The Reagan Siblings

Cotton Balls

"Uncle Danny, did you ever find that suicide note?" Nicky wondered, referring to the piece of evidence gone missing.
"No. And we've scoured the crime scene, the Vic's apartment, the precinct... twice. And we've still got zilch."
"Hmm. Maybe it's with the cotton ball." Jamie suggested, smirking.
"What cotton ball?" Linda looked at Danny who only shook his head. She turned to Erin, "What cotton ball?"
Erin smiled and took a sip of wine, ready to fill her sister in law in with another stupid story from the detective's youth.
************
"Hey, Joe," Erin exclaimed after studying the cotton ball.  "I dare ya to eat a cotton ball." The kids were making a Christmas card for their mother. On the cover were two sheep and Bethlehem in the back. On the inside was a picture of the manager, with a light shining down on it.
Joe looked at Erin skeptically. "Why would I eat a cotton ball?"
"Because it's a dare, bro," Danny explained like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
The young Reagan was still wary. "Mmm... I dunno..."
"Are you chicken?" Erin wondered, pasting a cotton ball on the colored paper.
"No... it's just... wouldn't it hurt your tummy or make you sick or something?"
"You are chicken!" Erin squealed.
"Look-it, Joe, it ain't that hard!" Danny picked up a cotton ball and put it in his mouth. Swallowing it, he exaggerated a shrug, "see?"
Erin's mouth dropped open, "I can't believe you did that!"
"What?" The twelve year old picked up more cotton, "y'mean this?" He ate another ball. "I'd give one to the kid, but he has enough problems with putting stuff in his mouth."
"Danny, he's two."
He looked at his sister weirdly, "I see huge fights in our future." He ate three more cotton balls.
"Ugh!" Erin threw up her hands, walking out of her brother's room.
Joe looked at Danny, waiting for some sort of answer regarding swallowing the cotton balls.
"I hope these don't cause problems." He threw a cotton ball on the desk, leaving Joe laughing.
********
"I can't believe you ate five cotton balls!" Linda looked at Danny.
"Are you surprised?"
"Honestly... no."
The table laughed at the story for a few minutes. Once they had stopped laughing, Jamie stated, "and Mom never found out."
"Oh, she knew alright." Frank corrected him.
Looking straight at Erin, Danny said, "you told."
"I did not! I swear!"
"How'd Mom know?" Jamie wondered. Erin didn't tell, he certainly didn't tell, he knew for a fact that Danny wouldn't tell, maybe it was Joe?
"It was a year or so before she passed away, and she saw Jack and Sean making something with cotton balls. That night, while we sat in bed, she said, out of the blue, 'why in the world would your son swallow cotton balls'?"
Danny smiled, "I was a weird, strange little kid."
"Now you're a weird, strange little grown up." Linda teased, smiling into her glass.
"I am not little."
"No, you're not. I'm just teasing."
"I've got a question!" Sean piped up, "why do parents say 'your kid'? Isn't both their kids?"
"Ah, that's an excellent question. And the excellent answer is: when kids- especially boy kids- do something stupid, the mother says they're  the father's kid."
"And when kids are up at oh-dark-thirty, they're the mother's kids." Linda shrugged simply.
"Okay. What's oh-dark-thirty?"
"Oh-dark-thirty is a universal term meaning anytime between bedtime and sunrise." The detective explained.
"Oh. So you get up at oh-dark-thirty a lot, huh, Dad?"
"Yup."
Silence hung in the air until Linda shook her head, "I still can't believe you ate cotton balls."