"That's my money! Dad, don't, it's mine. You said you were just going to keep it safe for me!"

Fiona grabbed at her father's arm and tried to yank the muscular length of it back. Too late. Her quarter, the one she had worked so hard to earn, plunked out of sight through the worn slot of the cigarette machine behind the rest of a handful of change. With casual ease, her father shook her off, sending her staggering back against the brick wall of the convenience store.

"Da-ad." Fiona's eyes burned with tears as her father nipped the cigarette pack neatly out of the machine and peeled it open. "I earned that money. That's the allowance Mom gave me for doing my chores."

Her father shrugged. His lighter flared, and the tip of the cigarette glowed red as he inhaled it with obvious pleasure. "Trust me, I needed it worse than you did." His cool grey eyes viewed her with mild contempt. "I'm pretty much flat, and your Mom's kicking about letting me have any more. You wouldn't want your dear old Dad to go without smokes, would you?"

"It was my money," Fiona muttered, and snuffled juicily.

"Oh, for - ." Her father yanked a handkerchief out of his pocket and shoved it at her. "You're homely enough, don't make yourself disgusting. Blow, and stop snivelling."

Fiona blew, and sniffed again. "I did chores for two weeks for that quarter. I was going to buy a comic with it. And a chocolate bar. Now I can't buy anything."

"Oh well." Her father grimaced and blew out a long stream of smoke from his nostrils, like a bull in the cartoons. "If a comic book and chocolate bar are all that's needed to shut you up, I can manage that. Come on."

"How?" Fiona trotted after him, perplexed. "You said you were broke."

"I've still got my wits, don't I?" He slowed as they came to a drugstore, took a last long puff, and tossed the cigarette butt into the gutter. "You don't need money if you got brains, kid. You'd better learn that. Lord knows you don't have the looks to help you along in life. Now keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you."

Fiona trailed after him into the drugstore and looked around warily. Mr. Benton, the pharmacist, was behind his counter doing something with pills. Mrs. Benton, who managed the store, nodded to her Dad but gave Fiona a sour look. The older woman always looked at Fiona like that. Fiona didn't know why. But she was used to people not liking her much, whether they knew her or not, so it wasn't a big surprise that an old grouch like Mrs. Benton would glower at her.

The store was quiet, with only one or two other customers. The girl who usually worked the till and the pimple-faced stock boy must have gone for lunch.

Her father ambled over to the magazine rack and began leafing through it. Fiona followed him. She gazed longingly down at the comics on the lowest shelves. The new ones always came in on Friday, so today, Saturday, the rack was full, and with lots of good ones, too; Little Lulu and Richie Rich and even a Scrooge McDuck. Those didn't show up often and were always popular. She could have gotten two-to-one, trading comics, with a new Scrooge. If only her Dad hadn't taken her quarter...

"You want that one?"

Fiona looked up in surprise. Her father was apparently engrossed in a Field and Stream, but she had heard his whisper clearly. Not sure why he was whispering, she didn't answer, just nodded.

"OK. Go over to the cosmetic counter and start looking through the lipsticks."

"Mrs. Benton hates it when kids touch the cosmetics." Fiona was careful to keep her voice down. "She doesn't like me, anyway. She'll yell at me."

Her father rolled his eyes as though she had said something too stupid to be believed. "Exactly, dummy. Go pick up one of the classiest lipsticks and act like you're gonna open it."

Fiona was doubtful, but the look her Dad gave her said not to argue. She made her way over to the silvery countertop stand that held the lipsticks, and stared up at it, mustering her courage. Without even looking at Mrs. Benton, she could feel the woman's glare burning into her face. Her dad coughed behind her. Fiona swallowed hard, reached for the lipstick with the fanciest swirls on its case, drew it down and tugged timidly at the top.

"What are you doing?" Mrs. Benton was breathing down her neck before Fiona knew she had left the till. She jumped in fright. The lipstick flew from her hand, rattled across the floor and rolled under a shelf.

"You pick that up right now and put it back. Right now! And if it's damaged one bit, you'll pay for it!"

