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Historical Society board, does it?” he said.
    Bucky looked up at us. “Why do you say—?”
    “The vandalism at the Tapley House?” he said. “I read about it in the paper. And the flap about the bus route? Everyone in town is up in arms about that. That was in the paper too.”
    I thought about the proposed rerouting of the local bus, the one that took tourists from the train to the downtown and commuters from downtown to the train. If it moved to “preserve the aesthetic and historic qualities of the historic district,” a lot of people were going to have to find another way across town to get their bus to work. And that included the workers at the Voeller assembly business. “Hmmm.”
    “This is where we’re digging tomorrow, Em?” Bucky looked more interested than worried.
    “No, we’re at the Chandler House. None of this has anything to do with us,” I said, as much for Brian’s benefit as for Bucky’s. I put my thoughts that had run along similar veins aside for the moment. The sun was taking its time setting and the bugs still weren’t out yet. It was the perfect time to let your cares seep away.
    Brian sighed and raised his bottle halfway to his lips when a thought struck him. “Ah, Emma? You did speak to Meg about leaving her you-know-what at home, didn’t you?”
    Brian was referring to the fact that Meg owned at least one handgun, something he wanted to keep as far from our house as possible. “Yep. She had no problem with it. We’re going to be fine, hon.”
    “You girls be careful out there, tomorrow. That’s all.”
    “Ha!” Bucky said. “I defy anyone to take on the Fielding girls and walk away with their full complement of body parts!”
    “Or an unbruised ego!” I added. “Speaking of which, Brian, I left a copy of my book out on the table last night and I can’t find it now. You seen it?”
    “Nope. Try your office.” He pushed back on the swing. “Hey, Bucks, did Emma tell you what I’ve been working on lately?”
    “No. She doesn’t know a Suzuki reaction from an Erlenmeyer flask.”
    “I do so know the difference,” I said, but I didn’t really. One was some kind of procedure and had nothing to do with the admiring glances one gets from a new motorcycle, and the other was a piece of glassware. “I’m just happier working on a cultural level than the molecular.”
    “Well,” Brian said, “the biologists screened the natural products library against a protein implicated in Alzheimer’s, and they found something that looks good. All they want from me now is to resynthesize the molecule in sufficient amounts to test in animals.”
    “Sounds like a bitch,” my sister said.
    It sounded like magic to me. Even though when Brian explained what he did to me, I still couldn’t imagine manipulating nature like that. It left me in awe of what he did for a living.
    “Yeah,” Brian said. “It’s gonna keep me and Roddy off the street for the rest of the year, that’s for sure—”
    I worked on my pizza, trying not to feel left out while they talked about things that were far beyond my ken. I nudged Bucky in the butt with my foot when she made a grab for the slice I wasn’t quite done with. “Knock it off. Jeez, some day I’d like to be able to eat something without finding your paws in it.”
    “I thought you were done.”
    “Likely story. So, you gonna be ready to leave when we go tomorrow? And don’t forget to bring your inhaler, just in case; the work’s going to be hard. I don’t want you to collapse and have an asthma attack.”
    She groaned. “What time again? Zero-dark-hundred hours?”
    “Tch, we leave here at seven-thirty. Sun’s up for hours by then. Wimp.”
    Bucky leaned against the railing and scrunched closed her eyes, pouting. “Wah. Yes, I’ll be up then, just wake me when you get up. You never used to be such an early bird.”
    “When you get to my age, you learn a few virtues,” I replied, primly. “Including how important it is to