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“I don’t know that he’ll be any trouble. He’ll know who his boss is, and he’ll follow the same rules that everyone does when it comes to Ronan and Denver being king and leap leader. Something else you might not have thought of is that there will never be any mice around here. For the same reason, cats.” She smacked him on the arm. “Hey, I’m serious.”
Picking Hero up and putting him on the floor, he hissed at him. It was funny for him to see this little ball of fur think that he could take him on and come out on top. As soon as Georgie came back into the kitchen, the little shit moved to sit on her feet as if showing him who was the mistress’s favorite.
“Don’t get too used to that spot, buddy. She’s mine.” Again, he hissed at him, and Lance decided to ignore the little monster for now. “I’ll let the others know that there are kittens about. I don’t want any of them hurt while we’re coming in and out of the driveways.”
“Good idea.” Georgie got dressed and left with the kitten. She said she was going to have to take him to the vet to make sure he didn’t belong to anyone. Lance didn’t think that anyone would claim the orange ball, but then he was a cat himself.
Tonight was the big thing with Cybil. Everyone was going to be at Denver’s home because there was a lot of paperwork to read over because of all the things she’d done. For a while there, Lance didn’t think that list was ever going to stop. Just the number of missing people in her hometown made him wonder what sort of life his sister-in-law had grown up in. There was a great deal that they’d been able to find out about her upbringing, and he found himself proud of her for being the person that she was if only half of what they’d found out to be true.
Lance made his way out to his truck after getting dressed up for work. Today, it was going to be him and Grayson working. Mostly, it was answering the phone and going over paperwork. He had started looking at the obits, too. Ronan told him that was a good source of information on families that might need a hand-up. He knew that funerals were expensive.
They fielded calls for most of the morning and talked about some of the things that they’d learned by being around the Foster family. Both he and Grayson had a long list of things that they needed to be acquainted with and even more stuff that there was to learn after they digested that.
“Being wealthy takes a lot of work, doesn’t it?” Lance told him he didn’t know if he’d ever get used to having money all the time. “I don’t think you want to get used to that. But knowing how much to pay someone, tip them? All that stuff goes out the window when I think about how five bucks would have helped us put meat on the table, even if it had only been hamburger. There wouldn’t have been much meat, but it would have been there. I applaud our grandparents every day in knowing now what they had to do to keep us all not just fed but clothed as well.”
“Then there was our Mom and Dad with their hands forever out, wanting us to give them more.” Lance thought of something that had happened when he’d been much younger. “Did I tell you about the time that Mom tried to get me to hand over the school fees money? I kid you not, Grayson, I had to fight for my life when she wanted something. She actually held me out in the road, thinking that a car would hit me and she could take off with the cash. I’ll never forget the look on her face when old Mr. Gilbert got out of his car and slapped Mom so that I could get away. I ran all the way to school. You can bet, too, that I was more careful about seeing her around after that. I know that she and Margo had gone a few rounds too. She was lucky to find you so young so that you could protect her.”
“That didn’t stop her from trying, however. A few times when I had after-school practice, I’d find Margo in my locker in the gym. She was inside the locker, Lance, to keep away from her mom. I had to take her to the emergency department then so that they’d have records of what she’d done to her. I have never said this to anyone else, but it’s a small wonder she didn’t try and sell off you kids. If she had thought of it, I doubt there would have been a single one of you left.” The hair on his arms danced, and he and Grayson looked at the door when it opened.
They had a secretary who would tell them when they had appointments or get the phone at times, but she had just left for lunch, and Lance was happy that she wasn’t there. The woman standing in the hallway certainly didn’t look like the woman that his Georgie had worked for a few weeks ago.
“Where is she?” Grayson asked who she might be talking about. “Georgeanna Rogers. She might well still be going by that stupid name Georgie or George, but her name is Georgeanna.”
“She’s not here in her office at the moment.” Lance let his brother-in-law do all the talking because he seemed to be calmer than he was right now. “If you’d like to call back or leave a message, I can see if she wants to talk to you. However, I can’t make any promises.”
“She stole my business from me. And I don’t give a good goddamn if she wants to talk to me or not. You tell her that she’d better get her ass in gear and figure out how to get me my clients back. They all have gone to other places. I did her a solid by allowing her to work with me, and look how she treats me.” Grayson asked Ange if she thought that she got what she deserved. “Me or her? And if you’re implying that I got what I deserved, then you’re dead wrong. And she will be, too, if she doesn’t get her head out of her ass and get back to working for me.”
