Tommie Lyn

Fallon got a copy of the Florida Driver’s Handbook and spent every spare moment studying it. Each day when she got home from work, she sat on the steps while Dixie lay under them lapping soup and went over each section again and again. On her next day off, she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office to take the driver’s test, and Mrs. Gail rode along.

She’d taken driver’s ed when she was in the eleventh grade, before she dropped out of school. And she’d had a driver’s license, but let it lapse when their old car broke down. Rachel couldn’t afford to have the car fixed, so the cost of renewing Fallon’s driver’s license seemed an unnecessary expense. She wished now she’d renewed it.

Fallon passed the written test and the driving part of the exam and stood in front of the digital camera while a woman in uniform took her picture. Within an hour, she walked out of the air conditioned DMV office into the September heat clutching her plastic permission to drive, got into the car and drove Gobel’s Gas and Grocery.

Mrs. Gail waited in the car while Fallon went inside the store to get a job application. She approached the woman behind the counter, unsure what to say.

“Uh…uh…” Fallon stammered, turned red and looked at her feet.

“Yeah? Can I help you?”

“You have any jobs? I need to apply…”

“Matter of fact, we do. And we’re kinda in a bind. The girl that works mornings got into it with…oh, never mind. You don’t need to know all that. The upshot of it is, yeah, we have a position open.” She turned and yelled to someone Fallon couldn’t see. “Jerry! Some girl here is wantin’ a job. You need to come out and talk to her.”

A man came from an open door in the wall behind the register, wiping his hands. He regarded Fallon for a moment.

“You the one wantin’ a job?”

“Yes.”

“Are you old enough to work?” He frowned at her. “You don’t look but about—”

“I’m twenty-three.”

He whistled. “You couldn’t prove it by me. You look like a kid. Anyway, just so happens we have an opening. You had any experience working in a store like this?”

“Yes. I’ve worked at Jones’ Stop N Go over on 87 for almost seven years.”

“Okay. I’d say that qualifies as experience. I have the authority to hire you on as a temporary. And if I think you’re okay, they’ll probably take my recommendation. Can you start in the morning? With it being Saturday, we’ll be plenty busy, and we need somebody.”

“Sure. I can start tomorrow.” Fallon took a breath to ease the spinning excitement that swirled through her midriff and ascended into her chest.

“Now, this is nothing set in stone. You’re gonna be on trial. I’ll give you a couple of weeks, see how you do. And if you work out all right, maybe we can make it permanent.”

“That’ll be fine.” Fallon gave Jerry a small smile.

“So, you’ll be here in the morning? Five-thirty?”

“Yes, I will.”

“See you then.” Jerry gave her a nod and returned to his work in the storeroom.

Fallon hurried to the car and climbed in.

“I got the job,” she said to Mrs. Gail. Now things’ll be better for me and Mama.

When they returned home, Dixie wasn’t on her bedding under the steps. Fallon searched under both trailers and in the surrounding undergrowth. The only sign of the dog she found were a few paw prints in an area of loose sand.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Mrs. Gail said. “If she’s well enough to get up and leave, she’ll probably be all right.”

But Fallon worried. She wondered what Dixie would find to eat and if she had regained enough strength to get to water.

Chapter 2

Milton, Florida, October, 2006

Within a few months, Fallon had settled in to the routine. She learned her responsibilities and recognized the regular customers. But she found the higher pay didn’t mean more money to make things easier for herself and her mother. Being the newest employee, she often got fewer hours than she’d expected, and now, there was a weekly amount to be paid to Mrs. Gail for the car. And she had the added expense of gas and oil. Her paycheck didn’t stretch as far as she had expected.

But having the car gave her a sense of independence and security she’d not experienced before.

She continued setting out a bowl of fresh water and bit of food each night under the steps. Most mornings, the food was gone, but she didn’t know if Dixie had returned for the food or if some other animal had eaten it.

And several times, she thought she caught glimpses of light-colored fur in the underbrush behind the trailer. Fur the color of the bare sand under the oaks. The color of Dixie.

