Free Tribb's Trouble by Trevor Cole

Chapter One

    Tribb Munday was watching football in his living room. Suddenly, something made him look toward the hall.
    Nothing. The hall was empty.
    Tribb’s wife, Linda, was sitting on the couch against the wall, knitting. Linda worked as a nurse at the local hospital. Lately, whenever she was home, she was knitting.
    â€œDid you see that?” Tribb asked her.
    Linda didn’t look up. “Was it a good play?” she said.
    Tribb shook his head. “I’m not talking about the football game. I thought I saw something in the hall.”
    In the light coming from the kitchen, Tribb saw the hall carpet and the wall. On the wall hung a framed picture of the Munday family. Tribb, Linda, and Suzy, their daughter. They were standing on the dock of the cottage they’d rented a few summers before. Suzy was eight years old then. That summer, Tribb often thought, was his family’s happiest time. But besides the wall, the carpet, and the picture, there was nothing to be seen. Still, Tribb couldn’t shake the idea that something else had been there a moment ago. If only he’d looked a second earlier, he’d have seen it.
    â€œI’m sorry, honey,” Linda replied. “I’m not really watching the football.”
    Linda was still focused on her knitting. Every fall she made scarves and mittens and hats to raise money for Suzy’s school. This year’s sale was at the end of next week, and she had a lot of items to finish. Right now she was working on a powder blue scarf, her long knitting needles clicking in a steady rhythm. Tribb could tell she was not paying any attention to him.
    â€œLinda, it’s hard to talk to you when you’re not looking at me.”
    Linda kept knitting. “Okay, then,” she said, nodding.
    Tribb watched her. “Linda?” he said, and waited. Nothing. “Linda?” he tried again. “Linda? Linda? Linda?”
    His wife dropped her hands and the blue scarf into her lap and stared at Tribb with wide eyes. “Tribb, why are you bothering me? I have all this knitting to do!”
    They just looked at each other for a moment.
    â€œNever mind,” said Tribb. On the small table beside him sat an old crystal candy dish, a real antique. It held wrapped butterscotch candies, and Tribb tipped the dish to take a few. When he took his hand away, the dish rattled back into place.
    â€œCareful,” said Linda. “That dish was my grandmother’s. You know it’s very precious to me.”
    Linda paid more attention to the rattle of a dish than to Tribb’s own words. He wasn’t surprised. That was marriage for you.
    â€œThis is looking nice, don’t you think?” said Linda.
    Out of the corner of his eye, Tribb saw Linda hold up the blue scarf for him to praise. He didn’t have to look. He had very good eyesight out of thecorner of his eye. Better than most, he thought. Not that anyone else appreciated it.
    â€œVery nice,” said Tribb, as he shoved a candy in his mouth.

Chapter Two

    Early the next morning, the three Mundays gathered in their bright kitchen. Outside, orange and yellow leaves from two big maple trees covered the yard. At the stove, Linda cooked sausages for breakfast. Tribb and Suzy sat at the kitchen table, holding their thumbs side by side to see whose thumb was longer.
    Being eleven years old, Suzy never stopped noticing how her body compared to the bodies of others. Her height, her weight. The number of freckles she had. The thickness of her wrists. The lengths of her fingers and toes. A day did not go by, it seemed, without Suzy judging some part of her body against someone else’s. Tribb supposed that she kept measuring herself to see how she fit in the world. Like anyone, he thought.
    â€œYour thumb is huge!” Suzy said. She had a playful grin. “It’s so big it’s gross!”
    Tribb waggled his thumb. “It’s not gross,” he said.