• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 326 0

get out of that whole deal with Gartner using the death of one daughter to screw up the other? Or E. T., for that matter? He puts Andy in jail to spare Dan and then has to drop the dime on Dan because the bastard’s about to kill a cop and his entire family. How messed up is that? How wrong can you get it?”

Joe absorbed all this, knowing that an answer wasn’t requested. But it did make him think of Lyn and her family, half destroyed by the sea; of his own mother and brother, almost lost through capricious malice; and of how fragile and tenuous even the best of bonds could become, through no fault of one’s own.

None of which considered the other, more willful human dynamics that Willy was talking about: divorce and abandonment, revenge and paranoia, murder and mayhem.

“How bad is it with you and Sam?” he asked.

Willy made a dismissive face. “Just a pissing match. No big deal.”

Joe nodded and gazed out the darkened window for a while in silence. “I guess we just do the best we can,” he finally said, “and keep our fingers crossed.”

Willy took a final sip, put his mug down, and slipped off his stool. “Okay, Obi-Wan. I’ll go home now. Thanks for the java, if not the bullshit.”

Joe nodded. “Take care, Willy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”