—with Colleen of course—would be fine.

Scrambling up to the top of the schoolhouse roof was easy enough, though the ladder leaning against the side of the building was in such sad shape I almost climbed up without it as the safer bet. At least this time she was alone and didn’t have anyone doing his damned best to get her to fall off—not that she wasn’t capable of doing that on her own.  Stepping onto the shingles, which were in sorry shape, I squatted and asked, “If you had your heart set on being a roofer, couldn’t you have saved a fortune in college tuition and quite a few years and just apprenticed with the local union?”

I had to hand one thing to her—she was hard to faze, and even harder to catch at a loss. She just looked up from where she was crouched, hammering down some new shingles and flashed me one of those dimpled smiles.  “I thought about it but they didn’t offer basketball scholarships,” was her mouthy comeback. She didn’t miss a stroke of the hammer but kept on working.  She was good at it, I realized, a bit surprised. I tended to think of Luke’s family, especially the younger ones, as pampered rich folks, used to all the finer things in life.  I knew they were good about giving back, especially a couple of them, but for the most part, they’d all had it pretty easy in life. His brothers worked hard, kind of, but at glamorous careers like acting or modeling, or at professional jobs like doctors and lawyers, or owning their own businesses.  They had no idea what it was like to be a soldier and live rough.  Colleen’s mother was an exception—her family had it tougher because Liam was a slacker and left it to Mary Fran to be the breadwinner much of the time.  It struck me that growing up as Liam’s daughter in a family filled with over-achievers like the O’Keefes, and having more than a fair share of pride, probably explained why Colleen felt that she had to work so hard at so many things that the rest of her peers would not have stooped to. That realization stopped me from reminding her sharply of the meeting we were now going to be late for, and instead made me get up, walk over to her battered toolbox and grab a second hammer.

She flashed another smile at me. “Thanks. This roof leaks worse than my old bedroom back home, which is saying something. And with storms expected for this weekend, I really want to get this done today or we’ll come in Monday to soggy books and supplies.”

“That would be bad,” I agreed mildly. “Though, if you had asked me, I would have taken care of this for you sometime before we were due to leave for a meeting with Grace at the County Office Building.”

Her expression was comical.  The curse that passed her lips would have made Mama Rose, may she rest in peace, wash this granddaughter’s mouth out with soap, if Mama Rose had ever learned Lakota, that is. I laughed.

“Relax. I called Grace and moved our meeting back an hour, but looking at all the work we have here, and how you’re dressed, I’m thinking that maybe we’d better reschedule after all.”

A worried frown creased her brow—an unusual sight.  I didn’t like it. I paused in reaching for some of the shingles. “What, you had your heart set on a fancy lunch in the city? I can still take you over later on, after this roof is done. You haven’t gotten out of here since we arrived, have you, come to think of it. I guess you might want a chance to ….”

“No! I’m happy to take a raincheck on the trip to the ‘big city,’” she quickly assured me, confirming my impression that she wasn’t all that crazy about Grace. The few times that Grace had stopped by to see how Colleen was settling into her job, the two of them had bristled at each other like two cats.  Or a German Shepherd and a toy poodle, Grandfather had suggested. I didn’t bother asking which was which to his way of thinking. I knew his opinion of poodles…and Grace.   I didn’t understand their attitude about her. Grace seemed to be unfailingly sweet and helpful to Colleen, if maybe a little too helpful, but that was only to be expected. She was a lot more experienced as a social worker than Colleen was, I tried pointing out to my Grandfather, when he seemed ready to be indignant on the kid’s behalf. But he didn’t say anything, just raised that damn eyebrow, which made me feel defensive. Later on, though, he made a point of getting Colleen to talk about her experiences in South America and in Harlem...his subtle way of hammering home that in her own way, Colleen was every bit as qualified, and more, than Grace had been when she was assigned to be my parole officer. After all, she was just a master’s candidate back then, and Colleen was a bona fide PhD.

