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“You really do live under a rock.”
Maybe. But I liked it that way.
I heard a voice in the background before my brother added, “Oh, and Reagan wanted me to remind you about your fitting.”
“I’m not the one ya need to be remindin’.” Our little brother Jimmy hated putting on anything other than shorts, flip-flops, and T-shirts. When our daddy passed he’d bitched and moaned over wearing a tie. Now he was gonna have to wear a penguin suit for Billy’s wedding and he wasn’t happy about it.
“He’s there now. Isabella dragged him kickin’ and screamin’. And don’t worry, we’ll be old news soon.” Billy disconnected the call and I flipped it back to the front page and read the byline.
Stewart Davenport
I should’ve known it was that idiot Stewie who wrote the article. He was the conductor on the Firefly Trolley Tours and talked about the damn Comfort Curse on each tour he gave since the first stop was Abernathy Manor.
My blood was boiling as I stood and poured my now cold coffee into the sink. I resisted the urge to put my fist through the wall. The article wasn’t wrong, I was known for fighting. I hadn’t gotten into a brawl since I was in my early twenties, but that didn’t mean the impulses weren’t still there.
There was a knock at the door and it startled me. I didn’t get many visitors or any at all out here on my private slice of the island. My brothers were basically it and since I’d just hung up with Billy that left Jimmy. Although it didn’t sound like his signature break-the-door-down knock.
He was either here because he’d seen the paper or he wanted to complain about the tuxes that Billy had chosen. I was in no mood to listen to his whining, but I knew that ignoring him was futile. He’d keep knockin’ till I answered.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and checked my watch. It was only eight a.m. and I was ready for this day to be over. Between the message from my ex and the damn article, all I wanted to do was take a shot of Jack and go to sleep.
Before I’d made it two steps another knock came from the door.
“Comin’!” I shouted.
Before Pop died, there’d been an open-door policy at Casa Comfort. But after I inherited our family home, I’d enforced a locked-door policy and changed all the locks. As the oldest of four kids, I valued privacy. My brothers weren’t too fond of the new arrangement.
Another knock sounded as I reached the door.
“Hold your damn horses!” I flung the door open and initially didn’t see anyone.
It wasn’t until I looked down that I saw huge brown eyes staring back up at me. A little girl stood at the edge of the porch. Her pigtails had more hair slipping out of them than captured inside, her jeans had large holes in the knees and were either high waters or a size too small, and her worn-out T-shirt was a size too big. Completing the “urchin” look was a smudge of dirt across her nose and a coating of grime on the pint-sized fingers holding a shoebox in front of her that was half her size.
I looked around to see where the adult was that was supervising this trick-or-treat fail before looking back down at the pig-tailed Oliver Twist. “You’re either too early or too late, which is it?”
“My mom says running late is her cardio.”
I looked around again to see if there was any sign of this mom, I didn’t see any.
“But I don’t need cardio cause I got a good tabolism. My mom says she wishes she had my tabolism.”
A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Is that right?”
“Do you have a good tabolism?”
It was definitely slowing down now that I was in my mid-thirties. “I had a better one when I was your age.”
The pixie of a thing adjusted her hold on the shoebox she held in her arms as she asked, “How old are you?”
“Thirty-four. How old are you?”
Her posture stiffened as she stretched out her neck, in what I could only assume was an attempt at making herself as tall as possible. “I’m ten years old.”
Mind you, I didn’t have any kids of my own. But I’d raised my two younger brothers when Pops checked out after Mama died, and I’d be damned if this little girl was a day over six, and even that was pushing it. She was bright, though. She reminded me of the kid from Jerry Maguire, only a girl, obviously.
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and the box she was carrying began to slip. But this kid had cat-like reflexes and she grabbed it before it fell out of her grip.
“What have you got there?”
