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Date Posted: 11:55:48 02/03/09 Tue
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Casey and Pat>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "The Tipping Point Approaches..." on 11:39:20 02/03/09 Tue

copyright 2009 Cindy Brandner


Casey Riordan was stuck in a terrible traffic jam and was going to be late for work. Which was to say that there was a flock of sheep lazing about the road as if they hadn’t wool to grow nor a notion of moving in their wee addled heads, and he couldn’t get around them, no matter how much he honked the horn at them.

It was his own bloody fault he was late though, and that did nothing to improve his mood- really it was his wife’s fault come down to it, the woman needn’t have pulled him back into the bed, when all he was doing was trying to deliver a cup of morning tea to her. He grinned despite the damned sheep still wool-gathering in the roadway, for it was hardly a thing a man could rightly complain about. Once Pamela had gotten over her initial nausea and exhaustion with this pregnancy her hormones seemed to have gone wild, and he swore he found himself horizontal more than vertical whilst home these days. Not that he was complaining at all, at all. In fact he was half tempted to keep the woman pregnant for the next twenty years or so.

The sheep finally ambled off the road, blatting all the way, sounding purely indignant about having to move.

Casey drove as fast as the narrow lanes allowed, arriving at work some ten minutes behind, his shirt half untucked and a rather wild look in his eyes. Pat was there ahead of him, already busy with a pile of blueprints.

“Yer late,” his brother said and put a cup of tea on the desk in front of him.

“I know,” Casey replied gruffly, hoping to hell Pat wouldn’t ask what had him running behind every morning of late. To judge from the man’s quirked eyebrow though, he had a fair idea. Well it was likely, Casey thought, that he looked like a man fair depraved these days.

“Bring me up to snuff, will ye?” he said, unrolling a set of blueprints for a contract they had for a holiday cottage for a wealthy American- he had to give these one last lookover and make a few minor corrections before shipping them off.

Pat sat on the other side of the desk, canting one long leg over the other.

“We’re near to finished on the renovations to the Finherty place. The windows were delivered this mornin’ an’ we’re waitin’ on the rock for that retainin’ wall. We’ve still to hear back about the bid we put in for the village centre in (?). But no matter that, we’ve got two more projects lined up before we can get to it anyway.”

Pat drank his tea down in three long swallows and stood, impatient to get on with the work at hand. Casey rarely managed to have more than a few words with him, and often their conversations consisted of just this, work talk.

“Pamela wants to know if ye’ll come round for dinner, sometime this week,” Casey asked, not looking at his brother as he asked, knowing all too well what the answer would be.

“Ye’ll thank her for me, but I think-no-not just yet. Now, if ye’ll excuse me I’ve got to get on Pete Simons about that load of schist he was meant to deliver yesterday.”

Casey watched his brother go out the door, hardhat in hand. Pat had proved invaluable in the start up of the company. No one worked harder or longer hours, not even himself. It worried him though, that Pat seemed to have replaced any sort of life with working until he dropped with exhaustion. He understood why, but wished he could find a way to help his brother return to the land of the living. Pat seemed neither angry, nor sad, but rather as if he’d turned to some form of stone, that moved with a great and restless energy that was terrible in its burning. And yet, he was well aware there was little he could do, Pat had to find his own way through his grief, and certainly there were worse ways to mourn your wife than burying yourself in work. He was grateful the boy hadn’t hit the bottle. Frankly he could not imagine what he, himself, would do should something happen to Pamela. He shrugged the thought away, as though a cold hand had touched the nape of his neck in passing.

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