I’d forgotten how sneaky he could be, the wily old man. I sat back on my haunches and considered the girl opposite me. Funny how much she had looked like just another O’Keefe when she was pointed out to me two years ago, one of the many “black-haired, green-eyed pod people” as Brian Kinney, Danny’s partner, liked to call the mess of them. But, ever since that ill-fated Haiti trip, when me, Luke and Linton went down with Luke’s brother John to look for Colleen and her twin in the disaster following the earthquake down there, and I’d been struck by the amazing courage she’d shown when trapped in a collapsed hotel for days, she’d entered the very limited number of O’Keefes who were family to me. Even when she was being a pain in the ass, which was a good part of the time—like now.

“And so, if you are happy with a raincheck, you’re happy with me telling Grace we’ll see her tomorrow, first thing?” I waited, keeping my face expressionless, just to see what she would come up with. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Oh…tomorrow…uh, that would be good except that…you know…I already promised to tutor Noah and Ned, as well as the other Juniors for their SATs, which are Saturday, and then I promised to take Grandfather shopping for some Christmas presents and….”

“Don’t forget the root canal,”  I suggested.

She started to nod, then paused, and looked at me accusingly. “I don’t have any root canal scheduled Colonel Redraven. My teeth are in perfect condition,” she informed me loftily.  I had to laugh.  She pointed to the roof. “You missed a spot. The leaks will not be remedied if you do not cover all of the areas,” she said, her tone very pleasant.

“You are a brat,” I told her.

“So I have been informed.”  The minx winked at me.  I laughed again and told her to pass me some more shingles.

“Hey, Miss Colleen, you need some more help?”  Tommy was halfway up the ladder; his voice was hopeful.

“I could use that work you started finished, Tommy. Didn’t Grandfather say he’d pay you a pretty good wage to get that done?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  I felt the disappointment that weighed down his spirits—he wanted to be up here doing the more dangerous work, and helping out Miss Colleen, laughing with her, not relegated to the boring work on the ground. I once was him so I completely empathized, but it didn’t make me suggest that we let him join us. One, I could tell that Colleen was in fact good at this work, and I was no novice at roofing either. The last thing we needed was a novice slowing us down, and a teen with a bad case of puppy love at that. I’d noticed, even without my grandfather pointing it out in his subtle way, that Colleen was very careful to keep a professional distance with her charges. She was friendly, but never flirtatious, with her demeanor that of a big sister at best, and at worst, a stern but caring teacher.

With only a token amount of grumbling, the boy went back to his assigned job. She yelled down encouragement to him, and thanks for his offer, before turning her attention back to the shingles. We worked in companionable silence for over an hour before speaking. One difference about this O’Keefe than the two I knew best, Luke and Danny, she seemed to like being quiet and only talked when she had something to say. I loved both the Hound and the Pup but man, those two could talk a man’s ears off. Though in truth, when I got Luke back from being a POW, I missed the sound of his voice—took me months to get him back to talking and he never was quite the same as before, though he’s a lot closer now than he’d been, now that he’s got his boy back in his life and some of the secrets off his chest.  But other than that difference, it was almost like being back with Luke. We worked well together, me and Colleen.  She’d pass a tool or more shingles almost before I knew I needed them, and I was ready with a bit of muscle when she got to those patches that needed more than she had—though she had a fair share of her own. Tough girl. But a quiet one when she was focused on getting something done, which I could appreciate.

I wondered if it was the weight of secrets that had this girl, who seemed like she was naturally more of a cheerful type, like Luke, so prone to falling silent and getting lost in her own thoughts.

“Penny for them?” I asked, falling back on the old chestnut.

She glanced over her shoulder and gave me a smile. “Nah, you’d be overpaying. Besides, I would think you’d be glad of the peace and quiet. Living here on the reservation again has to be very different from what you’re used to. You stay in some remote, Xanadu type retreat area when you aren’t on a mission, don’t you?” 

