Unfinished Business by Isabelle Drake

missed some vital bit of conversation. Instead of asking her to playback her words, I agree to the time.
    “Your cousin Frankie had an exciting weekend. Did you hear about it?”
    Is his news trending on Facebook? Complete with a color picture? Was it on the front page of Reddit? If it was so great, why didn’t he call me?
    “You obviously didn’t hear.”
    Thrilled to be the one to pass on the latest news, my mom gushes, “He won a contest.”
    “Really?”
    “First place.”
    “No kidding.”
    “You’ll never guess what kind of contest it was.”
    What a smart lady my mom is. I was trying to do that very thing.
    “It was a St. Paddy’s Day limerick contest sponsored by the restaurant.”
    My mouth drops open. After I snap my choppers shut, I stammer, “You’re kidding?”
    “No dear. I’m not kidding.” Her voice is dead serious. “You know what a funny boy he is.”
    Did I know that? “What did he get?”
    “Fifty dollars!”
    “Fifty dollars!” He won actual money? Not a cornbeefan cabbish dinner?
    “Let me see if I can remember the poem.”
    I imagine my mother curling her mouth to the side and tapping her chin.
    “There once was a pretty young model…”
    Naturally she finishes up the whole thing, remembering each line accurately and delivering it perfectly. As must have been the case with young Frankie, her delivery isn’t hindered by thin, green beer or erroneous visions of leprechauns.
    Stinking kids and their stinking limericks.
    “Yeah, that is a good one,” I mumble when she gets to the end. “I’ll have to call Frankie and tell him good job.”
    “You do that. Your Aunt Sandy tells me he has some others, but, well, she threatened to take his DS away if he told one of the really bad ones for the contest. Some of those limericks can be, well…” Her chattering fades for a few seconds then she breaks the silence buzzing between us with, “So, we’ll see you on Saturday?”
    I can’t hold it all in. “Um, hey, Mom…?”
    She hums into the phone, very mom-like.
    “It’s not going to be, I don’t want…”
    Again the pause, puff of breath then reply, “No one is going to say anything about…about… it .”
    The way she puts emphasis on that single two-letter word tells me what I need to know. They—that means the whole country side of town—aren’t over what happened last spring. That day I ‘ruined everything for everyone’.
    As we say our goodbyes, Tony slips out of Caroline’s office and I wave him off as he goes out of the side door.
     

Chapter Eight
    Fail-Proof Ways to Loosen His Lips and Get Him Talking
     
     
     
    Later that same day, I’m getting ready for the much-anticipated night with Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Nick is angled on my couch, pulling handfuls of pork rinds out of the crackling bag balanced on his chest. He’s watching ESPN. Him lying around on my couch for no reason is usually no big deal. But today he is…weird. He keeps looking at me like he’s going to say something but then decides not to. Finally a question tumbles out, “What do you know about this guy anyway?”
    I’m not about to admit the truth, that I know close to nothing, so I hedge with, “He’s from Josie’s dating thing.”
    “Does she do a background check on these guys?”
    Here I can state the facts so I tip my head out to yell back at him, “She calls references, asks for their current place of employment and photocopies their driver’s license.”
    I hear the crumble of the empty bag as he wads it up. “You didn’t ask her that. Riana did,” he calls, brandishing his bottled water.
    “So what?” I wave my brow pencil at him. “I know he’s safe.”
    “What else do you know?”
    I duck back in to finish my eyes. “He plays football at Wayne. On scholarship.”
    A sputtering choking sound is followed by silence. When Nick speaks again, his voice sounds too tight. “What position?”
    Typical guy question. Who cares? They all wear those pads, don’t