*  *  *

Donovan Pfarr hit the snooze button a second time. He’d love to turn it off and sleep through the morning, but the threat of a captain’s mast hung over him like a thundercloud, spoken into existence in a barrage of profanity by Chief Thompson the last time Donovan was late for morning muster. And so he didn’t fall asleep again, but hovered in the half-world between sleep and wakening.

The insomnia was the problem. Ever since his marriage to Emily ended at his discovery of her affair with his friend, Jeremy, Donovan had trouble sleeping. Every evening, he moped about the apartment he and Emily had shared, unable to work up enthusiasm for any activity, not even for televised sports, movies or any of the things he’d always enjoyed. And he couldn’t sleep when he lay on the bed he’d shared with Emily. The same bed where he’d found them.

When the alarm sounded the third time, Donovan shut it off, grumbling. He dragged himself into the bathroom, showered and shaved. He pulled a pair of bell-bottomed Navy dungarees from the laundry basket by the bed and put them on unironed. He did the same with his blue chambray dungaree shirt and noticed the numbers on the digital clock as he buttoned it. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late. Again.

He snatched his blue ball cap off the bedpost, shoved it down on his too-long hair and hustled down the stairs from his second floor apartment. He cranked his car, wheeled out of the lot and down the street. But when he neared Gobel’s Gas and Grocery, he decided he had to risk the chief’s displeasure. His stomach was growling, and he’d never make it through the morning without something to eat.

Donovan steered his car into the lot and parked near the door.

*  *  *

The sailor, dressed in Navy dungarees, stepped to the register when his turn came. He set a styrofoam cup of coffee on the counter along with a microwaved sausage biscuit and a newspaper.

“Will that be all?” Fallon asked the obligatory question.

“Yeah.”

She rang up the purchases. She’d seen the sailor before; he came in occasionally, but not on weekday mornings. He sometimes came in on weekends, dressed in T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. She hadn’t known he was a sailor until this minute, seeing him in his rumpled Navy dungarees. And he appeared in need of a haircut. Dark blond hair stuck out from under the blue ballcap.

“Pfarr” was the name stenciled in black letters over his shirt pocket and in white over the right rear pocket of his dungaree pants. She looked at the black letters on his shirt and wondered what his first name was. She often wondered about the lives of customers who came and went all day, but she kept them at a distance. So few people entered her life on a personal basis, she was left with speculations about the people with whom she had contact at her job.

Loneliness had been a constant companion since Fallon’s childhood. Because of the scandal surrounding her father’s suicide, she was ostracized at school. After enduring the first years of heart-rending taunting, she actually welcomed the shunning, the silence, the averted eyes. At least she didn’t have to hear her father condemned and ridiculed on the playground. “Handy Dandy wanted landy, Drank some brandy, Stole some candy.”

 Each time the taunting started, Fallon fought back. “Daddy didn’t do that! My daddy was good!” And Fallon got into trouble. A half-remembered phrase she overheard while waiting in the principal’s office for her mother came into her memory: “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She hadn’t known what it meant at the time. But she did now. She kept all her behavior conspicuously honest, as if to prove to everyone else, as well as to herself, that she followed her daddy’s example, and her daddy had been an honest man.

At times Fallon yearned to have a close connection to another person, but those childhood experiences had erected a barrier between herself and others. And no one was allowed to breach that wall. She withdrew further from the people she dealt with, kept all contact with them superficial. Even her contact with Mrs. Gail was only on a surface level.

Her cheeks burned with shame and anger whenever she recalled the childhood taunting. And she remembered.

Pfarr gathered his purchases and disappeared out the door. The next customer in line took his place, set a six-pack of beer on the counter and asked for a pack of cigarettes and ten lottery tickets.

And Fallon’s day had begun.

*  *  *

Donovan Pfarr eased his car into a slot by the hangar and got out. He leaned in, took his coffee from the cup holder, picked up his paper and what was left of his breakfast biscuit. He stuffed the remaining two bites of the biscuit into his mouth, chewed and washed it down with the now-tepid coffee. He wadded the wrapper and threw it in the trash can just inside the building as he walked past.