I didn’t bother asking how she knew that, and ignored the Xanadu crack, she seemed to have a way of deducing information from very little so it wasn’t likely that either of her uncles that knew where Luke, Linton and I lived had told her; she probably just made some educated guesses. Or questioned Vasha, I thought, grinning, she and my dog did a lot of chatting, I’d noticed, though the conversations were a bit one-sided.

“Yes and no,” was all I said. She waited for more and when I didn’t elaborate, she laughed. “Spoken like a true spy. Colette and I used to….” She clammed up then, as she always did when she slipped and mentioned her twin.  I pretended not to notice, though I’d have to be stupid by this point not to have noticed how any reference to her twin caused her to get that frozen look. I wished she’d talk about it but I wasn’t one to force confidences.  Time for a new topic.

“Any more trouble with the police around here?” 

This was the longest we’d been in each other’s company since arriving. Somehow, with one thing or another, we’d both been busy with other things for the first couple of weeks and then I’d been away for the past week taking care of some Alliance issues over the border. Before I left, I made a point of making time to have a talk with the local chief. He’d promised me there would be no more aggressive action by his men, and that the officer who had the inappropriate ideas about the way to act around teenage girls had been reassigned after the new young social worker had filed a report. Grace had recommended the transfer as the best way to handle the situation and the kids seemed content, but I was left with a niggling sense that the old Grace wouldn’t have left it like that. We hadn’t left it like that when she was assaulted and I was attacked. Back then, when things were far harder to fight, we’d taken it all the way. I hinted as much to her but she had been shocked that I thought the cases were at all the same.

“You were almost killed, Steven! I was almost raped! How can you possibly equate that with that young Tommy being shaken a bit and the Silverbear girl having her arm grasped?”

I’d assured her I didn’t see them as the same…and yet…in my mind, I didn’t see it as all that different either. That boy Tommy wasn’t just shaken. I saw the bruises on him and he was left with a mark on his face, a thin scar. If the cop felt comfortable doing that in broad daylight, in front of his buddies and witnesses, what else took place when people weren’t around? Our attackers had been young people pretty much the same age as me.

I knew Colleen obsessed over it, especially when the kid developed the scar. She felt guilty for not taking him to get stitches. Grandfather pointed out, rightly so, that stitches probably wouldn’t have prevented the scarring and would have cost his mother and stepfather a deductible that would have gotten him in trouble at home. More trouble, that was. Her competent first aid kept him from getting into too much hassle.  I’d met his stepfather one evening when I took the boy home—he was not the understanding type.  It was a good thing she was around to keep an eye on things, and even better that those kids had Grandfather to go to—no one better to give them a guiding hand. 

Colleen leaned back. “We haven’t had any real trouble, though it’s been tense. The buddies of the officer who was transferred have been making a point of making extra patrols around the time school lets out and driving by the coffeehouse where the kids hang out.”

“A coffeehouse?”

She grinned. “It’s an old abandoned warehouse that we got permission to use—well, Grandfather got permission for us to use. They had just been hanging out on street corners. If I weren’t here doing my roofer thing, you’d see me at my other gig. In fact, I was hoping to swing by the post office to check on a package from Danny.”

“What are you expecting from the Pup?”

She grinned appreciatively—she loved that her most glamorous uncle bore that most unglamorous nickname; it never failed to amuse her.  “I’m not really sure. I told him in an email about how Grandfather and I were  helping the kids converting this old warehouse into a sixties style coffeehouse  and he promised to send me some stuff we could use.  It could be anything knowing him, from costumes for the kids to play at skits to lights,  barware, dishes—it might not occur to him that it would be cheaper to send me the money than to ship stuff a couple thousand miles, so your guess is as good as mine.”

Actually, I thought it probably did occur to the Pup, who was more practical than most O’Keefes, but he likely didn’t want to offend his niece’s pride.  Colleen was funny; you never quite knew what would set her off, like buying the truck until I made her feel guilty for complaining about it with the story about it being for Grandfather.  As though he needed two vehicles—I just knew she’d fallen in love with that SUV and couldn’t resist treating her to it.   That reminded me of something I’d been meaning to ask her, ever since the paperwork for the SUV and truck had arrived.