Stammering apologies, Fiona dropped to her knees and scrabbled under the shelf. She found the lipstick, brushed off the dust, and handed it to Mrs. Benton. The woman snatched it out of her hand, examined it closely, and put it back into the rack, hissing like a snake the whole time.

"What's the problem here?" Her Dad's hand dropped hard on Fiona's shoulder. "Is this clumsy brat causing trouble again?"

Mrs. Benton turned, her face rigid. As Fiona watched in mingled pride and envy, the older woman's expression slipped from haughty indignation into a repulsive, smarmy look. Fiona's Dad was handsome. Everyone said so. Women always went mushy when he gave them that lopsided smile. It even softened her Mom, at least some of the time, when she wasn't too mad at him.

"Oh - no real problem, Mr. Brass." Mrs. Benton smirked. "It's just, you know, we prefer that children not handle the cosmetics. It's a matter of sanitation. Women don't want to buy lipstick that's been mauled about by grubby hands."

"Of course." His disarming smile gleamed again. "I apologize for my daughter, she should know better. She'll be getting a good talking to, I promise you. Come on, Fiona. Let's get you out of Mrs. Benton's hair." He gave Fiona a shove in the direction of the door.

Red with humiliation and confusion, Fiona almost ran from the store. Her father followed, humming a little as he lit another cigarette. It wasn't until they had turned down a solitary back lane that he strode up beside her. She wheeled, hurt and angry, to face him.

To her surprise, he was grinning.

"Worked pretty well, didn't it? That was a good touch of yours, dropping the lipstick. Got old Benton distracted too, and gave me time to do a nice bit of shopping." He reached inside his jacket and, with a conjurer's flourish, pulled out a bundle of comics.

Fiona grabbed them out of his hand and leafed through them with thrilled disbelief. The Scrooge McDuck, Little Lulu, and a Double Archie edition!

"Thanks, Dad. This is great! Wow. But how - ?" She looked up in sudden shock. "You mean you - you stole them?"

Her Dad's face went to stone. He dropped to his haunches and stared into her face, his grey eyes glittering like steel. "You calling me a thief, girl? Is that what you're saying?"

"N -no." Fiona backed a step. "Of course not. I just - I don't - "

"Because if you are - "

"I'm not. I wasn't thinking that. Honest. And - and I won't say anything to Mom, I swear."

"You won't say nothing to nobody. Ever." Her father straightened and casually flexed his right hand. It looked massive to Fiona. "You went to the store for comics, and you got comics. That's it. Got it?"

Fiona nodded so hard it made her dizzy.

"Good. I didn't think you were stupid." Her father's face relaxed. With relief, Fiona trotted along beside him as he began to stroll down the street again.

"Worrying about old Benton losing a comic or two. What a sap you are." Her father shook his head and chuckled. "You know the kind of profits that old shyster is making? I bet he doesn't pay more than two, maybe three cents each for those wholesale." He jerked his head toward the comics in her hand. "Then he charges some poor kid 12 cents to buy them. And you thought I was a thief."

"I didn't, Dad. Honest." Fiona eyed him anxiously, but he seemed to be in good humour again. "So you mean - it just makes things fairer, if - if once in a while Mr. Benton gets ripped off, too, like he rips off other people?"

"Exactly." Her father blew out a long, luxurious stream of smoke. "You gotta understand, rich guys like old Benton already have more than is good for them. We're doing him a favour, keeping him from getting too greedy. Besides," he grinned at her, "if he and that sourpuss wife of his are so easy to sucker, they deserve to get taken. Anyone with half a brain wouldn't have fallen for that old shell game we pulled."

Fiona laughed with him, thrilled that he was talking to her like she was grown-up. Almost like she was a friend. "Yeah, they really suckered easy. Thanks, Dad. I really, really appreciate you getting these for me."

"Hey, you're my kid, aren't you? Homely as a toad, but still my kid. Here, you might as well have this, too." He pulled a chocolate bar from his pocket and tossed it on top of the comics. "That should make up for letting me have one lousy quarter."

