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The boys had come back in the middle of the afternoon. She could tell from their windblown, sunburned appearance they'd spent all day outside playing with Jeannette. Well, the quiet young Army officer looked like he could do with a little time to relax and play, but as thin as he was, she hoped Marika had thought to feed him lunch. In any case, a little snack before dinner certainly wouldn't be wasted on him, and the kids would be home soon, she always put something out on the table for them.

"You boys come in here and have a bite to eat."

"You'r gonna be lucky if you can still fit in your pants by the time she lets you outta here." Casino walked over to the stove and picked up the ever present pot of coffee, filling the cups that sat on the table as the Warden took his seat. When his mother turned from the ice box and he saw her offering Casino cringed as she sat the plate down in the middle of the table. "Oh God! Ma, get that outta here! If I have ta' eat that I'm gonna heave!'

She looked at her son and then at the platter of cheese and bread. "What are you talking about?"

"Seems like that's all we ever get when we're working a job over there." His voice took on a plaintive tone. "Don't you have some kinda meat somewhere? An old sausage? Even some eggs would be better'n this!"

She glanced at the Lieutenant, he was looking down at the coffee cup he held cradled in his hands, and he was trying not to laugh. Shaking her head she took the plate up and turned back to the ice box. Covering the platter with a cloth she sat it back inside and pulled the paper package she'd brought from the butcher out. Lighting the stove she sat her large iron pan to heat and tore the paper revealing the sausages she thought she'd be cooking for breakfast in the morning.

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They were collected around the table again. It seemed the life of this family revolved around the kitchen. They were lingering there, satisfied with their dinner and the condition of their stomachs, talking. "We're mutts. I mean we got somebody from almost everywhere in this family. Pop's grandparents came over from Poland, but his Mom, my gram's Czechoslovakian. Ma's were from all over, Italy, Russia, Romania. You name a country over there in the middle a that mess and she can name a relative that came from it."

"With all of that in the family, why don't you speak anything other than English?"

"Well, I guess I know a bunch a words from a bunch a different languages, cause a the family. But they're just family words ya know? I couldn't talk to anybody but a grandma or somethin' with 'em. Some of 'em I know'd probably get me put up in front of a firin' squad!" He laughed across at his mother "Besides you and Actor got all that covered."

Cringing at the reference to firing squads she turned to address the Lieutenant. "You can speak different languages Fredrick?" She'd settled on his middle name, she said it suited him.

"Oh yeah, Freddy here can speak a lot of 'em" Casino smirked at him over his cup and then winced as his mother slugged him in the arm.

Garrison watched them for a moment, shaking his head and smiling, before he answered her, "Me? I speak German, I can get along in French and Italian, and I can get into trouble in Greek. I got in with some street kids while we were staying there."

She was watching him with her mothers' eye and ability to smell a cover up, "You mean you got into trouble with some street kids while you were staying there." She filed the 'staying there' away in her memory. She'd find out all about that in a minute…

He glanced down at the cup of coffee in his hands and smiled as he looked back up at her, "Let's just say I have some first hand experience with some of the things my guys can do…."

Casino snorted. "Well, well, well. I wondered how you picked up on all that stuff so fast. Wait'll I tell the guys!"

She watched the color bloom across the young man's cheeks, turning on her son she fixed him with the stare that she always used on the boys, the one that let them know she meant business. "You'll do no such thing. It's for him to tell his story to them if he wants to, not you. You stay out of it."

Casino raised an eyebrow and then shrugged, she was right, besides it was enough that he knew, but he'd throw the threat out anyway, just to keep the guy off balance. "I don't know, this might be too good to keep to myself."

"Casino! I told you to be quiet." She looked across at Garrison's confused expression as she settled herself at the table again. Knowing her son, she knew the reason for that look. "I don't suppose he's ever told you just how he got that nickname?" she asked sweetly.

"Ma!" There was a hint of warning in her son's voice.

Garrison shot a look at his explosives expert and saw a mixture of apprehension and humor on his face. This might be an interesting story… "No Ma'am. All of the men use them. They just seem to go along with what they do. I assumed it was because of the gambling."

"Well" She laughed quietly into her coffee, "gambling was involved."

"Hey! How come when it's him" Casino jabbed a finger in Garrison's direction "it's HIS story to tell?!"