“Pfarr.” Chief Thompson’s growl greeted Donovan as he eased into place at morning muster, a half-minute late. “See me after muster.”

“Sure thing, chief.”

Chief Thompson read through the obligatory announcements and went on to the work for the day. He cited the list of gripes and assigned crews to work them. He dismissed the men and went to his office.

“How was your weekend, Gopher?” Matthew “Blacky” Blackstone asked as he pulled a wrench from the bundle of tools he’d checked out of the tool room.

Donovan shrugged. “Same ol’ thing. Stood a watch on Saturday. But I did get to see part of the races at Talladega yesterday. Hey, did you catch the part where—”

“Well, well. Gopher and Blacky. The two worst metalsmiths in the whole squadron working on the same airplane. I pity the poor pilot that gets this one when you get through with it.”

Donovan clenched his teeth but made no reply. He was used to the goading from Chet “Bad Man” Goodman. He continued tightening a bolt while Blacky held the piece in place.

“Guess whose name is going to be on the list this time up,” Bad Man continued.

“It wouldn’t be yours, would it, Bad Man,” Blacky said.

“Oh yeah. I made first this time up.” Goodman said.

“You made first? How do you know that?” Blacky asked. “The results won’t be out until next month.”

“I know I aced the test this time. So I’ll make it. But you two slackers, I know I’ll never see your names on the list.”

“You sure won’t see mine. I didn’t even take the test this time,” Blacky said. “They just have a certain number of metalsmith slots for first, you know, and I figured you needed it worse than me, what with your handicap and all.”

“Handicap?”

“Yeah, you’re lame. A lame excuse for a human being, that is,” Blacky said, and he and Donovan chuckled.

Goodman stomped away without another word.

Donovan’s chuckle became outright laughter. “How do you do it, Blacky? You get his goat every time he tries to pull that ‘I’m superior’ stuff. It never works when I try it, but you always stick it to him so good.”

The two turned their attention to the job at hand and forgot Goodman.

“Pfarr!” Chief Thompson’s deep voice boomed across the hangar deck, audible above the whine and clack of drills and rivet guns.

A cold wash, followed by heat, poured through Donovan. He hated dressings down and he knew from the tone of the chief’s voice he was in for one. “Sheesh! I forgot he wanted to see me. I’m in for a chewing out.” He laid the wrench down. “Would you take care of these tools for me and make sure they get turned in at the tool room in case this takes a while,” he said to Blacky.

Donovan squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and stepped across the hangar to the chief’s office. Ten minutes later, his face flushed and stomach gnawing, Donovan emerged from the profanity-laden atmosphere of Chief Thompson’s office, thankful to escape so soon.

Blacky looked up as Donovan approached. “I see he let you live.”

“Just barely. Whoo.” Donovan blew out a breath and managed a half-hearted chuckle. “My ears are still ringing, and I bet my Granny Ruth is turning over in her grave, knowing her Punkin heard such language.”

“Punkin, huh?” Blacky laughed.

“Aw.” Donovan groaned. “Shouldn’t of told you that. Man, now you’ll be ragging on me big time.”

“Nah. I never give my buddies a hard time. You know that. But I’ll tell you, I never run into a chief could give a chewin’ out like Thompson. He’s elevated it to a fine art. Glad it was you on the carpet, not me.” Blacky resumed his work on the airplane’s skin. “What’d he gig you for, anyway?”

“First, he got me for not coming to his office after muster, like he told me to do. Then, he got on me again about my flu shot.”

“You haven’t had your shot?”

“No. And Thompson wants a hundred percent compliance from our shop. I’m the only hold out. But like I told him, I hate taking flu shots. They always give me the flu.” Donovan shook his head.

“You’re gonna go get it, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. He told me to go in at lunch time and get it. And he’s not giving me any time off to do it. He gave me time off to get it last week, but I didn’t go, so now, I’m gonna miss lunch.”