Fiona's new and wonderful rapport with her father didn't last long. Nothing good ever did. She had learned that long ago. Less than two weeks after the comic book incident, her parents had a fight even worse than the screaming and throwing matches she was used to. The next day, her dad was gone, taking her mom's last paycheque with him. Fiona never quite forgave her mother for driving him away.

Not that she was with her mom long afterward, anyway. Things just kept getting worse at home, until some nosey teacher wrecked things completely by squealing to Family Services about Fiona having a few bruises and stealing other kids' lunches.

Her first foster home didn't work out too well. The next one was OK, once she figured out how to play the young couple who thought they were doing some wonderful good deed by taking her in. Trouble was, they were so easy that she got greedy. After an unfortunate incident with a gold ring, they couldn't get rid of her fast enough.

But that was youthful inexperience. By the time she had bounced in and out of three more foster homes, Fiona had become a lot more skilful at using her wits to wrest what she wanted out of an inhospitable world. Her Dad would have been proud of her, she often thought. She just wished she could see him again.

After high school and a few secretarial courses, Fiona found a job in the office of a used car parts dealership. It wasn't bad. She enjoyed the casual attitude and rough camaraderie of the guys who worked there. But it didn't pay very well. After a couple of years of just getting by, she decided it was time to look for an additional source of income. Her Dad had sometimes boasted of making easy money at the racetrack, and had told her in some detail of his strategy for winning. She decided to try it out.

The first day at the track, Fiona won $100. The next weekend, her winnings came to $320. When her boss chewed her out on Monday for being late again, she dumped the job without a second thought. The racetrack was a far easier way to make a living, and there was no doubt she had a knack for picking the ponies.

The winnings didn't come as steadily as she had hoped. Still, with a few odd jobs on the side, Fiona made enough to keep herself more or less fed and housed. She remained optimistic that the elusive Big Win would come to her sooner or later. She was smart, and smart people couldn't fail to hit the jackpot sometime, if they just figured the odds right. She spent a lot of time figuring, with mixed results.

After a string of losses left her dangerously in debt to the wrong kind of people, desperation drove her into Eddie Mackie's trailer.

Eddie was a trainer and ex-jockey, a small, incredibly tough little man who was known for his uncanny rapport with horses and equally complete contempt for the human race. Anyone with sense gave Eddie a wide berth, unless they were horse-owners needing someone to work a little magic with a claimer they had picked up cheap.

But while he despised females and never hesitated to say so, Eddie had an odd weakness for big women - especially ones who looked a little like horses. He was the only man who had ever lusted for Fiona. She found his interest more alarming than flattering. In her time of desperate need, though, Eddie was the only person willing to lend her the money she needed to escape the loan shark's enforcers.

The loan came with conditions.

"You move into my trailer, do the cooking and laundry, keep my gear clean." Eddie spat expertly into the stable gutter and turned back to eye her from under his brows. "We'll figger that's worth five bucks a day. I pay them creeps the $500 you owe, you stay 100 days. Any time I don't want you around, you get out. Otherwise, you're here every night. Got it?"

Fiona nodded. She would have agreed to anything right then. The fleeting thought occurred to her that once the loan shark was paid off, she could thumb her nose at Eddie's conditions and leave town, but only for a moment. Eddie was known as a dangerous man to cheat, and she didn't have the money to get away.

It was far from being a peaceful relationship. The minute her hundred days were up, Fiona shoved her belongings into her cheap plastic suitcase and moved out. Two months later, when a sure thing fell apart in the last lap and took the last of her welfare cheque with it, she was back.

Off and on, she lived with Eddie for almost ten years. Oddly, even though he treated her like dirt and never spoke of her without a sneer, he always let her in when she showed up on his doorstep.

It wasn't an easy life, but there was a degree of security in it. Fiona didn't realize how much she had come to depend on that, until the night she came wearily back to the trailer from a late shift at the diner where she worked now and then. She found Eddie sprawled dead on the floor in his underwear, pills scattered across the scarred linoleum from the bottle still clasped in his hand.

Her first reaction was shock, and a flood of grief so intense it astonished her. Fiona had thought she detested Eddie as much as he despised her. But now, facing life without his steadfast if never very pleasant support, she was devastated. Dawn was greying the sky beyond the grimy kitchen window before she finally dragged herself out of the chair into which she had collapsed.

