“So what happens when this juvenile delinquent finger-paints my niece? If the little so-and-so makes her cry—”
“Only the first time. Now she marches straight to the water colors, grabs a container and dumps it over his head.”
I laugh.
“Don’t laugh, Matt. It isn’t…” That’s as far as she gets before she laughs too. “Welcome to my world, brother dearest—and hold on a sec while I wipe up some puppy pee.”
I wait while my sister does her thing. She leads a busy life. A big house. A toddler. A puppy. A husband who owns a technology company. And she loves it all, wants it all, and not even the husband she adores and who adores her can figure out how she manages to deal with everything while still running her online business, Casey’s Quest. Yeah. She’s that Casey, the one whose site helps busy women locate stuff like antique perfume bottles and antimacassars, not that I really know what in hell an antimacassar is or why anybody would want to locate one.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m back. Hey. Is everything okay? You don’t usually phone me during the day.”
“Everything is fine.” I run my hand through my hair. “I just, uh, I just need a little advice.”
She laughs again. “On what? Potty training? Puppy train—Mongo! Mongo, put down that slipper. Bad puppy. Baaad puppy!”
“Mongo? You named a two month old Golden Retriever Mongo?”
“Talk to your brother-in-law. He’s seen Blazing Saddles more times than any human being should.”
Now I’m the one who’s laughing. It almost—almost—makes it a little easier to get to the reason for my call.
“Case?”
“Mmm?”
“That advice I need…It’s more like a favor. You got a couple of free hours today?”
My sister doesn’t just laugh, she guffaws.
“I guess not,” I say glumly.
“At least tell me what the favor is. Who knows? Maybe today’s when I figure out how to turn twenty-four hours into twenty-five.”
“It’s a favor for Bailey.”
“Bailey? The woman who should get the Croix de Guerre for putting up with you all these years?”
“See, she’s got this wedding to go to,” I say, ignoring the comment. “A family thing. It’s a three day job, Friday through Sunday.”
“Three days in the bosom of her family? Wow. I hope she doesn’t have an Uncle Harry.”
Uncle Harry is a man whose views on virtually anything you might foolishly mention are enough to empty a room.
“Close enough. She has a Cousin Violet.”
“Ah.”
“Violet’s the sort who pulls wings off flies. And if Bailey doesn’t show up looking like a fashion plate, she’ll end up being the fly.”
“Poor Bailey. I admit, she doesn’t exactly, you know, wear the things she should. I mean, if she did, she’d be a knockout because, basically, she’s a really pretty girl.”
“You see that too?”
“What do you mean, do I see that too? Who’s the ‘too’ in this equation?”
I close my eyes. I am absolutely not taking the conversation in that direction.
“What I mean is, you have an excellent eye. And you always look great.”