Blacky squatted by the airplane to remove another panel and looked up at Donovan. “Yeah, we all got time off. What’d you do instead?”

Donovan’s face turned red, and he scratched his head but said nothing.

“Come on, what’d you do?”

“I went to the library.”

“The library!” Blacky looked appropriately horrified. “What, you trying to raise yourself above our level or…oh, wait a minute. I know. That new girl we saw a picture of in the Gosport. New librarian. With legs and…” Blacky raised an eyebrow. “So, was she as much a looker in person as in the paper? And was she friendly”

The red in Donovan’s face deepened another shade. The new girl working in the library was just his type, blond, buxom and leggy. “Yeah, she’s a looker all right. But…”

“You were too shy to talk to her, right?”

“Yeah.” But the real reason was that she looked too much like Emily. Donovan couldn’t get past that.

Blacky threw back his head and laughed. “So, got yourself a bona fide Thompson chewing out for nothing. Way to go, Gopher.”

Chapter 3

Captain Joseph Lipstein, U.S. Navy, retired, placed his fedora on his head, positioned it, and emerged from Bethesda Naval Hospital. That was a Navy requirement sometimes ignored these days. Even though he was retired and wearing civilian clothes, he still maintained his old habits and never went inside a building without removing his hat and replacing it when he exited. His steps were slow and deliberate as he walked to his car with the air of a man with doom resting on his shoulders.

The Navy doctor had delivered Lipstein’s death sentence in a matter-of-fact manner. Cool, calm, not exactly unsympathetic, but impersonal, at best.

“How long do I have, doctor?”

“If you take care of yourself and follow the guidelines I gave you,” the doctor pointed to the sheaf of papers in Lipstein’s hand, “you could stretch it to, oh, say, a year or longer. I’ve had patients prolong their last months by watching what they do. And then, I’ve had some who succumbed pretty quickly. It’s largely a matter of your own attitude.”

Lipstein nodded as though he understood and agreed. But the full weight of the doctor’s prognosis didn’t descend until he emerged from the pervasive hospital odor into the sunlight and unseasonable warmth of the Maryland autumn. A sudden desire to scream gripped him, and he struggled to control it.

He noticed how his hand shook as he tried to insert the key into the door lock. When had the trembling become a constant annoyance? Why hadn’t he changed his habits, stopped drinking long before now? And especially when he started having bouts of pain and sickness? Too late to start the “what if”s and “why didn’t I”s.

Lipstein’s car eased along the road, the speed slow and measured, as he drove to his home, viewing his surroundings with new eyes. The leaf colors seemed deeper, richer, and the sky was so blue as to be almost surreal. Why was it you didn’t appreciate things until they were about to be taken away?

Anna was in the kitchen, as usual, when he arrived home. And, also as usual, she hadn’t armed the security system when he’d left for the hospital earlier. He grunted in annoyance. He’d have to make her understand how important it was, how she needed to protect herself, since he wouldn’t be around much longer to look after her.

He paced through the house, trailing a hand over the pieces of furniture as he passed, his fingers caressing the rich mahogany of the sideboard in the dining room, absorbing the rough contact with the expensive textured wallpaper as he left the room. Lavish, posh, like everything else in this house.

Anna had expensive tastes.

He had done his best to satisfy them over the years, even when he was a Lieutenant Commander at Whiting Field…his mind stopped. He wouldn’t, couldn’t go there today. It would be a burden greater than he could bear at this moment. He was never free of it entirely, but sometimes, he was able to shunt it aside, to push away the grating guilt that ground down his reserves of energy, wore him out.

He hung his hat on the rack in the mud room off the kitchen and took a seat at the bar.

“Well, what did the doctor say?” Anna looked up from the chunks of vegetables her knife produced as it chopped its way across the cutting board.

“I’ll tell you later. Right now, I need a drink. Join me?”

Anna sighed and laid the knife down. “Joe, please don’t get started this early. You know what will happen and…” her voice trailed off as he turned his back, slid from the stool and headed to the family room. And the wet bar.

