Chapter Fourteen
Discovery
The breeze whipped off the waves. Drills for catching pop flies still must go on. Brooke’s bat clinked again and again, sending eleven pairs of legs scuttling.
“Come on, Golden Thunder Monkeys.” Her words of encouragement floated about fifty yards away down the sand after her latest ball. “Let’s see some speed.”
“But, Coach Brooke,” one called back in a thin, heaving voice, “we’re the Batmen.”
Brooke smacked herself awake. The late-night, um, time with Dane, followed by a crazy half-shift at the hospital made her forget her team’s name.
After a few more minutes, they all gathered around her for high fives. “You’re faster today. Good job. You been running at home?”
Some nodded, others looked at the sand.
“Keep up the good training. We’re going to have a sweet winning team this season.”
She put her hand out, and all of them gathered around, their hands atop hers in a giant wagon wheel of arm spokes. “Go, Batmen!”
Then they all ran to their waiting moms.
“You get any sleep?”
Brooke whirled around, whacking herself in the back of her leg with the bat bag. Across the sand, Dane came sauntering toward her. In jeans and a flannel shirt, he looked even better than he had in his suit yesterday, which she’d have denied being possible until she’d seen it herself.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“That’s what all the overachievers say.” He took the bag from her with one hand, and he interlaced her fingers with the other. Nice. Both foreign and familiar at once. “Looks like the Golden Thunder Monkeys are going to put up a good fight when they have to face down the Rockets in season play next week.”
Whoa, did games start next week already?
“You’ve got to stop calling them that. I slipped up and forgot their team name myself today.”
“Fine. Batmen. Where’s your car? You walk down here?” He looked up and down the sand for her Honda. But it was only a block from Left Field to the dunes, so she’d obviously walked, like he had with Quirt and Brooke a thousand times over the years. Water Street ran along the shore, basically. “Never mind,” he said, swinging the bag of equipment into his truck bed. “Better this way. I have some stuff to show you and we can go together.”
Go? The only place she wanted to go was dreamland, but, well, since Dane arrived, she’d perked up a little.
Fuel. He was her fuel.
After he helped her into the passenger side, he came around and sat beside her.
“Is it paperwork? Did you get something to do with the will?” she asked.
Dane looked at her with a twinkle. “That, too, but first—” He shifted the truck into drive and jammed his foot onto the gas. In a practical ramp-jump, the old Dodge pounced over the nearest dune and screamed out onto the sand where the boys had just been playing ball.
“Dane?” Brooke grabbed the safety bar. “Dane!”
Dane just laughed and drove faster, the muffler snorting with every press of the pedal.
Terrified laughter pealed from her throat. “Dane— you’re insane!”
He gave a scary crazy-man laugh in response. “You spin me right round, Brooker, right round, like a record, Brooker,” he sang along to the radio, which was playing one of those ’80s songs Aunt Ruth couldn’t get enough of, adding her name to the lyrics.
“Hang on, baby.” With that, he simultaneously jammed the brake and cranked the wheel, and the old truck wheeled in a wild circle, sand flying up from the rear wheels in an arcing wake. Brooke’s stomach lurched sideways, weightless and airborne.
“Oh, yeah. The Dodge has been begging me for a doughnut for months now, ever since I got her wheels aligned.”
He spun another, and Brooke’s throat emitted a combination of gurgling screams and laughter. For how many years had she pictured this moment? How often had she sat on that dune, just west of here, and imagined flipping circles in Dane’s truck, slid up close to him, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. But now it was happening. And it was a hundred times more thrilling than she’d expected— she was still riding high on the kiss from last night.
“Go again!” she yelled over the bass guitar pounding from the speakers. “Spin it, baby!”
Years of watching from atop the crest of a sand dune while Dane and Quirt perfected the craft of sand circle art— not to be confused with crop circles— and she finally had her seat on the inside. Adrenaline shot through her veins, and she was more awake now than she’d been in days.
Dane made three more passes, and then the Dodge had had enough. He hauled up to a stop in the shade of a tall dune.
“You surprise me, Brooke.”
“Me? How? Did you think I’d hate that, or something?”
He half-laughed and shook his head. “I guess so. But you soaked it up, sport.”
