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your grandpa was in one of his moods. Lord knows I fed them all often enough. Then those little boys grew up. Tommy was killed. Jeff and your uncle managed to escape the draft, but not Gumbo. They called his number, and he couldn’t face it, so he ran. Oh, I was worried for him, but I wasn’t mad, Border. It was a war you couldn’t believe in; one boy dying was enough.”
    She pressed two fingers to her lips and inhaled, breathing in a ghost.
    Connie quit talking and played music. The Cadillac had a good sound system and she had a library of tapes. “Enough to get us to Florida and back without repeating a single one,” she told him. She popped in Aretha Franklin and let it blast.
    “Maudie bought me this,” she shouted over the music. Maud was her son’s wife. “She and I took a trip to the Ozarks last summer, just the two of us, and she didn’t like any of my tapes, so she made me stop in Kansas City to buy something she did like. Now I think it’s my favorite.”
    Border leaned his head against the leather seat and let his fingers tap while Connie sang along with the Queen of Soul.
    He thought about how every child has four grandparents. Odds were a kid would know at least one. He hadn’t. All four dead. Two before he was even born, the other two before they’d admit him into their lives. He closed his eyes and conjured up grandparents. What would they be like? Maybe one would look a little like Colonel John Farmer. Maybe one was an artist. Maybe one…
    Stupid. His family was his family. What they were, that’s all he had.
    He opened his eyes and saw that it was snowing. Connie drove on, oblivious, doing eighty. He shifted in his seat, and she turned her head, caught his eye, and winked.
    Driving in the Car with Connie —
    The computer salesman couldn’t believe his luck. Connie took five minutes to find what she wanted, another five to be persuaded to buy an armload of accessories, five more to pay. In under twenty minutes, she was back in the car with a four-thousand-dollar surprise for her husband.
    “Hope he likes it,” Border said.
    “He’d better. I’ll give it to him tonight, but I’ll call it a birthday present. His birthday is in two weeks. Now I don’t have to get him that rototiller. Oh my gosh, look at this snow. When did this start?”
    “On the way here. You didn’t notice?”
    “You had me thinking too hard, hon. Rats. I thought maybe we could stop somewhere for a nice steak. It’s not much of a town, but they do have some decent restaurants that know how to grill a chunk of beef.”
    “Maybe we should head home. Dad might be worried. And Paul might want to use his new toy.”
    She paused before inserting the ignition key. “I might be wrong about this. He might never get out of that chair now. Just sit in the recliner in his pajamas with this machine on his lap and crank out his sexy mysteries.”
    “Are they sexy?”
    “You haven’t read one of Paul’s books?”
    “I don’t really like mysteries.”
    “I’ll tell you the truth, Border. I’ve only read one. Part of one, really. When I came across the very first bedroom scene, I said to myself, I don’t want to know this. Don’t want to know what my husband is about to tell the world.”
    He couldn’t quite imagine her caring and was about to say so, but she pulled the mind-reading trick again.
    “I don’t talk about everything .”
    She didn’t talk at all on the way back to Red Cedar. Border felt chatty, and it seemed like a good chance to hear about his dad’s family and childhood, but he was good at reading adult signals, so he kept his mouth closed. Another time.
    Border hummed a tune, an original, tapping it out. Da-da-da-da-da-da-DE-da.
    Driving in the car with KA-nee.
    Better than playing pyroball.
    Bombs Away—
    On the fridge, a note for Border: Paul made chili. I’m at his house. The war has started and we are watching. You are welcome. Your mother called twice, you might want to call her. Dana has