Free Fixed in Fear by T. E. Woods Page A

ready for you?”
    Mort smiled. Things must indeed be slow if Micki Petty was drinking with Jimmy DeVilla without anyone to run interference. “That’s okay, buddy. I’m going to head on home. You two play nice, hear me?”
    He shifted into reverse, intending to head down to the lake. But an echo of Larry’s parting words and their sentiment caused him to point the Subaru in a different direction.

Chapter 9
    “If my girls ’ope to ’ave the apple tart my girls will ’ave to eat their dinner.” Claire’s French accent made the last word sound like
din-air.
    Mort leaned back and took in the scene. Twenty-five years ago it would have been Edie keeping the lid on dinnertime drama. It would have been Robbie and Allie negotiating for fewer bites of meatloaf and double scoops of ice cream. But tonight it was his twin granddaughters explaining their positions on main course versus dessert. He ran his hand across the heavy oak table in his son’s dining room. It was the same table Mort’s own little family had used for nightly meals, homework projects, and discussions about house rules. There’d been no room for it when he moved to the houseboat, and he was glad when Robbie said he and Claire would love to have it. Funny how traditions seem to continue on their own accord. Robbie sat in what had been, throughout all the years in that drafty old barn of a house Edie’d loved so much, Mort’s chair. Claire had settled into Edie’s spot without even knowing. Six-year-old Hayden sat to her father’s right, the side of the table Robbie had anchored from the age of two until he left for college. Hadley perched opposite her twin, in Allie’s chair. And Mort sat beside her, in the spot Edie used to save for guests.
    “Coffee,
beau-père
?” Claire asked.
    “I’d love some.” Mort never tired of his daughter-in-law. She and Robbie had built a solid life for themselves and their girls. Yet as much as he relished spending time with Robbie and his ladies, the joy was always tempered by the painful vision of the kind of life Allie had chosen. He forced his thoughts away from the twisted decisions his daughter made and focused on the warmth of the family in front of him.
    “Papa, we had a ten-forty-three at school today.” Hayden never missed an opportunity to use police codes. Mort used to think it was her way of impressing her grandfather, but as she began to present him with more and more arcane codes, he wondered if the little girl with the mop of golden curls was testing him. “What d’ya think about that?”
    “Well, I think if they didn’t have to call a doctor for
you
I’m happy. But I hope whoever needed medical attention is fine.”
    Hayden wrinkled her nose in something that looked like disappointment. The twinkle in her blue eyes told him she’d try harder to trip him up next time.
    “It was for Danny Buckley,” Hadley announced. “He climbed up into that tree at the end of the playground. He started shaking the limb back and forth.
Ker plat!
Next thing you know Danny Buckley hits the ground crying like the baby he is.”
    “Whoa,” Robbie said. “Is he okay? Where was Mrs. Diggins?”
    “She wasn’t there.” Hayden was quick to take the story she’d started back from her sister. “We had a subsisuze…a subatoo…a…”
    “A substitute!” Hadley corrected her. “We had a
substitute teacher.
It’s not that hard a word, Hayden.”
    “I know how to say it, Hadley.” Hayden turned her attention back to her mashed potatoes, her cheeks now flushed with embarrassment.
    “So what happened to Danny Buckley?” Mort asked her.
    “They had to take him away to the nurses’ office.” Hadley answered for her sister. “I heard his mom had to come get him and take him to the doctors. I bet he threw up, too. Nobody said anything, but I just bet he did. What a baby.”
    “Hadley, stop.” Robbie shot his daughter a stern stare. “Danny could have been hurt badly. What was he doing up there,