Read Online My Brother's Keeper by Keith Gilman - Free Book Online

skirt ride a little higher on your leg? What happens when that doesn’t work?’
    â€˜I guess you’ll just have to find out.’
    She stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, tapping it repeatedly against the brown glass and then absently pushing around the cold, gray ash. She rubbed her fingers together as though she were sprinkling salt into a pot of soup on the stove and then examined her painted fingernails and the tobacco stains underneath.
    â€˜I’m not the woman you think I am, Lou. I’m sorry.’
    â€˜Then who are you?’
    â€˜You want to know the truth? I don’t know anymore. My husband wants to get rid of me because I can’t have children. He became possessed with the idea of producing an heir to the Haggerty throne and since I wasn’t up to the task he’s decided to trade me in on a newer model. How does that sound? Any more believable a story for you? Probably his mother’s idea. How is it that some women can pump out kids like they’re nothing and not give two shits about them? And some women, who really want children, can’t have them. Why is that?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜You know, I actually thought about a surrogate. Only I don’t think Brian is the artificial-insemination type. He’d want to hand-pick the girl and do it himself. I think he might have had a few ready to go. Knowing him, he skipped the application process and went right to the oral interview.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, Franny.’
    â€˜Please don’t say that again, Lou.’
    â€˜I don’t remember saying it before.’
    â€˜Yeah, but I can hear it in your voice. Poor Franny Patterson. In another twenty years I’ll be just another miserable old woman, just like Eleanor Haggerty, only she has her money to keep her warm.’
    She reached for the purse again and the cigarettes inside but Lou abruptly pulled it away. Franny’s fading smile was instantly replaced with an animal fear as she tried to snatch it back. Lou held it out of reach, fending her off with one hand, the other thrust inside the purse feeling for the cigarettes. His hand came out of the purse holding a gun.
    It was a thirty-eight, a snub-nose revolver of blued steel with a bull-barrel and a checkered wooden grip. It looked like it had seen better days. It had been meticulously polished and oiled as if someone was trying in vain to hide the wear, the scratches along the frame, the worn metal around the hammer from years of sliding in and out of a leather holster, the thumb-brake snapping shut. Lou snapped it open and spun the cylinder, watched it spin like a roulette wheel, the silver, hollow-point bullets loaded like torpedoes. Lou put his nose to the barrel and smelled gunpowder.
    â€˜Cigarettes and guns, Franny? A bad combination. If one doesn’t kill you the other certainly will.’
    â€˜Put that back!’
    Lou dropped the purse on the table. Franny almost caught it in mid-air but it landed with a hard thud. Lou walked toward the window once more, examining the gun in the light. It was a belly gun, the kind of gun someone could stick in your ribs and blow out your insides, the kind of gun cops liked for a backup. But it was also small and light, the kind of gun a woman might use, getting in tight, snuggling against your shoulder and whispering in your ear before she pulled the trigger.
    â€˜Why the gun, Franny?’
    â€˜None of your damn business.’
    â€˜We’re back to that, huh?’
    â€˜You just don’t give up, do you, Lou?’
    â€˜You know me better than that.’
    â€˜There was a time when I thought I did; thought I knew you pretty well. And no, I didn’t think you were the kind of guy to give up. Come to think of it, I believed just about every word you said.’
    â€˜That was a long time ago, Franny.’
    â€˜Really? I don’t think so. You haven’t changed a bit, Lou. What would you have