Moonlight in the Morning (Edilean 6)

In the early evening, Kim’s uncle Benjamin, her cousin Ramsey’s father, pulled up in his SUV and called out, “Ho, ho, ho. Who ordered Christmas in July?”

“We did!” Kim yelled, and Travis followed her as she ran to her uncle’s big SUV.

Uncle Ben wheeled a shiny, blue bicycle out of the back. “I was told to give this to the dirtiest boy in Edilean.” He looked at Travis. “I think that means you.”

Travis grinned. He still had dirt on his teeth and his hair was caked with it. “Is that for me?”

“ItR>cause M17;s from your mother,” Uncle Ben said and nodded toward the front door.

Mrs. Merritt was standing on the step and Kim wasn’t sure but she looked like she was crying. But that made no sense. A bicycle made a person laugh, not cry.

Travis ran to his mother and threw his arms around her waist.

Kim stared at him in astonishment. No twelve-year-old boy she knew would ever do something like that. It wasn’t cool to hug your mother in front of other people.

“Nice kid,” Uncle Ben said and Kim turned back to him. “Don’t tell your mom but I went over to your house and did a little cleaning. Any of this look familiar?” He pulled a box from the back of the car and tipped it down so Kim could see inside. Five of her favorite books were in it, her second best doll, an unopened kit for making jewelry, and at the bottom was her jump rope.

“Sorry, no pogo stick, but I got one of Rams’s old bats and some balls.”

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Ben!” she said, and followed Travis’s example and hugged him.

“If I’d known I was going to get this, I would have bought you a pony.”

Kim’s eyes widened into saucers.

“Don’t tell your mom I said that or she’ll skin me.”

Travis had left his mother and was looking at his new bike in silence.

“Think you can ride it?” Uncle Ben asked. “Or can you only handle a little girl’s bike?”

“Benjamin!” Kim’s mother said as she came out to see what was going on. Mr. Bertrand stayed inside. He rarely left the house. “Too lazy to turn a door knob,” Kim’s father once said.

Travis gave Kim’s uncle a very serious look, then took the bike from him and set off at breakneck speed around the house. When they heard the unmistakable sound of a crash, Uncle Ben put his hand on Mrs. Merritt’s arm to keep her from running to the boy.

They heard what sounded like another crash on the other side of the house, and at last Travis came back to them. He was dirtier, his shirt was torn more, and there was a streak of blood across his upper lip.

“Any problems?” Uncle Ben asked.

“None whatever,” Travis said, looking the man straight in the eyes.

“That’s my boy!” he said as he slapped Travis hard on the shoulder. He closed the hatch of the SUV. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“What work do you do?” Travis asked in an adult-sounding voice.

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Is it a good trade?”

Uncle Ben’s eyes danced with merriment but he didn’t laugh. “It pays the bills, and it has some good points and bad. You thinking of trying the legal profession?”

“I rather admire Thomas Jefferson.”

t=" of tryi

“You’ve come to the right place for him,” Uncle Ben said, grinning as he opened the car door. “Tell you what, Travis ol’ man, you get out of law school, come see me.”

“I will, sir, and thank you,” Travis said. He sounded very adult, but the dirt on him, the twigs, and the bruises, made what he was saying funny.