“Don’t you use Lennon? I know I call you O’Keefe, but that’s just force of habit when I see a green-eyed black-haired person with dimples. I couldn’t help noticing when the registration for the truck and SUV came in yesterday, you put them in the name O’Keefe…what’s that all about?”

She swore again, this time in Gaeltacht, but it might have been because she struck her thumb with the hammer. Or then again, it might not.

I couldn’t resist commenting, “I have to say, it’s just like being at home with your Uncle—he’s fond of cursing in multiple languages too. I’ll have to teach you a few in Arabic and Russian.”

She grinned at that. “That would be fun, especially if you teach me the non-curse words to go with them. Not but that I’ve found you can get pretty far in a country with just the essential swear words.” She sat back and sucked her thumb, looking with satisfaction at the roof. Except for a couple more spots, which were closest to me, it was done.

“Name?”

She sighed. “Not easy to distract, are you?”

I just lifted an eyebrow and waited.  After a second, louder sigh, she pulled a water bottle out of the backpack next to the toolbox and handed it to me, then grabbed a second one for herself.  Seeing the look I was giving her, she laughed.

“I’m not stalling, I’m just dry and if I’m going to be telling you a story, I need to wet my whistle.  And sorry but I have a rule, no beer while more than ten feet up in the air. “

“How could Luke and me ever drink and fly then?” I asked innocently.  In truth, we never drank while flying, but it was fun to see those eyebrows fly up—until she realized I was teasing her.  Her eyes twinkled.

“Of course, some situations practically beg for an exception to the rule. Bet it would be kind of scary to have to fly into some of those places stone cold sober.”

I laughed. “Ain’t that the truth? But you were telling me about why you use O’Keefe before I distracted you.”

“Was I? I am such a scatterbrain sometimes. It’s like this,” she leaned forward, her long hair brushing over my arm. “There are about three or four different versions of the story. I am stalling while I try to figure out which one to tell you.”

I had to laugh at her tone, if not the words.  “You could tell me all of them and let me guess which one is the truth.”

“Well, that might work, assuming any one of them is any more, or less, true, than the others,” she said thoughtfully.

I waited.

“Well, it was like this.”  She paused, taking a sip of her water. “I don’t know if you remember the year, I know you were pretty busy back then, but Pops O’Keefe died when Colette and I were starting out in high school. We’d just started playing basketball and he was not all that thrilled at first, but we had been really good at it in middle school, and one of the last good times we had with him, he’d come to one of our games. We’d played soccer that year but the team hadn’t gone to finals despite our best efforts—along with the rest of the O’Keefes, and there were plenty. But basketball was new ground totally. None of the cousins even played it. Uncle John and he came to the game with Mom. I don’t know if I need bother mentioning, but my dad never came to any of our games, not even when we made all state, Colette and me?”

I shook my head; I’d never been told but there was no doubt in my mind that Liam was a jerk of the first degree. “Anyway, when the uniforms were made up, and this is the goofy thing, the coach had screwed up, had a brain fart or something.” She darted a look at me and I swore, she was blushing. I had to laugh; the language she’d been using while roofing had been far worse but this was the slip that embarrassed her?  She took a deep swig of water to cover up and when I continued laughing she swatted my arm.

“Shut up or I stop telling the story….”

I made a show of composing myself. She folded her arms over her chest. Boy, did she look like a prettier version of Luke. You’d think that would make her look like her mother but it didn’t—Mary Fran never looked so much like a Green Beret, I thought, amused.  I nodded for her to continue.

“Anyway, we get our new uniforms and we just put them on, you know? We were both more concerned with how the shorts look, to tell you the truth, since basketball shorts tend to be either too short or too long.  With the singlet, it is a question of whether it covers you decently than checking out the name, since Lennon isn’t a difficult name to spell, and we were used to having identical singlets since it wasn’t like the first initials, or even the first couple of letters of our first names helped, so we were always just Lennon—though once suggested we be called Thing One and Thing Two ala Dr. Seuss and that gave rise to one of the best Halloween costumes we ever had, with Keir as the Cat in the Hat.”

