“And a fifty in history,” he added with a sigh.

“We can’t all be great scholars like me,” she said with a haughty smile.

“Ha!”

She laughed and pulled him close to her side. “You’ll do, kid,” she said. “You’ll do just fine. Mama would be proud of you.”

They stopped in at the dollar store on the corner to get Tad another notebook. Across the street, a tall man in a white Stetson was frowning as he watched them. Surely the boy wasn’t Clancey’s son. He scoffed at that idea. A little brother, probably. He’d never asked if her parents were still alive. He knew next to nothing about her, except that she was a pain in the neck at work.

Well, her private life had nothing to do with him, he thought as he continued on his way.

Clancey and Tad walked the three blocks to the little house that they shared. It wasn’t much, just a one-story shotgun house with three bedrooms and a walled-in porch. When Morris and Ben had lived with them, the men shared the master bedroom. Clancey and Tad had the smaller bedroom. Each had twin beds of an antique sort with metal headboards. The furnishings were bare. Faded curtains, faded sofa and easy chair, and an old rocking chair where her grandfather sat in the evenings while he watched TV with Ben and Morris. There was a fireplace with gas logs, and beside it, the implements that had been used years ago when there was an open fire there. She shivered as she looked at the empty wrought iron holder where a fire poker and a metal shovel had once stood. She remembered the shovel most. The police still had it, somewhere. It had been evidence in Morris’s trial.

She averted her gaze to the rocking chair and the acoustic guitar on a stand in the corner. She smiled at the guitar, remembering evenings when her grandfather played for them. His rocking chair was just as he’d left it. She touched the worn piece of furniture with a loving hand and vowed that one day she’d find out what had happened to the old man. If Morris had anything to do with his disappearance, she’d find a way to make him pay for it. She blinked away the tears and went to the kitchen.

“What’s for supper?” Tad asked, returning after he’d placed his backpack on his bed.

“Whatever we can find that won’t put up much of a fight,” she teased.

“I saw a chicken in a yard down the street,” he said, his gray eyes twinkling.

“We are not chicken nappers,” she said haughtily. Her own eyes began to sparkle. “However, if you can spot a beef steer, I’ll go looking for a big bag!”