"Because this isn't your story! This is our story, your fathers and mine. So you just sit there and be quiet." Casino settled back in his chair with a resigned smile as she looked up and started the tale. "After Marcus and Lawenda were old enough for us to leave them with my parents Josef got the money together to take me for a week at the shore. We had a lovely room with a view of the ocean and we were going to walk on the sand, and eat fried clams, and just have some time to ourselves. There was a gambling house on the boardwalk though and that drew him in…." She raised an eyebrow and continued. "It wasn't just him either. The lights, the music and all the people… It was exciting. It looked like fun. And, at first we won some money." She smiled remembering their foolishness. "As soon as we were hooked they took us for every penny we had. There went the lovely room, the ocean view, the sand and the fried clams. One night we had there, and then we had to beg money to wire my parents so they could send us enough to get home. Nine months later" she nodded in the direction of her second son. "we had him. Josef said we'd managed to win big at the casino after all and took to calling him 'the casino baby'. The story was so good everyone else took it up too and as he grew up he got to be Casino Boy and then" she shrugged, "just Casino."

"You don't believe that one, do you?" Casino asked hopefully.

Garrison looked from mother to son. "Casino, you're not trying to convince me your mother would make something like that up,,, are you?" He sat back in his chair and laughed. "Of course I believe that one!"

She beamed across at him,,, such a nice young man. "You said you spent some time in Greece. Is your father in the Army like you? Did your family travel a lot?"

"Ma! Lay off the guy for a while." Casino leaned his elbow on the table and shot his mother a meaningful look. "Look, Warden you don't have to…"

"My father died when I was only three or four. Mother's family lived in Germany so we went over and stayed with them for a while. When we left we traveled through Austria and Yugoslavia and down into Greece. We came back to the States from there."

Casino thought that was a pretty cleaned up version of what they'd found out over in Germany. He got up to take their stuff to the sink and realized he'd never thought to ask how in the hell they'd gotten out of Europe. He just took it for granted they went somewhere along the coast of Germany or France, bought a ticket and climbed on a boat and beat it.

There was something in the Lieutenant's voice, and her son was sending urgent 'Do Not Enter' signals from his position behind him. Obviously there was more to this, and he knew it. She'd get it out of him later and she changed her line of questioning. "All of that time traveling, all of the things you must have seen. Where did you live when you got back?"

"We stayed in the New York area. There were so many people coming in from Europe by then and they needed people who could speak the languages. Mother could. It seemed like all she had to do was hear a language and she could pick it up. She was qualified to teach too. She'd managed to get that far before she got pregnant with me and had to quit school."

"Does your mother still teach? Where is she now?"

"Ma! That's enough."

"Casino, it's alright." He understood what Casino was trying to do for him and appreciated the effort, but he found that it was easy to answer her questions and for the first time he didn't mind talking about it. He smiled, Casino was right, she could probably get anything out of anybody. "Mother died less than a year after we got back to the states."

"I'm so sorry." She reached across and laid a hand on his arm. "What did you do, where did you go?"

"I tried to stay on my own in the flat they'd set us up in but the neighbors turned me in…." he shrugged as he explained. "There was a real shortage of space, I guess they didn't think one kid in an apartment alone was a fair deal. Anyway, the Children's Society picked me up and I spent some time in one of their facilities. Before she died Mother had gotten the money together and hired an attorney to look for Dad's people, and he managed to track me down. After he showed on the scene they put me out in a foster home, couple of them actually. He finally found some of Dad's cousins that were willing to take me and I went out to California to live with them."

"Why didn't you go to them when they let you out of the hospital?" She knew very well how far it was out to California but surly the Army could've gotten this boy out there so that he could be with his own family. It seemed to her that he'd been through enough to earn at least that much.

He looked away wondering what to tell her, then smiled, Casino was right, she could probably smell a con a mile off. He settled on the truth, "My cousin's wife wouldn't have wanted me out there." He hurried his explanation as her eyes narrowed in disapproval. "Besides, they aren't there anymore. My cousin was posted to Hawaii."

Garrison sat there a moment, remembering meeting Madelyn at the train station that first time. Somehow he'd convinced himself that he was going to find family at the end of the trip across the country. His mother had kept a warm, loving image of his father alive for him in her stories about him and, in his fifteen year old heart, he'd transferred that image onto the unknown relatives that were waiting for him at the end of the line. It had taken mere seconds for Madelyn to disabuse him of those childish hopes.