Page 119 of Homecoming

“I know we said we wouldn’t talk about it tonight,” Judith said, sounding almost tearful, “but how do you think it’s going to go, Dan?”

“We have a very strong case for dismissal. I believe it’ll turn out to be a severe overreach by the state police in charging them before they had all the facts.”

“Oh God,” Chuck said. “I hope so.”

“I don’t want to get your hopes up quite yet, but I’m feeling increasingly confident that they’ll never get the case to trial. Just keep anything we talk about between us, if you would.”

“None of us will say a word,” Chuck said with a stern look for the rest of the group.

“It’s still so shocking that Kirby was arrested,” Kolby said. “He’s literally never hurt a fly. Remember how he’d capture them and take them back outside?”

“Yes,” Kendra said with a soft smile. “He would say it wasn’t the fly’s fault that he ended up in the house.”

Judith used a napkin to dab at her eyes. “I can’t bear to think of him locked up in a cage. I worry this will break him.”

“It won’t,” Kara said forcefully. “We won’t let it. Tomorrow, I want to see him.”

“I’ll take you,” Dan said. “I think it’ll help him to see you.”

“After that, we’ll swing by the office,” Kara said.

“I’ll take you both to lunch after a tour of BBW,” Chuck said.

“Only if I can go, too,” Judith said.

Everyone looked at Kara, awaiting her verdict.

“Of course,” she said. “That sounds great. But only if we can go to the Travelin Lobster.”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” Chuck said.

“Want to see my old room?”Kara asked Dan after they’d cleared the table and helped with the dishes.

“I’d love to.”

“Right this way.”

“No funny business with my daughter up there,” Chuck said sternly.

Dan and Kara laughed.

She placed a hand on her baby belly. “A little late for those warnings, Dad.”

Chuck scowled. “Don’t remind me.”

“I promise to be on best behavior, Chuck,” Dan said, holding up crossed fingers.

Kara smiled as she took his hand and led him upstairs to the room she’d once shared with Kelly. That felt like a million yearsago now that she’d barely spoken to her sister in years. Their room was the third one on the left. “That was the bathroom I shared with Kelly and Kendra when we all lived at home. The boys had their own bathroom that we stayed far, far away from. All the rest of the bedrooms were theirs. My parents’ room is on the main floor.”

“Eleven kids overhead. Unfathomable.”

“We weren’t all here for long. There’s fourteen years between Kendra and Keenan. By the time he was in kindergarten, she was off to college. Kellen went to college the following year. It was only super crazy in the summer while they were home. Kingston moved out the day he turned eighteen and never looked back.”

“He’s the lobsterman, right?”

“Yes, he worked with Bertha for years before he got his own boat when he was twenty.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

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