With the cold clarity of morning came an equally cool appraisal of her prospects. She had a total of six dollars in her purse. Eddie had a handful of nephews and nieces who would no doubt be quick to claim his few leavings. She had no claim on any of it; their erratic relationship had never been solidified in any way. More than once, he had taunted her, saying that anything she got from him, she had to earn day by day.

Although Eddie had always lived on the cheap, griping over every dollar he spent, she was sure he had money stashed somewhere. The $500 he had come up with to buy her off, he had handed over in cash. There had been another time, too, when he had needed a large sum of money in a hurry to buy a share in a horse he'd been after. He had unceremoniously shoved her out of the trailer that day, then not half an hour later, shown up at the stables with the necessary bills in his hand. Somewhere in the trailer, there had to be money. She had never dared look for it before, knowing that Eddie would have been swift to discover the theft and merciless in punishing her for it. But now...

She started to hunt in earnest. There was nothing in any of the obvious places, in the cupboards or under the mattress or in the clutter at the back of the closet. Fiona was close to giving up when her gaze fell on Eddie's lucky saddle, hanging in dusty splendour from its peg on the living room wall. She had taken it down once to brush off the tangle of cobwebs that had collected on it. Eddie had thrown a fit of rage that was frightening even for him, and threatened to kill her if she ever touched it again. He had won a bunch of races with it in his jockey days. Like everyone around race tracks, he was deeply superstitious. As long as his saddle was there, untouched by any hands but his own, his luck would hold out. Or so he told her.

It occurred to her now that there might have been some other reason he had been so touchy about her handling it.

She lifted it down from the wall and examined it closely. There was nothing unusual about it, other than a roughly sewn seam in the padding, one that looked like it had been mended and re-mended a number of times. She found a pair of scissors, cut through the stitching, and dragged open the seam. Her heart leapt at the soft rustle of paper within. A second later, she was counting hundred dollar bills with trembling hands. Twenty-three of them!

She re-sewed the seam on the saddle and tidied the trailer to hide any evidence of her search. Then she slipped out to her rattletrap car and drove away. Someone else would find Eddie soon enough. No doubt they would make sure he was buried properly. There was no point in her hanging around to get kicked out of his trailer by whichever of his relatives inherited it .

For a whole lot of reasons, it seemed a good idea to get right away from the track and her old life. Fiona kept driving aimlessly, moving from one town to another as the mood took her. It was a fantastic feeling to know she had the freedom to go wherever she pleased. It wasn't until the end of the first week that she realized that the towns she was hitting were all ones she had lived in as a foster child. The thought amused her. She decided to finish the trail backward and return to the town where she and her parents had lived before the big smash-up.

It had changed, of course, but not so much that she couldn't feel a thrill of secret pleasure in knowing that she had come back a success, with money in her pocket, to the place she had left under such a cloud. It was just like her Dad had told her. Getting ahead was a matter of using your wits, outsmarting the people who were trying to outsmart you. She had long since figured out how to work the welfare system. Now, with Eddie's stash to top it up tax-free, she could live in comfort for a long time.

Fiona found a tiny house to rent and settled in happily to a life of small-town leisure. She played Bingo every Thursday night, went to the bar every Saturday, and spent most of the rest of her time watching TV. It was about as good as life could get.

One Saturday night, while she was at a pub having a beer and a smoke with a few of the guys, she noticed an older man at the bar who looked vaguely familiar. It wasn't until he turned to survey the room with a vague, crooked smile that recognition hit, taking the wind right out of her. Her father had been a handsome man when she last saw him. Now his body was sagging into fat, his face seamed and blotched with the tell-tale complexion of alcoholism.

He caught her staring at him, and stared back a long moment. Then, with a exclamation, he was off the stool and heading toward her.

"Fiona?" He leaned over to stare into her face, brows knit. "Is it really you?"

"Dad." She came to her feet a little shakily. "It's good to see you again."