“Sport?” She jutted her chin at the term. “I’ll show you good sport.” She grabbed his chin and swung it toward her, pressing her mouth to his. It took him no time to respond, and today’s kiss really did feel like a sport, considering the aerobic effect it had on her heart. It was as athletic as last night’s was tender.
Dane’s kisses had a lot of facets. Brooke intended to discover all of them.
Her heart pumped against her ribcage. How was it that her lifelong fantasy of spinning round and round on the sand at Dane Rockwell’s side, and then having him decorate her with his passion was finally coming true in this moment? A little moan of pleasure erupted from her when he moved his mouth to the side of her neck, and she shivered with desire.
He was dangerous— like a flame— and she begged the heavens that this meant as much to him as it did to her.
“Is this why you came today?” she said, slowing things down to avoid the third-degree burns that might ensue if she sat too long like this in his truck. She was weak, and not fireproof. “To spin me like a vinyl record?”
Dane leaned back and scratched the back of his neck, pausing for a second as if to gather his wits. After a hefty breath he said, “I wish, believe me, but—”He reached onto the dash and pulled out a paper with a date on it. “— here. You have until Tuesday the sixteenth.”
“What?” Tuning back into the struggles of reality, Brooke took the sheet of paper and stared hard. She’d caught a glimpse of this document last night. Now, beneath the date of the trial, Dane had written a list in his blocky handwriting— a to-do list to prep for the hearing, apparently.
Gather official records. Question Jarman’s neighbors. Handwriting expert— local?
But it was the fourth one that jarred Brooke to her core: Prove Brooke’s innocence in the changing of the will.
“My innocence?”
“You heard LaBarge’s threat.”
She had. He was going to come after her.
“He’s going to say you forged the addendum, or somehow tricked Jarman into leaving the ball to you.”
If that were actually true, the shame at what her father and mother would think of her would crush Brooke to smithereens. “You know I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t. But the judge is going to have to go on evidence.”
“What evidence do I have?”
Dane frowned. “I don’t know yet.”
Brooke bit her lip. This seemed like a situation similar to Dane’s— guilty until proven innocent. Sickness roiled in her stomach.
“So besides proving I had nothing to do with changing Harvey Jarman’s will, we have to prove the will’s addendum is valid, and to do that, we have to…what?”
“I’m not sure exactly.”
It wasn’t fair to expect him to know everything about how to proceed. But— ?
“Okay, then. Where do we start?”
He reached for another paper and handed it to her, one with an address on it. “Harvey Jarman’s.”
Brooke looked up at him. “Let’s go.”
__________
Jarman’s house was on the near side of town. Nothing ostentatious. Just a two-story brick Colonial with grass that needed to be cut. Dane looked around for a mower, but nothing was around.
Of course, Jarman was long past being able to do any yard work now other than push daisies.
“And what do we look for here?” Brooke asked, her hand lacing into his as they rolled up to the curb.
“Something— anything— with his handwriting on it.” Dane put the truck in park and let Brooke out. “The will with the portion leaving the Called Shot Ball to you is holographic, and Sarge LaBarge is out to prove it’s forged. To win, you’ll have to have some proven handwriting of Jarman’s for comparison.”
“But the place looks abandoned.” Brooke went up on tiptoes to peek through the curtainless windows. “There’s nothing inside. It’s been emptied.”
Dane peered in and then looked away quickly, after he was hit with a flashback of his house after his parents were convicted. Except Jarman’s was a lot cleaner.
Brooke stood with her hands on her hips on the old concrete porch. “No wife, kids? How sad.” She turned toward Dane, looking genuinely sorrowful for Harvey Jarman’s lonely life. “Or maybe there were kids who just don’t live there. Grown, flown, on their own.”
Dane didn’t know. Internet searches hadn’t done much good, and the obituary didn’t list anything except the name of a wife; it wasn’t clear whether she’d preceded him in death.
Brooke went up to the door and lifted the brass ring attached to a lion’s mouth as a door-knocker. She let it fall. From inside came a hollow echo. She looked up at him again with pathos in her face. It touched him. This girl cared— deeply— for a man she’d never met.
“I wonder whether he died alone.” She peeked into the empty iron box for mail with its clothespin still attached. “At least my parents were together, with me, at the accident. They had each other as ushers into the hereafter.”
