Deadfall (30 page)

E
PILOGUE

Hank looked down. Noel had crawled up onto his lap and fallen asleep somewhere during the battle. Evie, the mother, was cleaning up—ferrying dirty dishes and glasses into the house and onto the kitchen sink. She was on her third trip when her two boys, Josh and Caleb, silently joined her, lugging the bigger bowls that still held leftovers into the kitchen behind her.

Josh returned with a broom and started sweeping the patio. Caleb called out that he was tired and going to bed.

Evie returned with two cups of steaming coffee and sat down opposite Hank at the redwood picnic table.

She nodded, indicating Noel, still sleeping in her great-grandfather's lap.

“If she's too much for you, Grampa Hank, I can take her in and put her to bed,” said Evie.

“Naw,” said the old man. “I've lifted my share of calves, and on some occasions a near full-grown heifer. She's no bother for me.”

Evie took a sip of her coffee, then she nodded for Hank to do the same.

“No, thank you, ma'am,” said Hank. “I drink that stuff too close to my bedtime, I'll be up half the night.”

She leaned in closer with a sly smile on her face.

“Tell me, Grampa Hank,” she said, “was all of what you just told your great-grandchildren a true story?”

“Well,” said Hank, shifting his weight under the child on his lap, “most of it's true . . . some of it's not . . . and the rest is probably how I wish it had happened. But the one thing I do know is that my parents were kidnapped, and my grampa Charley got 'em back. And these three kids seemed to enjoy it all, didn't they?”

“Sure did,” said Evie, yawning, then settling back against the tabletop.

“It took their minds off their own problems for a while . . . and it let them see what goes on in other folks' lives,” Hank said.

“Your grampa Charley must have been something, Henry Ellis Pritchard,” she told him. “I'll bet he was just like you.”

“Not quite,” said the old man. “They just don't make 'em like my grampa Charley anymore.”

There were a few moments of silence between the two, then:

“Mommy?”

It was Noel, who had just awakened.

“I have to go to the bathroom, again.”

Before he lifted the child back down to the ground, Hank looked Evie directly in the eye.

“Me too. And that's a fact,” he said with a wink.

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Copyright © 2015 Stephen Lodge

 

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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3391-1

 

First electronic edition: May 2015

 

ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3392-8
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3392-4