“Yeah. Our librarian will take a look at them. But if you’ve taped over them with anything…”
“All of my sex tapes are digital only, never fear.”
“We didn’t need to know that,” Owen said. “Moving on. What else do you want? I’ve got a stack of CDs I can go through.”
“Excellent. Did anyone keep Dad’s old eight-tracks?”
Owen squinted, trying to remember. That year had been a chaotic blur. “Maybe Seth has them.”
Adam’s eyes lit up. “He could bring them down, and then take us back up north with him. We could do a brothers’ trip into the wilderness.”
“Into the frozen tundra?”
“It’s hardly the tundra. And I’ve always wanted to go on one of those ice fishing expeditions he runs.”
“You haven’t done one of those because you work part time for a moving company and you don’t have the disposable income for a float plane to come and fetch you for weekends away.”
“Family discount.”
“That’s not the Kincaid way,” Owen barked.
Will shot him a warning look. Partwhat crawled up your ass?And partgive the kid a break.
Adam shrugged. “I know. I don’t actually want Seth to pay for anything.”
Owen started ticking off the points on his fingers. “He pays for the fuel. His time is money. He—”
“He’s also our brother, and did you ever consider that he might want to spend time with Adam?” Will said. “Seth’s a grown-up, too, and he can say yes or no. Besides, pretty soon, we’re only going to have each other.”
Another reference to Becca moving away for school. Adam had said the same thing last night. Little did they know. But they didn’t, they couldn’t, and Owen knew that, but he barked anyway. ”Jesus, that’s maudlin. You planning ahead to when we all need to move back in together to make ends meet on our fixed income retirement?”
Will shrugged. “Would that be so bad?”
Owen rolled his head around, cracking his neck. “I’m planning a good long run of living on my own before we need to come to that point. Talk to me in forty years about being old.”
“Maybe if we talk now, about other shit, you won’t spend the next forty years alone and miserable.”
“Who said I’m miserable?”
Will was saved from answering that by the arrival of his niece. Becca wandered into the kitchen. “What are you guys yelling about?”
“Uncle Will’s car broke down.”
“The clunker?” She said it with all the genuine love a niece could have for an uncle, but it still made Adam howl, which made her giggle.
And that made Will smile, even though his precious hunk of junk was being insulted. Becca poured herself a glass of water, then leaned against the counter and settled in to roast the older generation. “Look at you all in your matching boots and big, burly plaid shirts. How are you all single?”
“That was the other topic of conversation. How we’re all going to live together when we’re old,” said Will.
“I can totally see that. You’d be the baddest old guys on the block. My daddy and his ferocious brothers,” Becca teased.
Adam hooked his arm around her neck and she squeaked as he gave her a noogie. “Who are you calling ferocious?”
“Definitely not you,” she grunted as she kicked him in the shin. “Picking on a—” Owen could hear her pause, like she was maybe going to saypregnant woman. But she didn’t, and his pulse slowed down. “Picking on a little girl. Only bullies do that.”
“You started it.” Adam threw his hands in the air. “But I’ll call uncle.”
It was a game they’d played since she was little and Adam had been the doting teen halfway between her and her dad in age. He’d pick a mock fight, she’d “win”, and he’d have to beg for mercy. She used to think it was the funniest thing in the world to make her uncle cryuncle.