“Joe…Joe!” she called, but he didn’t answer.

*  *  *

Fallon cranked up the music when Daddy’s favorite song came on the radio. “Heartbroke” by Ricky Skaggs. She sang along with Skaggs, as she used to with Daddy, content with life for at least a few minutes.

The station didn’t often play older country songs, and she couldn’t afford to buy CDs from that time…the golden days of her childhood. The time when she was happy. She was thankful they’d decided to play this particular song today, when she was in the car headed home, when she’d hear it.

As she drove down Stewart Street, she sang along, and she could see Daddy in her memory, his close-cut brown hair, his lively green eyes. She could hear his rich baritone blend with Ricky Skaggs’ clear tenor, could hear her own childish, off-key contribution echoing from the past.

There had been a time when hearing a few notes of this song was too painful, when she couldn’t endure the images it created in her mind. But now, the sharp edges of those memories had worn away and they were precious to her. And the pain receded and allowed the happiness of those times to fill her heart.

When she came to the intersection with Berryhill Road, she turned onto it and headed west, drove slowly out Berryhill, past the cemetery where Daddy was buried, past Navy housing where they had lived. She and Ricky finished the song and her smile disappeared, replaced by her habitual unsmiling dull-eyed expression. She continued on past the hospital, past the vo-tech school and the elementary school to the place where they’d found Daddy. The place where Daddy had planned to build a home for them when he retired from the Navy.

This wooded area was more a remembrance of Daddy for her than the unmarked plot in Milton Cemetery, since it was the last place where he’d been alive on this earth. It was the place where she always came to pay her respects to James “Handy” McKniere. Fallon intended, when she had saved enough, to have a small stone placed on Daddy’s grave. But this was the place she would always come to be near him.

She pulled off the asphalt onto the grassy shoulder and turned off the engine. A sheriff’s car passed her, the deputy gave a wave of his hand and went on. Most of them knew her, knew of her tragedy and didn’t bother her when she came here to visit Daddy.

She picked her way carefully through the undergrowth to a downed tree trunk and sat in the near-silence which was penetrated only by the soft brushing of wind through the tree branches and the far-off hum and buzz of traffic.

“Daddy, what did you look at while you sat here, before you did what you did.” She cleared her throat. “No. I’ll never believe that you...hurt yourself on purpose.” She paused until the sting left her eyes and she could see clearly.

“What did you think of? Did you remember our last time together? Did you remember our picnic here? Did you think of Mama? Of me? Oh, Daddy, I still miss you so much….”

And then the flood of tears came and cleansed the built up sorrow and strengthened her again.

*  *  *

Donovan rolled down his sleeve and buttoned it. If past experience was any guide, he’d be feverish by supper time and would spend an uncomfortable night rolling in sweat, alternately hot and cold. But the chief’s one hundred percent compliance quota had been met.

“So, what do I do tonight when I get sick?” he asked the corpsman.

“Sick? Why you gonna get sick?”

“I always get sick when I take a flu shot, and—”

“That’s what people say, but it’s not true,” the corpsman shot back, as though he was insulted Donovan thought anything done to him at the clinic would make him sick. “Nobody gets sick from a flu shot.”

“Well, I do,” Donovan muttered under his breath.

Since he’d missed lunch, he got a couple of bags of peanuts from the vending machine in the hangar and ate them as he worked through the afternoon. By the time he turned his tools in to the tool room, the chills had started. “What’s the matter with you,” Blacky said as he stepped up to the tool room door. “Your eyes look all blood-shot. Did you go to the club instead of the dispensary at lunch?”

“I got the shot. Now, I’m getting the flu.”

“Yeah, right.”

Donovan said nothing further. Someone had installed a trip hammer inside his skull, and its rhythmic thump started to pound his brain into shards of pain. The trip to his apartment seemed to take forever, and by the time he climbed the stairs, dizziness made him unsteady and he needed to hold the handrail.