"Wow, this is great." He gave her a crushing hug and turned to beam around the table at her curious companions. "This is my little girl, would you believe it? And all grown up! Looking good, too." His gaze went over her. "Nice clothes. Looks like you're doing OK for yourself."

Fiona didn't quite know how they ended up back at her house, but that night her Dad slept in her bed while she took the couch. The next day, he moved into her spare room.

"Just until this deal I'm working on comes through." He grinned. "Good thing I ran into you. I'm running a little low, what with putting everything into this set-up. Maybe you'd like to put a few bucks into it, too? It'll pay back big time, and all easy money."

Fiona managed an evasive answer. Maybe he was right and his sweetheart deal was the chance of a lifetime. But her precious cache of money was too important to risk. She'd been burned too many times betting on sure things at the track. The remaining hundreds were staying right where they were, in the Crown Royal bag pushed deep into the ventilation duct in the kitchen.

To her relief, he didn't press her. He seemed to be glad just to be with her again. It was a wonderful time, just like she had dreamt for so many years, to have him with her and talking to her just like a friend. She wasn't a kid anymore. Now they were equals, grown-ups facing the world together.

They talked a lot. It warmed her that he was so interested in her. She wasn't used to having anyone to share with, and he had the knack of listening, and of drawing her out. He enjoyed all her stories, but was especially appreciative of the ones about how she had won a risky bet or outsmarted someone. She couldn't resist telling him about her smartest and most profitable bit of quick thinking. He laughed uproariously about the secret of Eddie's lucky saddle.

"Ah, that's my girl!" He slapped her on the back. "No one could hide anything well enough to keep you from finding it! Good work, kid. I'm proud of you."

Fiona glowed with the warmth of his approval.

Other times, especially after a few drinks, he became sentimental. It surprised Fiona to learn that she had three aunts and four uncles and a whole lot of cousins she had never known. When she expressed disbelief, pointing out that she couldn't remember ever meeting or even hearing about any family as a child, her Dad shrugged.

"Hey, they're a bunch of plodders. I'm the only one with any guts. Why would I talk about them? But they exist all right, and I can prove it. Want to see your family tree?"

He actually had one, a dog-eared book with a faded list of typewritten names and addresses all in neat, indented rows.

"One of my sisters got big on family history a few years ago, and hunted down all our living relatives. Two hundred of them, if you can imagine." He chuckled as he ran a finger down the list. "I didn't think much of it when she sent me this copy. But I got smart after a while. Some of these cousins have done pretty well for themselves. I talked a couple of them into investing in some things I was working on. Stayed with this cousin once too, when I was going through a rough patch. His wife was a darn good cook. I hung out there for a month before I got tired of them."

He gave her a wink. "There's some good advice for you to remember. Keep track of your relatives. You'd be amazed how easy it is to get in a sucker's door if you've got some kind of family connection."

Fiona laughed along with him. She wasn't laughing two weeks later when she came home from Bingo to find the house ransacked and the spare room empty. It didn't take long for her shocked confusion to solidify into horrible certainty.

She ran to the kitchen and yanked the cover off the vent.

There was nothing left in the Crown Royal bag but a note. "I need it worse than you do. Thanks for the hospitality. Love, Dad."

That weekend, Fiona went on the bender of a lifetime. She woke shivering on a dirty patch of pavement in a back alley, with the stink of garbage hanging heavy in the cold air. Something was poking her, scraping at her face. With an effort, she opened her eyes - and let out a shriek of terror. From not two inches away, a pair of huge, malevolent yellow eyes glared into hers. Gasping, she shot up from her huddled position, and caught a shaky breath as the scraggy orange cat leapt away, hissing in fury.

"Oh geez, you scared me." Fiona dragged a shaking hand through her hair and stared at the cat. It glowered back at her. As she sat there, trying to catch her breath, it sidled closer, its eyes shifting hungrily to a spot beside her. She looked down to see a spilled paper plate of half-eaten chicken wings. There was something about those wings, a faint drift of memory. Something about them had made her angry. They looked pretty dismal, not even properly cooked. Had she refused to pay for them? There had been a lot of yelling, that much she recalled. After that, things became seriously confused.

The cat slid closer and hissed at her again.

