Chapter 1
“This looks good, don’t you think? I mean, we’ll need some of those fancy crackers to go with it too.” Her sister growled at her. “Now what? Lily, you told me the kids like cheese.” She put the three-pound roll of cheese in her cart, only to have her sister take it out again. “Am I going to have to go behind you again to let the kids pay for it? You said it will make a great after-school snack. I’m helping with that.”
“Right now, you have—let me count—six three-pound rolls of different kinds of cheese in this cart. Even if they were to have cheese every day after school until they graduate, there isn’t any way they’ll be able to eat all this. Not to mention, I wonder for their digestive systems too.”
“She means we might not be able to poop, Aunt Rogue.” Rogue winked at Donna when she walked by her, picking up the roll of cheese and putting it back in the cart. “I would love some beef jerky too, but I think it would be cheaper for us to buy the cow. What do you think?”
Both she and her sister laughed at Donna. Then Lily looked at her with the face she used on the kids. She was upset. Not mad, but upset. Rogue knew why, but she didn’t want to have to tell her once again that she could afford it.
“Don’t. Okay? Just don’t tell me again how much this is costing me. Here. I dug this out of my bag last night for when you asked me again how I can afford all this.” She could see the moment her sister saw the numbers on her latest paycheck. When she finally looked up at her, Rogue took it from her and stuffed it back in her pocket. “That’s for a single week, Lily. I told you, I make really good money because I’m very good at what I do. Then there are the other perks I get paid for as well. I want you to stop worrying about the money. Have a good time and buy the damned cheese.”
Picking up the roll of cheese she’d been looking at, Lily put it in the cart. Then she turned to her. There were tears in her eyes, and if she started bawling again, they were all going to be bawling. It seemed that the little Fisher family was on the edge of it a great deal of late. Not that Rogue blamed them. There was shit enough for an army going on for them.
“I’m so proud of you, Rogue.” She thanked her sister. “I really am. You set out to do something, and you did it.”
“I’d have not been able to do it if you’d not picked me up and shaken the shit out of me a few times back then. I would have been dead, literally, had you not gotten me cleaned up and off that shit when you did.” Lily said she needed her. “Not nearly as much as I needed you then and now. You’re all I have in the world with these kids. Let me have some fun with them before I have to go back out in the real world and take pictures of someone’s idea of how they need to resolve something other than having a conversation.”
“Is it bad for you sometimes?” Rogue only nodded. “They say you’re the best. Even the FBI goes out of their way to make sure you have the best equipment. Of course, the article didn’t say your name, but I knew who they were talking about. My little sister is a crime solver.”
“Aunt Rogue?” Glad for the interruption, she looked at her new niece, Billy. The kid was beautiful. Extremely smart too, but painfully shy. She asked her what she needed. “I would like to ask you if I can get this. Now, don’t tell me to just put it in the cart. I don’t want to share it. I’d like to have it. After I read it, I’ll share it, but I’d like to have it to read myself.”
She took the book from her and looked at the cover. It was about husbandry, something she knew a little about but not enough to get her any kinds of points in joking about it. Rogue handed the book back to her.
“I would love to have you read this book. And you don’t have to share if you really want to keep it. I don’t see any of the others showing any kind of interest in that sort of thing, do you?” Billy blushed and shook her head. “I will tell you something. The family we’re going to see, the Fosters? One of them, I don’t remember his name right now, is a vet. A great one too, from what my friend says about him. While we’re there, you can talk to him if you’d like. Quin. That’s his name. Quin might even let you tag along with him on a few of his cases if you ask him nicely.”
After hugging the book, Billy put it in the cart. Rogue had noticed that she was good at herding the kids around all the time, keeping them in line as well as helping out with the youngest, Sandy, when she got cranky or hungry. Rogue looked at her sister, asking her if she knew Billy had wanted that sort of book.
“I did. Before her father died, she’d been bringing home all sorts of animals. They followed her home, she’d tell us. But since then, I think because she knows there isn’t the money for any extras, she’s not been doing that.” Rogue was going to see if she could hook Quin and her niece up as soon as she got there. “I’m going to have fun from now on. I might even buy myself something while we’re here.”
“Good.” Her phone went off,