He’d never heard her talk about the accident. He wasn’t good at asking about it before, when they’d just played catch, but legal training had taught him a tiny bit about helping people talk.
“What happened that day? Do you even remember it?”
Brooke went over and sat down on the porch swing hanging nearby. “Not a lot.” The swing’s chains made a horrendous creaking when she sat and pushed off, but she kept it moving back and forth with her tiptoes anyway. “Just the yell Dad gave before the impact with the sideways semi-truck.”
Leaning on the porch rail, Dane shuddered. He could almost hear Matthew Chadwick’s deep holler of agony in that moment just before the other side took him and Mallory Chadwick, two of the best people who ever lived.
“I still hear it in my sleep every so often. Less these days. It’s tapering off.” She looked out across the expanse of yard, but it didn’t seem like she focused on anything in the here or now of the landscaping. “It gets easier.”
Dane sat down close beside her. Now the swing made a lower-pitched creak. He reached an arm around the back of the swing, letting it rest on her shoulders. She nestled in closer to him, and they floated back and forth on the swing for a minute, saying nothing. Dane’s soul relaxed when he touched her. It was the only time he felt whole.
“It’s still an unexplained miracle,” she said after a while. “You know, that I survived.”
“You were asleep on the back seat. Your body was relaxed.”
“Yeah, only my femurs broke.” She rested a hand on her upper thigh. Femur breaks were notoriously painful. “I must be here for some important reason I haven’t discovered yet.”
Dane rested a hand on hers. “Probably more than one important reason.”
She looked up at him like this was a novel thought. “Like what?” She blinked a few times, too quickly, and her eyelashes invited him to lean in, to let his lips graze hers. It was just a brush, the lightest touch of silk. A satisfied sigh drifted from Brooke’s mouth, and he wanted to elicit that satisfaction from her again and again, forevermore.
“Dane,” she whispered. “Is this safe?”
“Safe as playing with fire in a room full of gasoline-soaked cotton.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Brooke drew back, taking the softness of her breath away from where it had graced his cheek too briefly. “I don’t think we should be,” she whispered, “close like this.”
“I can get closer, if you’d prefer.” Much closer. He could close all the space between them, the second she gave the word. Dane leaned in and nuzzled her hair, her neck, the place where her jaw met the base of her ear. It tasted sweet there, and she relaxed into him a moment, sighing in that way that made every atom in his body rev to life. “How’s this?”
“Dangerous.”
“Right?”
“No, I mean— for your career.”
Ice buckets hit him. “Oh.” He drew back. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, that if I’m a female client, which I know I’m not, but it could be misconstrued, and you’re also kissing me— I mean.” Her brow knit together. “I think you know what I’m saying.”
“That kissing you will complicate things for my case if I’m also advising you. Or if they think I am.”
“When is your hearing?” A little tendril of pain accompanied her question. “How long will it last?”
Dane didn’t want it to be even thirty seconds.
“I don’t have a date for it yet.”
“Oh.” She looked up at him with so much longing, and yet so much wisdom. He couldn’t deny that what she was suggesting was the wiser course.
Rockwells almost never took the wiser course.
“Tweed did suggest it would be soon.”
Brooke nodded. “We need to think long term, Dane. We have to look at what you want later, and not let you trade it for what we want now.”
No question, he wanted her now. The wanting had dialed up to ten on the want-o-meter.
“Tell me exactly what you mean here.” He silently begged her not to say what he thought she was going to say.
“We shouldn’t kiss or be affectionate until after your hearing or else my trial, whichever comes first.” There. She said exactly what he’d dreaded ever since the conversation bent this direction. “We can’t jeopardize your career.”
Before he could respond, a woman’s yodel floated across the yard at them and interrupted all his protests, even though Dane knew Brooke was right.
Painfully right.
__________
“Yoo-hoo. Halloo.” Over the long grass chugged a woman in a floppy hat and an old t-shirt and jeans, carrying a bucket and a set of garden pruners.
Brooke stared at her, willing herself back into reality. Dane’s closeness, his earnest eyes and the depth of that blasted dimple, had swept her away into proverbial la-la land. It took some real doing to bring herself back.
Especially now that she’d dropped that truth bomb on him that they shouldn’t be making out in his Dodge on the sand where anyone could see anytime.
