Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
I’d just reached the edge of the roof when Kara and Charlie came out of the house, carrying a bunch of blankets. I acted like I didn’t notice them as Kara’s dad, Mack, intercepted them and they stopped to talk with him. If I was being honest, I was trying not to call any attention to myself. I wasn’t ready to go rounds with Kara again. Not yet. Not until I knew what my twin had done.
No, first I’d talk to Curtis.
“Those two have given me every gray hair on my fuckin’ head,” Mack said as he strode toward me a few minutes later. “My boys are wild, but Jesus, Kara and Charlie scare the shit out of me.”
“Are they headed back to town?” I asked as Kara spun the Jeep around.
“Yeah,” Mack replied. “Charlie decided we had it handled, so they could go.”
I laughed. “Typical.”
“You know why Kara was all wound up?” he asked me, crouching down to untangle the hose at our feet.
“I told her to go back to town and we got into it,” I replied, giving him the most simplified version I could think of.
“That’d do it,” he said, nodding. “That girl doesn’t like bein’ told what to do. Independent to a fault.”
“She wasn’t like that when we were kids,” I replied, stepping to the side a little once I had more hose to work with. “Independent, yeah, but not stubborn like that.”
“Nope, she wasn’t,” Mack said with a small smile as he rose back to standing. “I just figured it was part of her growin’ up. She started wantin’ to make her own decisions and fight her own battles and she was the devil incarnate if someone got in the way of that.”
“It drives me nuts,” I muttered. “Everyone needs help once in a while.”
“Of course it drives you nuts,” Mack replied, chuckling. “Kid, you’re a born fixer. You see somethin’ wrong, you pitch in to help. Doesn’t matter if you’re asked to or not.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“It sure as hell isn’t,” Mack agreed. “But when you put those two personalities together? The super-independent type and the fixer? Shit. Fireworks.”
“Is this your way of saying I should just keep my distance?” I asked, only half joking.
Mack looked at me with no trace of the previous amusement in his expression. “Now, why the hell would I say that to the kid who loved my daughter so much that he went to jail for her?”
“I was a stupid kid,” I countered.
“Oh, yeah,” Mack huffed, nodding. “It was stupid as hell. But you did it for the right reasons. No one can fault your reasonin.’” He paused. “Just the execution.”
“Hey, Mack,” my grandpa Dragon called from further out in the yard. “Ya lazy fuck, come help!”
“I should be doin’ that,” I said, jerking my head toward the branches and brush they were clearing. “And you should be doing this.”
“Ah, give the old farts this,” Mack said, smiling as he moved past me. “A little physical labor makes us feel like we’re twenty-five again…at least until we’re finished and can hardly bend down to take our boots off.”
I worked on wetting down the house as far as I could reach with the front porch hose and then worked my way back over it for good measure. I could hear someone else on the opposite side of the house doing the same thing, but I wasn’t sure who it was. Eventually, I shut off the water and stored the hose before rounding the house.
The back yard was pretty much deserted, no one really went back there on a good day—but further out, I could see the men working. I couldn’t tell who was in Mark’s excavator, but whoever it was knew what they were doing. Slowly and methodically, they picked up huge piles of downed branches and moved them further from the house.
It was surprisingly noisy outside, which is the only reason I could think of that I didn’t hear anyone pull up or see the men that had rounded the opposite side of the house and were striding toward the excavator and the guys working around it. I knew instantly who they were, or at least where they’d come from.
As I headed in their direction, both my grandpas stopped to talk to the older of the three, a grizzled man who looked like he’d been working for the past week with no breaks. They were all wearing heavy work pants and t-shirts and they were filthy from head to toe.
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked as I reached them.
Gramps looked at me and ran a hand down his face in defeat. “Looks like it’s time to head out,” he said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder.
“Can’t make ya go,” the old timer said sympathetically. “But there’s a good chance if you don’t go soon, road is gonna be blocked and you’ll be stuck here.”