I laughed again, this time at the mental picture I formed at her words. She grinned in response. “Yeah, we were a sight. Mom still has pictures of us, we won the costume contest at church, which was a first, usually Aunt Mary Beth or Aunt Laura had it sewn up—pun intended.”

She took another swig of water. “So, anyway, we go out onto the courts and I hear the cheer go out when we line up with our team and even before the announcer says the names of the starting line-up, Pops see the names on our singlets and despite being sick, he managed to find a semblance of his big voice, and called out, ‘There’s my girls, show them how an O’Keefe plays!’ That’s when I looked at Colette and saw that the name on the back of her singlet was indeed O’Keefe and I could tell from her expression that mine said the same.  We took it in stride, especially seeing how happy it made Pops. And it wasn’t like Dad was there to see, we reasoned. Anyway, we had an awesome game, Colette was high scorer and I was right behind her, plus I had the most rebounds. Together, we totally dominated.”

“You played forwards I’m assuming.”

“Yeah, Colette was the small forward, I usually played power, though we could change up. Sometimes we played guard, though not as often. She was damn good with a three pointer.” She fell quiet again and I nudged her.

“So old Pat got a kick out of another generation of O’Keefes kicking ass in yet another sport?”

That perked her up. “It was great, especially seeing how proud it made Mom. She’d been an awesome soccer player; she could have gone to the Olympics, back when it was first being played as an exhibition, as you know it wasn’t official for women until 1996, but he didn’t let her. Said it was crazy for a wife and mother to even think of such a thing. Even when it was official, and Aunt Mary Pat probably could have gone, he was dead-set against it, but he was different when he got older. At least he was different for us. Couldn’t have been more supportive.”

She fell silent again, but this time it seemed like a reflective silence. I gave her the time. I knew that Luke and Danny had very different memories of Pat. I’d always gotten along with him and he liked me, finding me what he liked to call a “man’s man,” but I never liked how he treated the Pup, nor how much he demanded of Luke. Hell, of all his boys. But, not being a father myself, I was willing to give him slack for the most part, except on some of the things he did to his youngest two. I could not imagine anything I could do that would make Grandfather turn his back on me the way Pat O’Keefe turned his on Angel.

 Hell, if I gave the man another baby in the family, in wedlock or out, he’d be over the moon. Maybe it was having so many children and grandchildren made Pat forget what a blessing they were. It took losing Luke for him to lose his own sense of omnipotence.

“Anyway, seeing how happy it made Pops for us to be O’Keefes when we played, we told our coach to keep them like that. And well,” she choked up a bit, “after he passed, we kept up the tradition in his honor. Having played all our games as O’Keefes, we’d been scouted as O’Keefes, so one way or another, the Lennon got lost along the way.”

“Sounds pretty plausible,” I told her. Her expression was watchful. And innocent…too innocent.  There was more to it, I was betting.  “Touching too. So, what’s the next version of the story.”

She rewarded me with the dimple. “I was pretty sure you wouldn’t push me any further if you heard the dying grandfather one first. You really are a cold bastard, aren’t you?” she complained good-naturedly. “Okay, but that actually did happen. The other thing is, O’Keefe is my middle name. Colette’s too. When we got confirmed, Mom added Mary to mine and Frances to Colette, so together we make up Mary Frances O’Keefe, which we always thought was pretty funny. Anyway, we were doing a bit of singing to earn extra money in college, not being the super-model types, as I’m always telling Leah, and Danny helped us get an act together. There already were singers named Lennon so we used O’Keefe as our stage names. We sang all over Ohio, PA and a few other states as part of an Irish trio, this guy from our college joining us.”

Again, she gave me that wide-eyed look. I met it, stare for stare. “That all ya got?”

“I killed a man in Rio just to watch him die and Uncle John changed my name legally to help me hide from the Rio police.”

