LITMIR.BIZ

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took the cards from her. “See this bend you made here? Now everyone knows that’s the ace of spades.”

      “Oh,” she said, the only one who didn’t know.

      And she simply didn’t have the face for poker! She frowned at bad hands. She chewed her lip if they were really bad. Her eyes did a glow-in-the-dark thing if it was a good hand.

      “Your aunt is a wash-out at this game. You have some promise, though. You have to have some ability to lie to be a good poker player.”

      Luke flinched as if he’d been struck. He ducked his head. He dealt them each a hand and glared at his. And then he set them down, face up. He cleared his throat and looked Brendan right in the eye.

      “I did it,” he blurted out. “I opened the mail. I sent Deedee the letter. I took the money.”

      Honestly, Brendan did not want to like this kid.

      But coupled with the defense of his aunt with the coat rack, and how hard he worked out there in the barn every day, how good he was with that cat and all the animals, the confession meant there was some hope for the boy.

      If Nora didn’t manage to kill him with kindness first.

      Because his aunt put down her cards—a royal flush, not that she would recognize it—and glared at Luke, ready to fight for him, ready to believe in him. “Luke! No, you didn’t!”

      “Let him do the right thing,” Brendan said quietly.

      The words made Nora want to weep. It confirmed what she already guiltily believed. She was making the wrong choices for Luke over and over again.

      Nora hated that Brendan was right. And she hated that he had come into her house and her life and had taken control as naturally as he breathed.

      But most of all, she hated the sense of relief she felt that she didn’t have to figure out how to fix it. She hated what it said about her that she had been prepared to lie to protect her nephew. And she hated, too, that she felt the same way she had felt in Brendan’s arms. Not so alone. Carried.

      “Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Brendan suggested.

      Nora appreciated his tone. Mild but stern. Not about to take any nonsense.

      Luke glanced at her, and she nodded, not missing the look of relief on his face. He’d been carrying the guilt for too long.

      “I was opening the mail for Nora’s Ark and found Deedee’s letter. She didn’t say Charlie was dying. She just said he wasn’t feeling well. I decided to play along. So I wrote her and said sure I’d send some energy. But that she should make, er, a donation.”

      “You told her to send money,” Brendan said flatly, not willing to allow Luke to sugarcoat it.

      “Okay. I did.”

      “But why? You have money,” Nora asked plaintively.

      “I didn’t have enough.”

      She felt herself pale. Enough for what? Why did a fifteen-year-old boy need fifty dollars that he couldn’t ask her for?

      Cigarettes? Alcohol? Drugs?

       Karen, I have failed. Colossally. Why did you leave me with this?

      Given the road she was going down, at first she thought Luke’s answer was a relief.

      “The police were hassling me about the bike. The guy I borrowed it from, Gerald Jack-in-the-Box—”

      “Jackinox,” she corrected automatically, thinking, It’s about the bike. Not drugs.

      “Whatever. He said he’d make it go away if I gave him fifty bucks.”

      Her sense of relief evaporated. “That’s blackmail! Tell me you didn’t ask Mrs. Ashton for fifty dollars to give to him! Oh, Luke, why didn’t you come to me?”

      He at least had the grace to look a little shamefaced. “I asked her for fifty bucks. Cash. In the mail. When the money actually came, I was shocked. And I felt guilty. So I sat down and thought I’d send her stupid cat—I didn’t know him then—some energy.”

      “What do you mean by that?” Brendan asked, his voice stern.

      “Well, just the way my aunt does it.”

      “And what way is that? That your aunt does it?”

      “That’s not important!” Nora said. Her way with animals had always made her a bit of a novelty—and not always in a good way—to those who knew about it. Brendan Grant already knew way too much about her. He’d guessed she’d been betrayed. He knew she had a secret crush on Johnny Jose. He’d read Ask Rover and knew she wrote it. Enough was enough!

      But annoyingly, Brendan trumped her with Luke. By a country mile.

      “She puts her hands on the animal and then closes her eyes and goes all quiet. So that’s what I did. Only I had to pretend the cat was there. I sort of imagined light going around him. It was dumb, because I didn’t have a clue what the cat looked like. I didn’t picture him being so ugly. I mean, not that he’s ugly once you get to know him.”

      “That’s the same with all things, and people, too, Luke,” Nora said, not wanting to miss an opportunity to help him see things in a way that would make him a better person.

      Luke and Brendan both rolled their eyes.

      “Right,” Luke muttered. “Anyway, it freaked me out because I got all warm, like the sun came out, and it was pouring rain that day. It freaked me out even more when Mrs. Ashton wrote that it worked, so I just threw out her letter. And erased her messages. Geez, she called about a dozen times a day. I was a wreck trying to get to the answering machine before my aunt.”

      Nora cast Brendan a glance. He didn’t look at all sympathetic to Luke feeling like a wreck trying to keep his treachery hidden.

      “Why,” Brendan asked carefully, “did it freak you out when you thought it worked? You could have been into some real cash.”

      “I didn’t like the way it felt.”

      Nora’s sweet sensation of relief was tempered somewhat when Luke shrugged and sent her a look. “Who wants to be like her?”

      Even though she was used to his barbs, it hurt. And even though it was the story of her life. She was careful not to let how badly it hurt show.

      Over the years, some people saw what she did as a gift, but most saw it as just plain weird. She was cautious about showing people that side of herself. Even in the column, she didn’t reveal she wrote it, didn’t always say exactly what she wanted to say, tempering it with what people wanted to hear.

      Nora glanced at Brendan. He was watching her. She had the uneasy feeling he saw everything, even the things she least wanted to reveal.

      Again she had that aggravating feeling. Instead of feeling exposed, she felt in some way not alone.

      She tore her eyes away from him, forced herself to focus on her nephew. “Luke, do you understand how terrible this is? You gave false hope to a poor little old lady—”

      “No one would resent being called old more than Deedee,” Brendan said mildly, “and we won’t even go into the poor part.”

      “The point is she was afraid to lose her cat, and Luke played on her fear and took her money.”

      “I needed the fifty bucks!”

      “You allowed that boy to blackmail you! I have to call his parents.”

      “That’s why I didn’t tell you! Dammit, Auntie, I didn’t really have permission to borrow his bike. Do you have to be so gullible?”

      Brendan’s tone remained mild enough, but there was steel running through it. “You don’t use language like that in front of women. And your aunt is not the guilty

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