A Walk Through a Window by KC Dyer

“I think one of my great aunts was a cousin to one of your great grandmas, or something like that,” she said. “Big Irish family. I can’t keep them all straight, to tell you the truth.”
    “It’s the Scots that keep things organized,” said Gramps, and he thumped the wall beneath a tartan plaque hanging above his chair.
    “I didn’t think Christopher was a Scottish name,” said Fiona.
    “My mother made the mistake of marrying an Englishman,” he barked. “But before that, it was all highland Scots. My mother was a MacLeod and her father was from the Urquharts out of Inverness.” Hepushed his chair away from the table. “What have you got there, young lady?”
    Fiona grinned a little at Darby before answering him. “Well, Mr. Chris, I know you haven’t had any kids in this house recently, so I figured this one might need a little in the way of, uh,
contemporary
fun,” she said. “I didn’t really have a chance to talk much to you today, Darby, but you should know that I review software for a living. When my grandma died, I inherited her house, so I work at the university part time and the rest of the time I play games on my Xbox at home.”
    “Wow! Dream job,” Darby said, impressed.
    “Yeah, it can be pretty cool,” she said. “But it also means that I have a bunch of old hardware lying around, so I thought you might get some use out of it.”
    Nan and Gramps with a PlayStation in their upstairs bedroom? Darby couldn’t believe her ears.
    But Fiona meant every word. She had brought over an old TV, too, and she and Gramps and Darby wrestled the boxes up the back stairs and set it all up on the desk in Darby’s room. Gramps complained the whole time that children today were far too spoiled for their own good. Once the equipment was in place upstairs, though, he patted Fiona on the back.
    “Guess this means I won’t have to fight over the remote with the kid anymore, right?”
    Oh, right. Like I’d ever get a shot at the remote with him around
, Darby thought. But she was too happy—and too smart—to say it out loud.
    He hurried down the stairs to catch the end of somemovie called
Pork Chop Hill
, and Fiona and Darby got to work on the hookup.
    “There’s no chance your grandparents have an Internet connection,” Fiona muttered after Gramps had stumped off down the stairs, “but even though you can’t go online, this should save you from total boredom on a rainy afternoon.”
    Darby couldn’t thank her enough. “This is
so
cool,” she said, checking out the game packages in one of the boxes. “I can’t believe you’d do this for me!”
    Fiona sat down on the bed and rubbed her back a little. “Hey, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was growing up,” she said. “Her family had come here from Ireland a long time ago, and let’s just say it’s not only Scottish people who have a thrifty streak.” She grinned. “I grew up loving computers, but whenever I visited Grandma, there would be none of that nonsense. She’d send me outside to play, which in retrospect was probably a good thing.”
    Fiona got up to stretch and leaned out the window. “Look at that! You can see the side of my house from here.”
    She pulled her head back in. “Anyway, when I heard you were coming to stay, I thought about all the stuff I have hanging around my place. And it can’t hurt to let you have just a little connection with the modern world now and then.”
    “Thank you so much,” Darby repeated, as they walked down the stairs. “There hasn’t been much to do around here, apart from skateboarding. And Gramps doesn’t really like the noise my skateboard makes, so I can onlypractise farther down the street. I’ve been hanging out with a kid named Gabe, but he’s, uh—”
    Darby didn’t know what to say about Gabe and didn’t really want to go there, anyway. “He’s only around once in a while, so this will be great!”
    “Oh, yeah?” Fiona said. “Is he the kid with the