Chapter 16

“Your Pa has some friends visiting. Where’re your brothers and sisters at?”

She shrugged.

“Well, find some of ‘em, gal!”

Hubert had counted five. “There are more?”

Another hilarious inquiry. “I got seventeen of ‘em and a pregnant wife,” Big Bearded Hubert said.

Hubert’s jaw moved, but he couldn’t get any sound to come out. Eighteen children?

Big Bearded Hubert gave Hubert another balance-threatening back-slap. “Your grandad wants to be proud of you, Hubert. Er, well, of me. He ain’t never gonna be proud of that,” he said. He gave Hubert’s narrow shoulders a shake, then stepped back to include spectacular shirtless Bartholomew, and everything his presence implied, in his indictment. “Now is he?”

Hubert was too stunned to cry. His chest was cold and tight and he reached instinctively for Bartholomew’s hand.

“That’s probably about enough of that,” Bartholomew said.

Big Bearded Hubert shrugged. “They wanted sensitive, they coulda kept this one.”