Shadowed(8)

“Tell me, Nina,” she said softly. “Are the dreams really so bad? Or is there another reason you’re upset. Is it that no good father of yours? What did he do this time?”

“Oh, Dad’s always in trouble.” Nina sniffed and sighed. “I am disappointed, though—I thought he was doing better. I had him going to Gambler’s Anonymous every Friday night. He hadn’t been in the casino in ages. And then…”

“Then what?” Mehoo-Jimmy’s eyes were hard, but the anger in them wasn’t directed at Nina.

Nina sighed. “Oh, I found out he’d been in the casino again. That’s all.”

“How much?” Mehoo-Jimmy asked. “How much did he lose?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” Nina lied uneasily. In fact, she knew to the penny how much her father owed. But if she told Mehoo-Jimmy, the sum might give the old lady a heart attack.

“Nina…” Mehoo-Jimmy frowned at her. “Are you helping him pay it off? Is that why you’re all the time working, eecho?”

“I’m helping a little—it’ll be okay,” Nina said. “Mostly, I’m saving for school. It’s just…I haven’t been sleeping well, so I’m a little tired right now, that’s all.”

In fact, she felt near the ragged edge of exhaustion lately. All the hours she was working combined with all the stress of the dreams to make her feel half-crazy most of the time. But she couldn’t let her mehoo know that.

“You shouldn’t be helping that dog of a man,” Mehoo-Jimmy snapped. “All he does is take, take, take. Probably doesn’t even care that you’re working yourself away to nothing, trying to keep his worthless hide from being nailed to the nearest tree.”

“Of course, he cares,” Nina protested. “He feels terrible about what he did. He just hasn’t been the same since Mom died. You know that.”

“That was twelve years ago, Nina. The death of a loving spirit is a terrible thing, but you can’t use it as an excuse forever.”

Mehoo-Jimmy was only saying what she herself had often thought, but Nina couldn’t help the surge of guilt she felt when hearing it spoken aloud. Her mother had begged her to take care of her father when she was dying, and Nina had done her best, though she was scarcely twelve at the time.

Cooking and cleaning the house as well as doing her homework had been a heavy burden at such a young age, but somehow, she had managed. And no matter how much she might hate her father’s drinking and gambling, she could never forget all the good times. The way he and her mother would laugh and dance in the little kitchen to the tunes coming out of the scratchy old radio… The way her father with his charming Welsh accent and deep blue eyes—the one feature Nina had inherited from him—would tell silly jokes and tickle her mother until she laughed so hard she cried…

“They were so in love,” she murmured, looking down at her hand again. “I guess…I can’t blame him for missing her so much.”

“He had a problem with gambling fever a long time before he met your mother.” Mehoo-Jimmy sighed and put a withered hand to Nina’s cheek. “Just don’t work yourself to death for him, eecho. He’s had his life, and he used it badly—don’t let him take away yours too.”

“He’s not,” Nina said a touch defensively.

“Yes, he is.” Mehoo-Jimmy sounded sad. “Look at you—you’re halfway through your twenties, and you still have no house or family of your own. You ought to find a good man to love you—someone to cook my special fry bread for.”

“You do make good fry bread,” Nina admitted, glad to change the subject. “I’d eat it all day if it wouldn’t go straight to my behind and hips.”

Mehoo-Jimmy made a disgusted hmmph sound. “You’re too skinny as it is, eecho—you ought to be eating a whole plate of fry bread every day.”

“The top of me, maybe. But this…” Nina patted her too-generous hips and ass. “This is never getting skinny, no matter what I do.”

“Nothing wrong with having wide hips,” Mehoo-Jimmy said with certainty. “It shows you’re fertile. The right man will come along and want to put a baby between those hips.”

“Mehoo!” Nina shook her head, laughing in embarrassment. Mehoo-Jimmy was known for speaking her mind, and she didn’t mince words. Half the time, Nina had no idea what she was going to say next.

“It’s true,” her adopted grandmother insisted. “Just you wait and see.”

“Well, I promise if I find a man who actually wants a girl with big hips and a wide behind, I’ll bring him home and feed him your fry bread—how about that?” she said.