"Oh, here." She scrabbled the spilled wings back onto the plate and shoved it toward him. He gave her a swift look of disdain and ran forward to snatch one away, retreated to a safe distance and began tearing at it in frantic, half-starved bites.

Fiona drew her coat tighter around her and watched him.

"You're down and out, too, huh? Just like me. Poor fellow, you look starved. And cut up a bit. Guess you've been in a fight or two. Here, have another one."

The cat was eating the last of the wings beside her, his fear forgotten, when a new thought struck her. "You know what, fellow?" She took a chance and touched his head gently. "You saved my life."

The cat gave her a brief, cold look and went back to his meal.

"No, really you did. I could have frozen to death right here, if you hadn't woken me up trying to claw out those wings from under me. You're a hero." For some weird reason, this struck her as too funny to bear. "Sir Beaumont of the Back Streets, wandering knight and rescuer of damsels in distress. That's you, cat."

Her wild burst of laughter might have been fuelled by hysteria, but it helped clear her head. She rose, stiff and clumsy with cold, and started stumbling down the alley towards home.

She had gone two blocks before she realized the cat was following her. With a shrug, she scooped him up and tucked him into her coat. He spat and hissed, but didn't try to claw his way free. Before long, he had settled down comfortably into her arms and was purring with a rustiness that suggested he hadn't had much practise lately. She walked the whole long way home weeping into his fur.

It took two months before the landlord discovered that she had run out of money and evicted her. By then, Fiona had memorized most of the Family Tree that her father had left behind. He had sunk to the level of pond scum in her opinion, but his advice had proven useful before. It might be worth testing again.

She went to his parents first, with a carefully crafted sob story that was mostly the truth. As she had suspected, they had a low enough opinion already of their youngest son that they had no trouble believing that he had stolen his own child's hard-earned savings. They took her in with open arms and lavished all the kindness on her that any prodigal grandchild could hope for.

She stayed with them a year, even though their efforts to reform her became annoying. It wasn't so bad having to going to church every Sunday, although she wasn't enthusiastic about having to get up before noon. It was more of a nuisance ducking their attempts to find her a job. But when they forbade her to smoke and ordered her to get rid of Beaumont, she knew it was time to move on. The problem was, where to go?

It was Grandma Brass who gave her the lead she needed. The old lady was an avid gossip, with an impressive network that kept her up on the doings of even the most obscure relatives. One of her big news items had been the story of some second cousin or other, a dentist, whose wife had come down with an unplanned pregnancy when their other two kids were already half-grown. The baby had arrived, a little girl, and apparently they were having some trouble adjusting to being new parents again.

Grandma Brass hinted broadly that Fiona could make her useful to Cousin John and his family in their time of need. She even had their phone number handy.

It seemed worth a try. Dentists made good money, so the Pattersons probably had a decent house. Fiona made the call. The line she strung was a pretty good one, even by her standards. John Patterson fell for it beautifully, accepting without a blink her story that they had met at some family gathering when they were kids, and that she had been trained as both a practical nurse and day care worker. He couldn't have been happier to accept her offer to come and help out with the baby.

Her grandmother was delighted to hear the news. It didn't take much persuasion to get Grandpa to pay for Fiona's plane ticket to Milborough.



Cousin John was friendly and easy-going, and Fiona liked him from the start. His wife Elly - that was another story.



She seem to think that Fiona was there to be some kind of slave. She also turned out to be a neat freak, who had an insane number of picky rules and obsessed over every little bit of dirt or mess in the house. The kids had learned the same fussy ways, too. Fiona did her best to get along with everyone, but it was hard work getting the Pattersons to loosen up so that she and Beaumont could be comfortable.



It didn't surprise Fiona when Elly started getting snippy. She didn't have the guts to tell Fiona straight out that she wanted her to leave, of course. Nice woman never did. They just pasted on their phoney smiles and got someone else to do their dirty work.

Sure enough, Cousin John started hinting to Fiona about getting a job and moving out. She could tell he hated doing it, that it wasn't his idea, he was just acting on orders. She didn't really care much whether she stayed or went. It wasn't much fun living in a place where there was a fuss over every scratch on the furniture or cigarette butt in the sink. But it bugged her to let Elly get away with being so manipulative.



