Free Sins and Needles by Monica Ferris

she had wished before—that he and her mother could get along. It would be nice to sic him on Mother. There were times when he was a real pest.
    But as her annoyance faded, she began to smile. Annoying as he could be, she’d adored Uncle Stewart all her life, from the day he’d sneaked her off to the circus when her mother had expressly said she wasn’t to go. She’d come home with a balloon and a tummy ache, thrilled to the core from all the exotica she’d seen and the forbidden sweets she’d eaten.
    Stewart had been a charming but naughty little boy, then a charming but naughty adult, and now he was turning into a charming but naughty old man. Apparently, he’d been devoutly wished for by Grandmother and Grandfather and arrived only after years of yearning—interesting that miscarriages ran through the family, thought Jan, wandering into a sidebar. Mother had lost babies, Jan strongly suspected, and so had she. But one result was that Stewart’s youth had been spent in a cocoon of indulgence that had left him unprepared for the cold, hard real world. He was a college dropout who had never held a job for more than a few years, and he had mooched shamelessly off his sister until, in despair, she had slammed the door on him—literally, according to both of them, though in very different versions. Mother had been hoping he would finally grow up. Uncle Stewart had seen it as a betrayal of an unspoken agreement. The problem was, by the time the door slammed, it was too late; nothing could change his behavior. Soon after, he’d married a woman he’d been halfheartedly courting. He had thought she was wealthy and indulgent—and she was—a dangerous combination to a man of his boundless ability to squander. She, too, had finally closed the spigot, but only when they were down to a few income-producing investments and a nice lakefront house that she kept adamantly in her own name. Fortunately, she had a good job as a high school principal, which kept them solvent. Stewart made a very good house husband, though Jan sometimes wondered if Terri liked her job as bread winner.
    But maybe she was content. Jan had never heard her complain.
    There was something sweetly helpless about Stewart that made his friends, especially the female ones, muffle the alarms that sounded when he came asking for yet another loan. He was always cheerful about loans; asking politely and, in this new world of less cash in the pocket, willing to walk around the corner with his victim to the ATM machine, telling a funny story on the way. And unlike most moochers, he hung around after, grateful and ever ready to do favors. He would fetch and carry, clean up, or jury-rig—he was, not surprisingly, talented at making an old car or toy or piece of furniture serve one more turn. One thing he rarely did: repay the loan.
    Jan was as susceptible as anyone to her uncle’s charms. She loved his deprecation and self-aggrandizing, even when she knew both were often merely strategy. And too often she had succumbed to his hints that she should forget the laundry, abandon her husband and sons, and go fishing with him—using her boat, her gas, her bait.
    Even now, past his midfifties, there was something elfin about him. He’d shrug up his shoulders, wink, and look around as if for eavesdroppers, then suggest they sneak off for a drive, maybe stop for a sandwich and beer at this out-of-the-way place he’d heard about.
    Jan smiled to remember all the crimes and misdemeanors they’d committed together. As recently as two weeks ago, he’d come around needing “one of those yuppie foodstamps,” meaning a twenty, because he’d gotten a bargain on cold cereal and what good were half a dozen boxes of Frosted Flakes without milk? She’d long gotten past expecting him to repay any of the money he’d gotten off her, nodding at his usual earnest declaration that one day he’d pay