He probably wouldn’t want to help her now. After all, this new closeness had triggered his willingness to help her in the first place, hadn’t it? Maybe not, but the little self-doubt demon inside her said so.
Kisses changed things. But on the other hand, no kissing might change everything, too. Oh, she’d be dying for him and his touch in the interim, but it was right, no matter how much she would writhe. She couldn’t have him get into worse trouble— especially not be disbarred over her.
Fear snaked its way through her when she thought of facing all this LaBarge stuff alone, without Dane.
Brooke was walking on thin ice.
The floppy-hat woman tromped up the concrete walk and spoke again.
“Looking to buy the house? It’s not listed yet, but it will be soon, I hear.” She stopped at the base of the porch where they had stood up from the swing. “Twyla Tyler, neighbor of the former owner of the house.” She extended a gloved hand to shake, but yanked it back and pulled off the glove before taking Dane’s hand.
“You knew Mr. Jarman?” Brooke asked.
Brooke didn’t give her name. If this neighbor had any kind of knowledge of Jarman or his will, she had to find that out first. Thin ice, she reminded herself. Be cautious. This woman could be in LaBarge’s camp, too, no matter how nice she appeared to be.
Looks could be deceiving.
“I’ve been looking for someone who knew him or his family.” Brooke extended a hand over the porch rail to shake. The woman’s hand was rough, like she’d done lots of gardening.
Twyla Tyler gave a long, deep nod. “Oh, sure. After Mrs. Jarman died fifteen years ago, I came to make Harvey lunch every day— after I made lunch for my husband, Barlow, at home. We became pretty close friends. Of course, we neighbors weren’t the only interests he had. The Naughton City Bowling League, and of course his collection, which kept him going after Mitzi passed on.”
So. That meant Jarman had been a widower. When Brooke had looked at the obituary, she couldn’t tell.
Dane took up the info-pumping task next. “What about children?”
“Poor Harvey and Mitzi.” Mrs. Tyler sighed. “They didn’t have any of their own. Of course Harvey treated my grandson, Little O,” her voice caught, “like he belonged to them, God rest his soul.”
Suddenly Mrs. Tyler’s eyes were wet, and she was sniffling.
“Was it recent?” Brooke hurried to descend the steps and put an arm around the weeping woman.
Mrs. Tyler nodded. “Last Christmas. Is that recent? I don’t know anymore. And everyone who tries to comfort me says God must have needed him more than we did here. I just can’t stand to hear that.”
“Losing a family member— time goes by, but the healing feels like it’s taking forever.” Brooke turned to press the woman to her heart. She knew this hurt. She’d felt its exquisiteness. “Maybe God needed you and me to learn to live without them, and to trust Him anyway.”
Brooke just held her for a while. “I lost someone dear, too,” she finally said. “I’m sure your Little O was precious.”
Mrs. Tyler hiccupped and nodded. “I miss the kid. He was such a feisty little guy. He got excellent medical care over at Maddox General, but…oh, he was only ten, you know.” The sniffling started. “First Little O, then the postman Mr. Yslas, then my dog Gallagher, now Mr. Jarman. It’s been a heart-wrenching year and a half.”
Brooke glanced at Dane. She could stay here all day with Mrs. Tyler, but she knew they had something they needed to accomplish here, too. She gave him the go-ahead nod and pulled away a second to let Mrs. Tyler meet his eyes.
“Since you knew Mr. Jarman well, ” he said, “maybe you could help us. We need something in his handwriting. You wouldn’t have something like that, would you?”
Mrs. Tyler came out of her personal fog. “I’d have to really look. He wasn’t much of a note-writer. But then, who is these days?” She gave a little half-laugh amidst the sniffles. “But you’ve been so nice,” she was looking at Brooke, “I’ll give a good search and let you know.”
“Let’s be in touch,” Brooke said, squeezing her hand. “Can I call you?” Brooke still didn’t give Mrs. Tyler her name. Not just yet. As nice as Mrs. Tyler seemed, and as much as they’d bonded in this moment, she still had some misgivings about being too transparent.
After all, what if LaBarge came next? It would be much better for Mrs. Tyler if she didn’t have Brooke’s name.
Not yet.
“Thanks. My number’s in the book. I look forward to it.” Mrs. Tyler adjusted her big floppy hat and left.