I shook my head, grinning. “Okay, you win. Don’t tell me.”

“But I did!” she insisted. “Would you believe it’s all true…well, except for the killing a man part?”

I gave her my toughest look, which I thought would be the antidote to her innocent stare. She was immune. More than I was to that wide-eyed look, I was beginning to fear, but after a moment, I thought I saw something in her eyes besides the fake innocence and mischief she wanted me to see.

“You did change your name,” I said softly, hiding my shock so as not to make her shy away from telling me more. She gave me the barest of nods.

“After Haiti,” I guessed. 

“Right again.” She started packing up the tools and leftover shingles. I wanted to ask if this was the problem between her and her sister, but something told me it wasn’t. I was willing to guess that this might be a symptom, but it wasn’t the cause.  And she probably had told the truth—all those other stories had been part of what led to her taking the step of getting John to change her name legally to O’Keefe, but the reason she did it was because Liam Lennon had never been any kind of father to her and she wanted to shuck the man’s name if she couldn’t shuck the man himself.

All I said though was, “Well, I can see how it would be easy to hide out as a murderer, with all those O’Keefes in Pittsburgh, it would take the Rio police months to sort through all of them. You’d be long gone by the time he made it through the six foot three ones.”

“My thoughts exactly!” She beamed at me, the tension visibly leaving her body.  “Since you helped me with this roof, how about I buy you a beer before I head over to the post office?”

“How about we go by the post office first, since the Pup might have sent you something heavy and then we can pick up a six pack and drink it while you show me this coffeehouse of yours?”

Agreeing happily to that idea, she let me head down the ladder first with the toolbox and shingles, then she clambered down it. It was just as well I went along. The Pup had sent her several large cartons of stuff via Federal Express. Why he had it all delivered to the Post Office was beyond me, but she seemed to think it made sense—something about a Post Office Box.

“Why didn’t you give him your address?”

“Well, I didn’t want to have it delivered to my address since I’m not living there yet, and I didn’t want to have to explain to them all why I’m still staying at Grandfather’s.”

Ah.  She didn’t need to explain any more to me. Truth was, I had talked to Grandfather about adding another room onto his place, but the bad weather was pretty much putting a wrench in those plans.  It wasn’t that I minded bunking down with him, his bedroom had plenty of space, but I knew that Colleen felt guilty about it. And she would have more privacy if I added a room onto the back for her. It would probably take less time than fixing up the dump the County had leased for her use. Her position was supposedly funded by the relief agency but the County claimed some responsibility over her, while the Tribe was supposed to be autonomous over anybody operating on the reservation, yet it often didn’t work out that way. The interactions between the Tribe Council and the County got tense at times, to put it mildly, and it often ended up with red tape with no one holding either end. That seemed to be the case with Colleen’s housing. I could have gotten it taken care of in a jiffy, but the truth was, she was better off not alone, and we’d let things slide.

But her family didn’t need to hear the particulars.  O’Keefes got funny ideas sometimes.

We joked about what Danny might have sent as I helped her load several large crates onto the truck, which I was driving. She put the smaller boxes into the SUV. Tommy and his posse reappeared when we drove up to the warehouse and we let them help unload and carry the stuff in.

“Go to it, guys, Santa came early,” she told them, letting them have the fun of unpacking the stuff while she took the smallest package to open, figuring that was most likely to have a letter from her crazy uncle.  She looked over to me before opening it.

“Let me get you a beer…we didn’t stop but I do know where there is a cooler with a few cold ones stashed. I put them here earlier, planning on coming by here after I was done.”

“You trust the kids not to get into them?” I raised an eyebrow. I doubted any would be left if the teens had access to this place during the day. She laughed. “They know the penalties for pilfering from me…and I trust them.”

I followed her over to the makeshift counter that was serving as a bar. I could see where she had drawn up plans for a real bar, but her workers were lacking in skill. She caught me frowning at some of the work.

