Page 9 of Bad Seed

“I will. The same to you two.”

And then they were gone.

Ava was in the back seat, tucked in warmly beneath Brendan’s blanket, talking about school and Mikey Pope all the way up the mountain.

Brendan already knew the two were buddies, but every other word out of her mouth was Mikey this and Mikey that. It made him smile, thinking of how random it was that they’d even found out they had a half-sister, and what a blessing she’d become to him and his brothers. But it was Wiley who saw her first as the waif she was. She had turned on every protective, parental gene in his soul, and he made it his business to become her legal guardian.

She’d come to them as starved and neglected as a child could have been, distrusting of everyone and withdrawn to the point of believing that if she was quiet enough, she could disappear. And now she was a little magpie in the back seat, giving him a play-by-play of the last twelve hours of her life.

Brendan was approaching the turnoff to his mother’s house when he realized Ava had quit talking. He glanced up at her in the rearview mirror.

“You okay, sugar?” he asked.

Ava nodded. “Do you think Grandma will have cookies?”

He chuckled. “Ever since you came into our lives, Grandma always has cookies.”

Ava almost hugged herself with delight. “Because she loves me?”

“Because she loves you so much,” he said.

The impact of those words went straight to Ava’s love-starved little heart. She’d suffered too much too young and didn’t forget, but she’d finally learned to trust, and that was what saved her.

“We’re here,” he said, as he turned off the blacktop into the drive.

Shirley Pope had turned on the porch lights, and the security light on the pole in the front yard gave them plenty of light to see by as Brendan parked.

He grabbed Ava’s backpack as she got out and bolted for the steps. Moments later, Shirley Pope was standing in the doorway with her arms open.

“There’s my girl!” Shirley said, and picked her up and hugged her, then winked at her youngest. “Come in where it’s warm, Son. Thank you for bringing her up. Wiley called about the wreck. Such a terrible thing. I hope to God there were no fatalities.”

Brendan shut the door behind him as he walked in,dropped Ava’s backpack on the sofa, and shed his coat as he followed them into the kitchen. Amalie, Sean’s wife, was setting the table. Ava already had a cookie, and he didn’t wait for an invitation to help himself.

“Isn’t the snow beautiful?” Amalie asked, as she looked up at him and smiled.

Brendan gave his sister-in-law a quick smile and a wink. “It sure is, honey,” he said. They all knew how much she loved the snow.

“Coffee’s fresh,” Shirley said.

He got a coffee cup from the cupboard, filled it, and then took a quick sip. “Good stuff, Mom. Is Sean in his office?”

“Can I take Sean a cookie?” Ava asked.

“Of course,” Shirley said.

Ava grabbed another cookie and took off running.

Brendan glanced at his mom and at the delight on her face. “She’s sure made a difference in our lives, hasn’t she?”

Shirley sighed. “The blessing we didn’t know we needed. On another note, what do you know about that wreck? Wiley mentioned something about a bus full of tourists and a moving van.”

“I witnessed it. I’m the one who called it in. I pulled a young man off the top of the bus who had a bad cut on his leg. He’s Josie Fallin’s brother.”

Amalie gasped. “TheJosie Fallin?”

Brendan nodded. “I’m hoping they got him to surgery in time. He was bleeding pretty bad. I even founda little boy in the ditch who’d been ejected from the wreck. It’s been a day,” he said.

Shirley’s mouth dropped. “Good lord! I had no idea. Well, you know you were there at that moment for a reason, don’t you?”

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