“You’re not terribly nice, are you?” Lance barely held onto his laughter when Grayson said that to Ange. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this saying or not, but you can get more bees with sweetness than you can with bitterness. You have a lot of that in you all the time, I’m betting. You’re a bitter—” He sniffed the air, “Bitter old maid that hasn’t even had her cherry plucked. Perhaps if you were to get that taken care of, you’d be a nicer person. I doubt it, but who knows. Stranger things have happened.”
“How dare you imply that I’m a virgin. I’ll have you know that I have sex all the time whenever I want it and with whomever I wish.” Grayson only stood up, and he was glad to see that Ange backed up several steps. “Just give Georgeanne the message, or the next time I come back here, I’m going to kill whoever gets in my way.”
“You go ahead and try that. By the way, did you read the notice on the front door? The one that says that by entering this building, you are agreeing to be recorded, voice too, the entire time you’re here? Good luck trying to tell the police that you didn’t know that. The sign is as large as the door, so there was no missing it.”
When she left, Lance hugged his brother. He was tense, he could feel it, but when he hugged him back, he was happy to know that he wasn’t going to let this affect him as badly as he could have. When he looked at him, his face no longer as tense as it had been, he smiled.
“When this thing is over with Cybil, I want to start hanging out more with all of you guys. I think that I missed a great deal by moving out when I did. But you do understand why I did it, don’t you?” He said that he did more than ever before. “Good. I love you, little brother. How about when things are closed up around here, you and I take our wives out to a nice dinner and enjoy being alive.”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea.” He thought of something. “I have a wife. Christ, I have a wife, and I couldn’t be happier.”
His brother was still laughing as they headed out the door. The calls coming in would be handled by their secretary, and anything important would be messaged to them while out. Lance was happy. Happier than he’d been in all his life and he couldn’t wait to go home and kiss his wife silly.
~~~
Georgie, what everyone was calling her now, sat in the living room across from her niece and nephew. They weren’t talking, but then neither was she. Now, she wished that she’d waited for Lance to go with her, but she’d been putting this off for too long as it was.
“You gonna yell at us all the time?” She asked Billy why he’d think that. “Cause your brother did. I’m not going to call him my dad no matter how much you make me.”
“Listen, kid, why don’t you take it down a couple of notches and let us get to know one another before we start throwing around shit like that. I’m here to meet you and see what you’ve been up to. Not before you moved here but since then.” She sat down on the floor and pulled out the little kitten that she’d just picked up from the vet. He’d been in her pocket since she’d come in. “This is Hero. The vet told me that he’s been abused badly, and the fact that he lets me hold him is a miracle.”
Susan moved closer but only close enough to touch the little kitten. When he hissed at the little girl, Georgie told Hero to behave. Then she put him on the floor to see what he’d do. The stupid cat hissed at them again.
“It’s on account of us being in the house of a bigger cat, I think.” Susan put her fingers out to let the cat smell her. Then, when he seemed to be all right with her, she picked him up. “I’ve never had a pet before. Well, we had a dog, but when we went to get him, he was dead. Denver said it looked like he got into some rat poison. I should have thought about him being hungry and eating what he could find.”
“I heard about that. I’m sorry for you losing him. We’ve been looking for this guy’s family, but so far, the only one we’ve found is feral, and he won’t even come near us. The vet said that he was surprised that this guy came to me at all.” Georgie could hear the cat purring from where she was sitting. “Did you know that animals know when someone is going to harm them, even if they only just met them? I didn’t know that either until I looked it up about why he was hissing all the time. Also, he’s been on his own for a long time, and he doesn’t trust easily.”
Susan handed Hero to her brother, and Billy put him up under his chin. The cat seemed to be enjoying the attention, and she thought about why she’d been asked to come here in the first place. She wasn’t going to sugarcoat it either when talking to them. They didn’t trust any more than the cat did, and she wasn’t going to get off on the wrong footing with them.
“I didn’t know about you guys until I was contacted by the family. I didn’t even know that Shelby was still alive until I got the call. He’s been a mean bastard all his life. Also, I don’t know if you know this or not, but you have another uncle. His name is Philip. I’ve called him to let him know that Shelby is dead, and he wants to meet you guys as well.” Billy asked if that was fancy pants. “Fancy pants?”