He struggled to insert the key into the lock, entered and lay across his bed without undressing. In spite of the headache, he fell asleep. He awoke hours later, shivering, sweating and aching. The red numbers on the digital clock showed one a.m. Donovan knew he needed aspirin to break his fever, and he needed relief from the aching muscles and pounding pain in his head. He searched the medicine cabinet and looked through the kitchen, but Emily hadn’t left any aspirin behind when she divorced him and took everything.

His eyeballs became globes of fire, burning and shooting lightning flashes of agony through his head every time he looked in a different direction. His muscles ached and protested his every move.

I gotta get some aspirin. I shoulda got some on the way home. Maybe they got some at the convenience store.

He didn’t bother to get his hat or straighten his clothing. He eased out the door and stumbled down the stairs to his car. He leaned his forehead on the cool steering wheel, rubbed his eyes and groaned. He cranked the engine and motored to the nearby Gobel’s Gas and Grocery.

*  *  *

Fallon didn’t mind filling in for a co-worker who needed the night off, especially when it meant a shift in this neighborhood, where she worked most days. Some places seemed creepy at night, and she would never have felt safe working at night in those stores. But Gobel’s on Stewart Street was different. A police car patrolled regularly, and the store didn’t get much business after midnight.

She did all the nighttime chores and settled on a stool behind the counter. A light flashed through the window as a car pulled up, and her stomach tightened.

The door buzzer sounded when the sailor she’d waited on that morning came inside. Pfarr, she remembered. He looked rough, his clothes mussed as though he’d slept in them, and his hair was uncombed. He came to the counter.

“Could you help me?”

“Sure. What you need?”

“Aspirin. I’m sick.”

“They’re on that aisle.” She pointed in the direction where the aspirin could be found.

Pfarr staggered away from the counter, squinting at the items on the shelf. He moved past the section were the aspirin were stocked.

“You passed them. They’re on that second shelf.”

Pfarr peered at the shelf with no success.

“Just a minute.” Fallon climbed off the stool and joined Pfarr in front of the shelf. She grasped a bottle of aspirin and held it out. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

“You really are sick, aren’t you,” she said, taking in his flushed face and glassy, fever-reddened eyes.

“Yeah. Flu shot. They always make me sick.” He closed his eyes and rolled his head to loosen his aching muscles. “I can see that.” She took the aspirin to the counter. “You probably want a coke to go with it. Aspirin always seem to work better for me when I take them with a coke.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” He shivered.

“What kind you want?”

“Gimme a lemon-lime. They’re easier on my stomach when I’m sick.”

Fallon retrieved a drink from the cooler and added it to the aspirin. She rang them up, told Pfarr the total and bagged them. He reached in his pants pocket for his billfold but couldn’t find it.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “I don’t believe this. I came out without my billfold. I have no money.”

Fallon bit her lip as she considered the situation. Pfarr obviously needed the aspirin. She couldn’t bring herself to send him from the store without them. After a moment’s hesitation, she got her pocketbook from under the counter and pulled out her billfold. She counted out the amount needed to cover the aspirin and soft drink. It would leave her short, but…she looked at Pfarr again, at his bloodshot eyes, fever-flushed skin. She dropped the money into the register drawer and got her change.

“Here.” She pushed the bag across the counter.

“But—”

“Take it. You need it. You can pay me back later.”

“Thanks. But I—”

“Don’t worry about it. Just go. And I hope you get to feeling better.”

“I’ll bring you the money.” Pfarr took the bag, ducked his head and straggled to the door. He opened it and turned to Fallon. “What’s your name?”

“Fallon.”

“Mine’s Donovan Pfarr, and I’m in VT-11. Just so you know I’m not gonna skip out on you. I’ll bring you the money.”

Fallon watched as his car lurched from the parking lot and winced. She hoped he’d make it home safely. He surely lived nearby. Maybe in that apartment complex a couple of blocks away.

*  *  *

Joseph Lipstein sat alone on the deck that stretched across the back of the house and stared past the velvet black of the yard to the faint luminescence of Chesapeake Bay. A distant string of lights twinkled from the opposite shore, but no moon or stars provided illumination for the night, just as his thoughts seemed unable to find any light within.

