Page 4 of Guitars and Cages

“At least it’s something.”

“I guess,” he muttered, and I let him pick which caps he wanted before we set up the board.

We sat in relative silence at the wobbling kitchen table, peering at the board as he trounced me seven games out of twelve, the little shit.

“You’re pretty good,” he said, grinning at me over the army of kings in front of him.

I shook my head, still trying to figure out at what point I’d lost control of the game. “You’re better. Who taught you to play?”

“Mom and Dad would play after dinner. When I was little I watched and tried to steal pieces. Dad finally sat me on his lap and let me move them where he told me. He said it was so I wouldn’t steal them and make him have to chase me across the room.”

I laughed, remembering how Alex used to steal chess pieces from Chase and Cole all the time. Guess my big brother finally came up with a solution to stop the interruption of a game.

My curiosity suddenly kicked in. “Who played better?”

“Mom won a lot, but sometimes I think Dad let her.”

“I’ll bet he did,” I said, laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

I opened my mouth to tell him why a guy would let his wife win at a game, and then snapped it shut when the realization hit that he was too young for that kind of knowledge.

“Ech, just remembering how your dad used to let me and Alex win so we wouldn’t feel bad.”

Rory smiled. “He used ta let me win when I was little, but then I got good enough to win on my own.”

“That’s better than I ever managed, kid. I never could beat him.”

“Really?” he asked, giving me that wide-eyed owl look of his.

“Yeah, really. He always seemed to know what I was gonna do before I did it.”

“Must have sucked trying to play games with him, then,” Rory said solemnly.

It hadn’t. I’d loved playing games with Chase; of all my brothers he was the one who’d never seemed to mind when I tagged along behind him, sticking grubby fingers into everything. Damn, but I missed him. I shook myself out of the memory and leveled an attempt at a stern gaze at Rory.

“Don’t let your mother hear you say that.”

“Say what?”

“Sucked. She was forever after me about it not being proper English. I don’t see how it’s not; it’s a word.”

We both shared a laugh at that as we cleaned up the game together, putting the pieces in a half-full drawer so they wouldn’t get lost.

“I’m hungry,” Rory declared.

“Seriously? Didn’t you just eat like, an hour ago?” I asked, unable to believe such a small person could constantly be this hungry.

Rory looked at the clock on the microwave, and then back over at me.

“We were playing checkers for hours,” he pointed out. “You move really slow.”

“I was thinking,” I shot back as I looked at the clock and frowned.

“Damn.” I couldn’t believe it was after six already. Well, on the bright side, it was far closer to being his bedtime than it had been when I’d fed him lunch. “All right, so what do ya want for dinner?”

“Beef stroganoff.”