It was kind of fun playing the Pattersons. Against her smarts and experience, the poor suckers didn't stand a chance.



It couldn't last, of course. Sooner or later, as always, she would lose. But Fiona was surprised and delighted by the neat twist with which Cousin John ended the game.



She left the Pattersons knowing that she wouldn't be back. Fusspots or not, John and Elly had treated her well. They were genuinely nice people, a rare occurrence in her world. She didn't have the heart to sucker them again.

It was great, having her own place once more. She and Beaumont could settle right in and be as comfortable as they liked. Living off relatives had been OK for a while, but she'd had enough of being pestered with other people's rules. It was time, Fiona decided reluctantly, to try working for her living again.

She looked into the job at the store that John had mentioned, but it didn't appeal much. It wasn't until she dropped in at the local pool hall that she found something to her taste. Grogan, the owner, wanted someone to run the counter and do a little short-order cooking.

To make sure she knew what she'd be getting into, Fiona spent a couple of evenings playing pool there before she applied. She decided the place was OK. Most of the clientele seemed to be honest enough, just regular guys looking for a game and a brew to relax with after a day's work. She took the job on a month's trial.

Seventeen years later, Fiona is still at the pool hall. A year after she started work there, she moved in with the owner, a hard-bitten ex-biker who reminded her of Eddie, even though he was six feet tall and rode Harleys instead of horses. They fought a lot, but made a good team in running the pool hall.

It was also a point for Grogan, in Fiona's opinion, that he was always decent to kids who came by to hang out. Remembering her own childhood, she liked that in him. Most of the kids who mooched around the pool hall weren't much different than she'd been, hard-luck cases who really needed a warm place to go to and a bit of friendly adult attention. There were others he was less generous to, rich kids who were out slumming, trying to be cool.

It amused Fiona no end whenever John and Elly's two kids, Michael and Liz, showed up at the pool hall. They'd slouch in with scowling faces, trying to look tough and street-wise but mostly looking young and nervous. She played along, giving them free soft drinks and fries before she skinned them out of their allowances at snooker. It didn't bother her to clean them. The Patterson kids had more than was good for them anyway. She was doing them a favour, showing them that life wasn't all sunshine and roses and mommy tidying up after them.

But she didn't encourage them to hang around too long. There were some shady doings in the pool hall at times, and she didn't want to be responsible for any kid getting started on drugs or anything uglier. Michael, in particular, seemed like he could be susceptible. She kept a sharp eye on him, and more than once shooed him off home when it looked like he was being set up.

After Grogan's death from emphysema (brought on by too many years of hard smoking), Fiona discovered that he was also like Eddie in having a stash of cash hidden away, well out of sight of Revenue Canada. She found it barely hour before his estranged wife showed up to take possession of all his worldly goods. She used it to buy the pool hall from the grieving widow.

Fiona made a poor choice in the bouncer she hired to fill Grogan's role in the pool hall and in her life. She wound up deep in debt after the scumbag ran off with most of her profits. That same year, Beaumont went out one warm summer evening and vanished. She spent more time and grief looking for the cat than she did for her vanished lover, but never found any sign of either of them. After six months, she held a little private memorial for Beaumont. The miniature headstone she bought for him still sits in a place of honour in her living room.

After a few tough years, the pool hall is now out of debt. Fiona found herself a new bouncer who looks like Herman Munster but has about as much meanness in him as a marshmallow. They get along just fine. He and Fiona share a soft spot for stray cats, and are in constant trouble with neighbouring businesses for their habit of putting out plates of scraps for the half-wild, scraggy felines that stalk their back alley.

Fiona sometimes talks of selling the pool hall and retiring, but no one, including her, believes she will ever do it. Running her business isn't the easiest life. Still, it is a settled one, with a decent income and enough novelty in every day to keep her wits and her tongue sharp. It's good enough for her. As far as Fiona is concerned, she has earned every bit of her little slice of security. In her own words, "I started out bad, and now I've got it good."