__________
Dead end. Probably. Dane frowned. He’d been awkward at comforting Brooke when she lost her parents, and he was certainly useless at helping a stranger.
Good thing Brooke was with him today. She’d been so amazing at breaking down emotional barriers with others. Dane marveled at this girl who kept getting better and better. The two of them might not be Golden Thunder Monkeys, but as a team, they weren’t bad.
More than anything, he wanted to take her in his arms, and—
Oh. Right.
They walked back to the truck, and Dane reluctantly put his hormones in neutral as he put the truck in gear and drove them back into Maddox.
“So here’s what we know,” Brooke said through a bite of fast food after they hit a drive-through. “Harvey Jarman didn’t have any close family members alive. He had a good neighbor. He liked to bowl. He wasn’t much of a note writer.”
“I doubt Mrs. Tyler is going to have anything with his handwriting.” Dane took a swig of his Coke. “Might be useless.”
Brooke took some fries from Dane’s stash. Surprisingly he didn’t mind. “Yeah, maybe. But…I don’t know. I have a feeling Mrs. Tyler is going to be key. Somehow.”
“Woman’s intuition, huh?”
“I know, I know. It’s probably not one of those things they pound into you at law school.”
Dane laughed. “I took a whole course on it. There was a second course, but it was full, and I couldn’t get in.”
Brooke punched his arm and bobbled his cup. “Whatever. I just think we need to keep her in mind.”
“What I think we need to keep in mind,” he said, “is the fact you haven’t been bowling lately. You should take a page from Harvey’s book.”
“Bowling.” Brooke set down her cup. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, but I am.” He released a wicked grin. “I’ll just sit back, wearing my special bowling shoes, and watch you from behind as you bowl set after set …” He could picture the sway now.
“Dane.” Her warning fell on deaf ears. He’d already watched a whole mental movie.
“Fine,” he relented. “Don’t think for a minute I’ve forgotten our new normal of no physical displays of affection.” How could he, when it felt like an amputation? “But, no, actually, I’m being serious.”
“Oh, clearly.”
“No. We need to go check out the Naughton City Bowling League.”
Brooke started to roll her eyes at him, but then she clearly caught on. “Oh, I get it. To find some of Harvey’s handwriting.”
“Why would a bowling alley have his handwriting?” Dane frowned. She made a good point, though. On his phone he searched for a local bowling alley— hoping it was an old-fashioned kind that still used scoring cards and not an automated system.
“They might not. But, let’s be honest. For now it’s our only lead.”
A text came in from Bevan Tweed. Hearing Tuesday the sixteenth.
Today was Wednesday the tenth. They didn’t have time to mess around.
__________
Brooke looked around at this cavernous waste of time, inhaling the stale air of old shoes and marble-buffing cleaner for the bowling balls.
Naughton Lanes smelled exactly like every other bowling place Brooke had ever entered.
“They’re closing up at eight, so we’d better see what we can find now,” Dane said.
“I think we should have spent more time with Mrs. Tyler.” This place was a dead end. Searching a bowling alley for a handwriting sample? Seriously? “She has to have something with his writing on it.” She’d said she’d call, but Brooke was more of a mind to help the woman turn her house inside out looking for it.
“Trust me,” Dane said as they strode toward the shoe rental, but then his shoulders fell.
“What’s wrong?”
He pointed to the lanes. “Auto scoring.” Above each lane was a TV screen with the names and digital output of scores.
Bummer.
Dane looked so dejected, her heart softened. Honestly, he was right. This was currently their only lead.
“But if he was in the league, maybe there’s something else.” She tried to inject hope into her voice, but she knew everything here was a long shot, even whether or not this place was where Jarman’s league bowled.
“Look. League trophy case.” Dane took her by the hand, his touch an electrical circuit that shorted out the second she remembered they shouldn’t have such intimate contact as even hand-holding.
Maybe she’d made a mistake. Because pushing him away physically could mean she would lose him.
Again.
He led her to a big glass case of shelves filled with photographs and bronzed bowling balls and marble statues of little guys in bowling stance.
“Look for Harvey. Or his team, even.”
“What’s his team? I don’t even know what he looks like.” Strange for Jarman to bequeath her the most valuable thing she’d ever been given— besides her very life— and she wouldn’t recognize the guy in a police lineup.
