Free Courting Trouble by Maggie Marr Page B

said. “Her brother cooks and she makes the pies.”
    “They are some mighty fine pies,” Cade said. His spoon clinked against the diner mug as he stirred sugar into his coffee. Cade looked up at his brother. “I think Dad’s confused.”
    “To you he’s Dad, to me he’s Hudd.” Wayne leaned back in his booth and draped his arm over the seatback. “And as far as confused? What’s new? The man’s been confused since 1972.”
    “He doesn’t remember some pretty important things.” Cade clasped both his hands on top of the table. Hudd losing his mind wasn’t pleasant breakfast conversation but one they needed to have.
    “Does he know who you are?” Wayne asked.
    Cade nodded.
    “And he knows who he is, right?”
    Again Cade nodded.
    “Then he’s fine,” Wayne said with the finality of a sheriff casting down an edict. Cade grimaced, both corners of his mouth pulled down. If only Hudd’s mental acuity was that simple. Wayne might want to think Hudd was fine, he might even want to believe Hudd was fine, he might even be able to convince himself that Hudd was fine, but after months of living with their father, Cade was quite certain that Hudd was not fine.
    “Look,” Wayne said, shifting his body forward and placing both palms flat on the tabletop, “the doctors said he’d have good days and bad.” Wayne lifted his right hand, palm up. “You know how it goes. Sometimes he doesn’t appear very with it. Also fatigue. When he’s tired he’s not nearly as good. If you talk to him after eight pm you never know what you’ll get. He may think he’s Batman.” Wayne shrugged his right shoulder and resettled, leaning back against his booth. “Who knows?”
    The right corner of Cade’s mouth jerked upward with the image of his stern-faced father standing in the center of the living room proclaiming he was a superhero and king of the night.
    “He wasn’t that out of it,” Cade said.
    Cade waited for Rose to place his two eggs over easy and Wayne’s Hungry Man Breakfast onto the table.
    “What was it about?”
    “Thank you, Rose.” Once she was out of earshot, Cade leaned forward as if sharing a dirty secret with his brother. “Connie McGrath.”
    Wayne’s steak knife halted mid-cut. He slowly looked up at Cade and while his face was stern—non-expressive—his eyes held questions.
    “And the remarks?” Cade continued, “Not appropriate.”
    Wayne’s eyes slid to the right as if checking to see if there was anyone near enough to overhear their conversation. “Enough to get Hudd into any kind of trouble?”
    Cade shrugged. “No, of course not.”
    “Look,” Wayne continued quietly and his gaze never left Cade’s face, “he’s probably got the McGraths on the brain what with Savannah getting arrested, and Tulsa coming back, and you accepting that case—”
    “I didn’t accept the case.” Cade’s tone hardened. When would people understand there was no accepting, he’d been compelled, no, ordered, to take the case by Judge Wilder. “I didn’t have a choice—when you give forty hours of pro-bono work to the legal clinic, you get the damn case you get.”
    “Right, no choice.” Wayne cocked an eyebrow and returned to cutting his meat. “Maybe Hudd’s fixated. I mean, that whole damn mess nearly ruined his career and your life.”
    Cade pulled a napkin from the dispenser. A damn mess. A tragedy. A night no one wanted to remember and a night that no one could seem to forget.
    Cade stirred another packet of sugar into his coffee and noticed Wayne look past him toward the front door. A grin—the type of grin that usually spelled trouble for Cade—spread across Wayne’s face. The hair on Cade’s neck prickled. He knew. Cade knew before Wayne said her name, Cade knew before he heard her voice, Cade knew because a jolt of energy like a bolt through ion-charged air socked him on the back of the shoulders.
    “Well, Tulsa McGrath! Aren’t you the best sight a man could see this early in