He was dying, and all the darkness of his life found expression in the almost-lightless night. He went over each lapse, each sin, tried to make his peace with it. But there was one episode, the worst of all, and he could find no palliative to ease his mind about it. It stood as a dark, unscalable wall between him and the peace he sought.

Viewed now, from the vantage of distant years, he wondered how he could have contemplated, much less accepted, what he and Thornton did. The theft was stupid. He could only assign his responsibility for it to his own cocksure youth.

But the evil of what they did to cover it up…he clenched his teeth as the familiar, ever-present guilt gripped him with iron-hard talons and tore at his middle. It was the guilt which had started him drinking. And it was the drinking that started his physical decline; it was the drinking that would kill him.

He heard the faint, far-off trill of the telephone, muffled by the closed French doors. Anna opened one and poked her head out.

“Joe, it’s Bitsy. She wants to talk to you. Do you…can you…talk to her?”

He almost shook his head, but hesitated. “Yes. Tell her I’ll be right there.” Lipstein pushed himself out of the chair and dragged himself into the house, through the family room to his office. “I’ll take it in here.” He lifted the re

“Hi, Bitsy.”

“Hi, Dad. Mother said you were sitting on the deck. Isn’t it too cold to sit outside?”

“It’s a little cool, but it’s okay. How’s school going?”

“I’m doing well…except in physics. Ugh!”

“You just need to apply yourself, honey. Too bad you’re not closer, maybe I could—”

“But that’s not why I called, Dad. Why I’m calling is, some of my friends are planning a skiing trip next month. And, please, please, may I go? Mother said it was all right, but I’m going to need some extra money…”

As always, Bitsy called to chat with her mother, but wanted to speak to her dad when she needed money. That was all he’d ever been to his wife and children—a source of money.

He had thought for a moment, when Anna came to the door, that she had told Bitsy about his sickness, that Bitsy wanted to talk to him about it, wanted to tell him how sorry she was that she’d be losing him. But…she just wanted money. A moment of bitterness assailed him.

“How much do you need?”

“I think two or three hundred probably would be enough. I’ll just wear last year’s old—”

“I’ll transfer four hundred to your account.”

“Thanks, Dad. Well, I’ve got to go. We’re getting ready to have a study session and—”

“I understand. Bye, Bitsy. I love you.”

Lipstein squeezed his eyes shut after he hung up. What would become of Bitsy when he was gone? When he wouldn’t be here to give her money when she needed it? He’d have to set up a trust fund for Anna and Bitsy.

His son, Warren, was grown and on his own. Warren would receive an inheritance, of course, but Anna and Bitsy needed to be provided for, needed a regular source of income. He’d have to talk to a lawyer soon, arrange for money to be available for his wife and daughter, but with the principal untouchable, so there would always be funds to cover their needs.

His eyes popped open. Chief McKniere’s family. Didn’t the man have children? He tried to remember. Yes, he was pretty certain the chief had a daughter. Wonder what happened to her when…when…

He realized he knew nothing about McKniere’s family nor what became of them after the chief’s death. Surely there had been insurance money…something.

And he had a sudden need to know, to assure himself that they were all right.

*  *  *

Donovan dragged himself awake when the alarm sounded. After a long shower, he felt little better. But he at least had the strength to get dressed. His head ached and his ears felt stuffed with cotton. Aspirin. He needed more aspirin. When he picked up the bottle, he remembered that he hadn’t paid for them. The cashier had paid for them herself. He cringed. He’d have to go pay her what he owed. He took two aspirin, and by the time he was dressed and ready to go to work, the headache was easing and his head felt clearer.

His stomach was still queasy, so he didn’t stop for a biscuit at the fast food restaurant where he usually bought breakfast. He drove straight to the base and to work.

And then remembered he needed to go pay the cashier at the convenience store what he owed her for the aspirin and coke. He’d do that tonight when he got off work. Or maybe tomorrow. No big deal.

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