“Who you looking for?” Up walked a guy in a shirt with his name on an embroidered patch: Cloyd. “You reporters?” Cloyd’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t talk to none of them.”
“No, honest.” Brooke tried to look sincere. She was still in her scrubs from after work and then baseball practice and meeting Mrs. Tyler. “I’m a nurse. And this is my…husband.” It just slid out. When she realized she couldn’t say Dane was her lawyer— this fib replaced it. It wasn’t just for the sake of Dane’s sticky situation’s sake and wanting to keep him out of the public eye. Cloyd looked like he might like lawyers even less than reporters. But he might not mind husbands.
Brooke’s face burned red under Dane’s disbelieving gaze. So much for nonchalance. “I wondered if you knew Harvey Jarman.”
Cloyd paused a minute, eyes still directed on them with skepticism. “What about Harvey?”
“We have the right place?” Brooke asked. “Oh, I’m so relieved. We just want to find out some clue about Harvey.”
“You knew him?”
“No, but he was very kind to me.”
Cloyd frowned a second and then seemed to relent. “That’s his team right there.” He pointed to a picture in the trophy case.
Jackpot!
“Thanks,” Brooke beamed him her best pageant smile. “Nice.” In the black and white, eight-by-ten picture a dozen men in collared shirts smiled. If she squinted, she could just make out the shirt with the name Harvey. Wow. Harvey Jarman was not what she’d pictured. He had wonky teeth, a buzz-cut that came up into a flat top, and eyes a little too far apart.
Every detail of this picture endeared him to her. Harvey Jarman looked like the sweetest man who’d ever lived.
She pointed him out to Dane who looked and nodded.
“Champions,” Dane said.
“Oh, yeah. Harvey was their star.” Cloyd puffed out his chest, as if he’d been the star himself. “Bowled a three-hundred once. Got the scorecard right over there.”
Brooke’s eyes zoomed to where Cloyd’s thumb pointed, and it was as if light opened from heaven to beam down onto it. This could be it!
Dane got there first. “Look, honey.” Honey. He called her honey. Brooke’s pulse up-ticked. “It’s Harvey’s handwriting.” And without asking permission, he took a photo with his phone.
“Hey,” Cloyd said, frowning. “You guys are reporters.”
“No. I promise.” Brooke held up her right hand. “We’re not reporters.”
“Then what are you? You look like a nurse, but your husband smells like a lawyer.” Cloyd’s face morphed from frown to violent scowl when Brooke’s surprise-face gave them away. “You’d better get scarce right now.”
Brooke and Dane booked it to the old Dodge.
“Husband, huh?” he breathed over his jogging. “What was that all about?”
“He didn’t like lawyers.”
“Whatever,” Dane snorted, grabbing her door for her.
Brooke climbed inside, but she asked before he shut her in, “How are you going to enter a grainy picture like that into evidence in court? Will they even allow it? Pictures can be so easily doctored these days.”
He came around and started the truck. They peeled out on the gravel as they left the bowling alley parking lot.
“Let’s get a closer look at it, decide if it’s useful,” Brooke said.
“What we really need next,” he said, giving her a worried look, “is something I can’t help you with. Not directly.”
A pang of worry shot through her. “Why not? What is it?”
“Because I’m not your lawyer.”
Oh, right. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. And he couldn’t be her boyfriend, either. She had to keep him squarely in friend status for now.
But how was she ever going to see him that way, now that she’d been seared by those hot, passionate kisses that didn’t ever seem to cool from her lips?
The sixteenth seemed like a lifetime away— but it also zoomed up terrifyingly fast when she realized how much they had to do to prepare, and that she’d also be attempting to serve as her own lawyer in court.
Holy cats. This could be so bad.
“Okay, so what exactly do we need now?”
“A handwriting expert.”
“That should be easy enough, right?”
“They’re not as common as you’d think.”
“So, there’s not, like, one in Naughton?” she said, knowing her ignorance was splashing out all over the place.
“No. Richmond, Baltimore, or D.C., maybe.”
“Okay, so I hire someone. I’ll research one out, or something.”
“Right. But there’s another catch.” Dane sounded grave. “We have no way of knowing if the person we hire is tainted by Sergeant Faro LaBarge.”