Keeping The Day

[rix_scaedu]

I wrote this to the 16-Minute Saturday prompt at Alder's Grove.

Sinead was smoking, which was a bad sign if you knew her.  Her knuckles were bloody plus it looked like she might be developing a bruise right across her forehead and that meant she’d nutted more than one person.  She was perched on the railing outside the entrance to the bar, ignoring the clean-up crew of cops and paramedics who were finishing their jobs here before going on to the night’s next crisis.  I’d seen the results of my sister’s fights before and she wasn’t in handcuffs now, so I figured that there was probably some good news in this.

She saw us coming across the road, dropped her cheroot butt on the sidewalk then jumped down from the railing to stub it out.  When we got within conversation distance, she spoke first.  “Tiffany, Dan, thanks for coming.  I’m fine but the owner,” she jerked a thumb back at the bar, “doesn’t want me wandering off on my own.  He seems to think I might find trouble to get into.”

“Can you blame him?”  As I asked that I looked around at the emergency personnel and vehicles.  “What happened?”

“Oh, I walked in on a robbery.”  Sinead tossed it off like it was nothing.  “And I did something about it.”

“What were you even doing out here at this time of night?”  Dan, my husband, is a dear but he hasn’t known Sinead as long as I have, of course.

“I wanted company,” Sinead cracked her knuckles and I knew that as code for, I was looking for a fight.  “I didn’t want to bother you two.  I know Tiffany keeps the anniversary her way, well this is mine.”

“At least this time,” Dan observed, “you seem to have done a good deed.”

“Yeah, that,” she agreed, then a funny look crossed her face.  “I think I got a date for tomorrow night out of it too.”