The Short Game Read Online Free Page B

climbing up on roofs.  
    Maggie was right. Maybe I should go. Uncle John was the closest thing I had to a dad. Normally I’d already be on my way to help him.  
    I think the reason I was so set on staying around the Village was that Maggie refused to tell me what was going on with Shay. I figured the closer I was to her, the closer I’d be to finding out what was going on. The fact that she wouldn’t trust me with his mission pissed me off on so many levels, but there was no arguing with her once she’d made up her mind about something.  
    I looked my mam up and down. She was wearing her nicest green dress. In fact, now that I thought about it, she’d been dressing up a lot lately.  
    Well, her version of dressed up, anyway. Most women in the Village had more sequins on their clothes than a Saints’ cheerleader, and they showed just about as much skin. But not my mam. She had far simpler tastes.  
    “Why are you dressed so fancy? You going somewhere?”
    “Trying to change the subject?”
    “Trying to avoid my questions?” Maggie narrowed her eyes, but I ignored it and pressed on. “Mam, seriously. What is going on with you lately?”
    “I’ve just been going over to Emma Sheedy’s house. That’s all.” Emma Sheedy, one of Pop Sheedy’s daughters-in-law. She was married to Pat, Pop’s second youngest.
    “Why’ve you been going over there?”
    “Women issues.”
    “Mam!”
    “Fine. You know how she’s been sick a lot over the last few years?”  
    “I guess,” I said, although honestly I hadn’t noticed. Maggie always knew everyone’s health complaints because even though Travelers had no problem going to the doctor, the women of the Village put as much stock in Maggie’s concoctions as any modern medicine.
    “She’s been having a problem with miscarriages. She’s lost five babies in the last three years.”
    Wow. I had no idea. I didn’t know Emma all that well and I couldn’t stand her husband, but I still felt for them. It had to be difficult.  
    That would also explain why she hadn’t gone out on the road with her husband for the last couple of years. Women without school-aged children usually accompanied their husband for the season. I’d just assumed she hated looking at his lazy-eyed face as much as I did. Now I felt sort of guilty for those mean thoughts.
    “She’s pregnant again. I’m giving her a course of treatment to support the pregnancy, and I have to go over there once a day to give it to her.”
    “And you’re telling me this has nothing to do with Pop sending Shay up north?”
    “Not that Emma knows.”
    I narrowed my eyes at her. It was bad enough I couldn’t do anything to help out my brother without Maggie making me feel impotent at home.  
    “So maybe it’s an added benefit to keep an eye on the lass. See if I can hear anything about the Sheedy boys. Apparently, Pat and his brothers haven’t been calling back to the Village much either. I don’t like it.”
    “Sounds like a reason why I shouldn’t go on the road.”
    “It isn’t. You’ll only be gone a few weeks, right? Just fixing roofs damaged after some tornados? You go. I’ve got things covered around here.”
    I let out a long sigh. “I could do a lot more to help if you’d just tell me what’s going on.”  
    Maggie took a long draw from her mug of tea, but otherwise didn’t respond.  
    “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go. But if you hear anything about Shay, you tell me, all right?”
    “Of course.” She said it so innocently. Like she’d never keep anything from me.  
    I had once helped Shay study for a vocabulary test while he was in high school. One of the words on his list was inscrutable. Impossible to understand or interpret. Half a dozen years later and I could still remember the precise definition because she was sitting right across the table from me.

C HAPTER S IX

    THE SUN BEATING down on my shoulders made me wonder if maybe I should rethink my life. It was nearly 100