“I know,” she said quietly as she handed me my beer. I’m not a very good foreman. I can hammer a straight nail and follow a set of plans, but I’m not real good at watching to see if others can do it, which leads to crooked shelves and counters. But it isn’t very good for self-esteem if I make them rip it out, is it?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and considered the situation, and the crooked work, then answered. “Well, I think I know what Grandfather would say.”

“Tell me. He’s coming by tomorrow and I’d rather be a step ahead if I could.”

“He’d say it never did anyone’s self-esteem any good to teach them to be proud of bad work.”

Her face fell. “I was afraid you’d tell me that. Damn. I’m going to have to make them redo it, aren’t I? After I already praised them for working so hard.”

“Nope,” I told her. “I will. Let them think you were dumb enough to think this was good.”

And that’s what I did, after finding out which kids worked on the counter and shelves. Colleen played sheepish really well, and the boys took the criticism like men, though not without some grumbling at first. That told me that they knew it was crap work—and were thinking that they could get Colleen to accept less than their best. Her narrowed eyes as she watched them improve very quickly under my strict supervision told me she’d learned a few lessons herself, and wouldn’t be fooled by this crew again. I was willing to bet one or two of them really did need to learn how to work better—and the others had been shamming. I was keeping my eye on that Tommy, and Ned was another who bore close scrutiny, while Noah and Malcolm seemed like the more innocent of the boys, for all that Ned and Noah were twins and Malcolm was the youngest.

Tommy was keeping an eye on me as much as I was watching him, which amused me to no end. I felt like telling him, boy, there are no tricks you can show me that I didn’t try when I was your age…twice over. But the day was long gone that a half-grown pup like him was going to be able to put one over on me…not that there ever had been such a time.

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The boxes were filled with treasure…and a hoot. My Uncle Danny had always been a source of largesse, part fairy godfather, part Santa Claus in toe shoes, if Santa Claus were really into show tunes.  Away at college and on a very tight budget, Colette and I used to love when a package came from him. Mom sent cookies, Danny sent designer jeans and tickets to sold out concerts, or plane tickets home for special events, when a trip home really was out of the question financially. If Mom worried about the cost, he’d just wave it off as frequent flier miles and she’d relax. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but the thing was, he remembered us. Uncle John was great about a lot of things, but Danny was good in the showy, big gesture ways. Between the two of them, we hardly missed having a sober father.

His letter cracked me up. “I know you SAID you were aiming for a sixties style, ‘On The Road’ style Coffee House, but living next door to John’s teens, my inner child tells me that Karaoke Bar is what you REALLY meant. So, along with an industrial size coffee and expresso maker, I’m sending you this industry worthy Karaoke machine. Loaded with everything from sixties songs to, you know it, Broadway show tunes. Got all the best from your illustrious singing career in the mix too, though I always like you a cappella.  Hope you are careful with the boxes and don’t let Red carry them—got Matt to donate old bar glasses from O’Keefe’s so you’ll not feel homesick.  Love you lots, your favorite uncle, Danny”

I did feel a tug of homesickness as I read his letter a couple times through. It was like hearing his voice. I let Red read it when he came over, no doubt wondering why I was just sitting there with a sappy look on my face and blinking to beat the band. I felt his arm go around me.

“Hey, little girl, don’t tell me you can face earthquakes and bully cops without flinching…and even almost certain death by falling off a roof, with just a laugh…but the thought of Karaoke can get your weepy? Though come to think of it, the idea of this bunch singing makes my eyes water too.”

I buried my face against his shoulder and he tightened his arm around me in a warm hug. That’s all it was, truly. A hug with a half dozen teens around to play chaperone. But from the screech of,  l’ll call it indignation, that one Mrs. Grace Parkins let out when she entered the room, you’d have thought we were both stark naked and …well, better stop that mental image right there.

I lifted my head up and looked blandly at Red. “You did remember to call Mrs. Parkins and reschedule our meeting, didn’t you, Colonel?”

Whoever would have guessed that such a dark complexioned man could blush so deeply?

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