Hello again, gut feeling. Why couldn’t he put his finger on what was causing it?

The crowd was thinning as people dispersed and the train began pulling away from the station. Shad turned away from Charissa’s departing family, released an exhale of relief to be finished with this specific responsibility, and took a couple of steps toward the brick depot. Shad halted when he spied Dulsie.

She was standing at the corner of the station and broke into a broad grin as soon as Shad saw her. Dulsie’s long, sandy brown hair was twisted in the upsweep she preferred to sport during the summer’s heat. The green, short sleeved pantsuit she was wearing had been her day’s attire for Dulsie’s work at a financial counseling service near the downtown district of Jefferson City. Because she stood at only four-foot-ten, a full foot shorter than Shad, and weighed about ninety pounds dripping wet, Dulsie liked to refer to this particular outfit as her leprechaun costume. Most of the time when Shad saw her wear it, he remembered how Dulsie once commented that the Irish trickster look was appropriate for somebody named Delaney – although with a name like Dulsie Delaney, she felt as though she ought to be hanging out with the likes of Clark Kent, Peter Parker and Bruce Banner.

Frankly Shad had no idea if there was even a drop of Irish in his blood, and he claimed the surname Delaney only because he had it legally changed after he turned eighteen. Dulsie had quipped during their engagement that if he had just been patient, Shad could have changed his surname to hers, which was Wekenheiser. And considering the word many people corrupted it into, Shad could have been a “wisenheimer” just like her.

They closed the gap between them as each took a few casual steps toward the other.

“How was the trip?” Dulsie’s voice was soft and its pitch was just high enough to belie her diminutiveness.

“It went well enough, considering. Have you been waiting long?”

Shad had called her on his cell phone during the time he knew Dulsie would be off for lunch and informed her of Eliot’s truancy. She was here now to take him home. Earlier that morning Shad accompanied Dulsie on her trip to work, and he knew she would have got off over an hour ago.

“You know I’m good at entertaining myself.” Dulsie’s grin had a mischievous quality to it. “I hung out at the museum in the capitol to see how long it would take for somebody to ask if I’d lost my parents.”

Besides her short stature, Dulsie’s heart-shaped face, small nose, and dark blue eyes highlighted with minimal makeup guaranteed she would get carded every time Dulsie made a liquor purchase. Because her appearance was very much inherited from her dad Karl, Dulsie knew she had many years ahead of her to deal with misconceptions. And like her dad she’d decided to accept her circumstance with humor.

“That’s better than finding out how long they take to try to throw you out of the mall.” Shad’s smile deepened. “And at least the train didn’t get here terribly late.”

“Only ten minutes. Not bad at all.” Dulsie stepped beside Shad and slipped an arm into the crook of his as it rested on the carrying case. “Remember that time we took the train to visit Russell? We were over an hour late getting to Kansas City.”

Russell was one of Dulsie’s two brothers, both several years older than her. Like both of Shad’s “sisters,” none of their siblings still lived in the area.

Shad grasped Dulsie’s hand in his, and their fingers intertwined. They strolled together past the brick depot and toward the row of cars parked along the street. Just a few blocks ahead of them towered the crystalline limestone marble dome of the capitol building where Dulsie had kept herself occupied.

“Wasn’t that the trip when we all went to the zoo?” Shad asked.

“Yeah,” Dulsie replied. “But I remember it as the trip when you reminded me of Dad.”

Shad liked Karl, but he couldn’t entirely take her remark as a complement because he knew what Dulsie was referring to, and he didn’t doubt that Karl was someone who could be dangerous if sufficiently provoked. “Oh.”

“I’m pretty sure you wanted to rip that guy’s arm off and beat him with it.”

After the train had arrived at Kansas City, the station was so crowded that Shad and Dulsie drifted apart from each other as they searched for Russell. Some greasy looking fellow who probably assumed Dulsie was an insignificant teeny-bopper nearly knocked her over as he pushed by and snapped for her to get out of his way. Shad immediately zipped to Dulsie’s side, and he remembered the impulse that shot through him when he looked into the crowd after the thug wasn’t much different from what Dulsie just described. And of all the emotions he strived to keep subdued lest they became an overreaction, anger was the one Shad kept tightest rein on.

“It was very subtle,” Dulsie continued. “The only thing that gave you away was your eyes. I swear they got darker. Oh, and you did refer to him as a coward who was missing part of his genitalia.”

Dulsie was as adept at sensing people’s feelings as Shad was inept. Except in situations he was already acquainted with and could therefore draw upon empathy, Shad had to rely on the more obvious physical cues that betrayed a person’s emotions: the position of the brows, the turn of the mouth. Dulsie had told him the key to reading somebody was to look at the eyes. Since Shad already had an aversion to gazing into most people’s eyes, he remained at a disadvantage.

“Isn’t it funny how people aim for the groin when they really want to insult somebody?” Shad hoped to steer the conversation toward a more philosophical discussion.

“Except Dad would’ve said what you said a lot louder, to see if it would bait him into a fight. But even though you kept your cool, I was glad to see you do have a fire in your belly.” Dulsie gave his hand a squeeze. “It was part of what convinced me I still wanted to go out with you.”

They’d made that trip together shortly after the rest of the family figured out Shad’s and Dulsie’s “hanging out” together had evolved into something more serious. Not that the two of them had tried to keep their relationship a secret, but nobody had foreseen such a change in their personal dynamics. Actually, by that time Dulsie was just the slower of the two to realize their comradery could lead to commitment. Shad was relieved to discover his efforts at courtship were working. But that was also when Jill began to speak up against him.

Shad frowned slightly as they approached their car, a bronze-toned Buick. “I would’ve thought that’d make you worry about me.”

“I would’ve worried about your genitalia if you hadn’t got pissed off.” Dulsie grinned.

“Well ... it takes balls to be a man.”

Dulsie laughed. Shad had simply quoted what was known as the Delaney family motto. Quaid imparted those words to his sons and grandsons, and they had done the same. Any repetition of it was usually done humorously, but Dulsie was easily provoked to laughter even though Shad didn’t consider himself to be particularly witty. And Dulsie’s love of laughter was one of her many endearing qualities.

“But it’s also to your credit you didn’t do anything to warrant spending the night in the pokey.” Her grin became more mischievous. “Rather pacifist approach for a Delaney.”

Dulsie didn’t let go of his hand as they slowed to a stop at the front of the car. Shad smiled warmly at her.

“We Delaneys have managed to stay outta jail.”

Dulsie chuckled as she placed her other hand over their clasped fingers. “Only because you haven’t been caught.”

Shad wondered if she was referring to a certain computer activity he had started in high school, and for many reasons still practiced to this day.

Dulsie’s gaze locked with his. “I also talked to Mom this afternoon.” Shad could tell by the drop in her joviality although she continued to smile that Dulsie was becoming serious. “It’s time the two of you called a truce.”