Page 113 of Worth of Waste

If that made any sense.

Somehow, his heart seemed good.

That was how he knew, even as he climbed inside his Bentley, started it up, and started to back it out of the parking lot, that his brother and sister would be just fine.

He could say goodbye, and not feeling as though he had left them hanging. He hadn’t left business unfinished. He’d done what he promised his parents all those years ago when he buried them; he’d taken care of his siblings the best way he knew how.

All those thoughts jumbled around in Dino’s mind as he reached for the tuner dial on his radio—irritated that it wasn’t on his favorite station.

That was his first clue something was wrong.

Dino had already turned the knob to his station when he realized his mistake.

It was slight hiss from his dash that had him slamming back in his seat, and reaching for the door. He just got the Bentley’s driver door opened when the bomb blew.

He woke up to the sounds of people screaming, to his skin hurting, and to the inside of the car door handle still attached to his hand.

He couldn’t see the people, but he could hear them. Actually, all he could see was the stone fence that surrounded the graveyard, one that was just a little too high for people to see through.

Had he gotten thrown that far?

Had opening his door just as the pressure blew saved his life?

Dino stood, his head ringing, his ears bleeding, and his body feeling like it as going to fall apart. He couldn’t catch a proper breath. He could barely hear, the longer he stood there.

But he could see the flames and the black smoke over that fence—he could hear his sister screaming his name, and the sounds of people fleeing.

No one came into the graveyard.

No one saw him.

Dino almost wondered …

Was he dead?

He was in far too much pain to be dead.

Nobody else knew it, though.

Karen

“J, GET off the counter!”

Karen pulled the giggling, squirming toddler down, put him to the floor, and gave him the sternest look she could manage. Junior laughed in her face, and then ran off in search of something else to climb.

That kid was going to make her go gray.

“And stay out of the bathroom!” Karen shouted after her son.

Junior didn’t respond, but that wasn’t unusual. His new favorite way to find trouble included seeing what exactly he could make disappear down the toilet. Thankfully, he hadn’t clogged it yet.

Hoping her son wasn’t looking for trouble, and had decided to play in his back bedroom, Karen went to work in the kitchen. She wanted to have lunch with Dino, but if she didn’t start cooking something now, it wouldn’t be done by the time he got there from the church.

Absently, to fill the silence, she turned on the small flat screen TV in the kitchen while she worked. A random news channel with several anchors sitting around a curved table doing some sort of panel on the latest economy numbers.

She didn’t care to hear them talk, so she turned it on low, just enough for their murmurs to keep her from worrying too much about what Junior might be doing.

Dino had told her to stop hovering so much over the boy, and to let him explore. He was a smart child, maybe too smart for his own good, and he needed to expel his energy or he was going to expel it in worse ways.