The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue by Trish Hanan (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

working on some invoices for the house and jumped up on them and meowed very loudly. Sean laughed and scratched his head.
“What’s up, Toby, come to help me work have you?” he teased but the cat didn’t want to be petted, he kept meowing and looked quite agitated. Sean didn’t know what to think of that.
“What’s wrong, kitty; is something wrong?” Sean asked. He stood up and the cat hopped off the desk and rushed to the door and looked back at him and meowed again. Sean nodded and followed him. He followed him though the house and down the basement stairs to where Bill was sitting. Sean felt tears come to his eyes, it has started once again.
“Oh, Bill,” he said with a big sigh. He bent down and scratched Toby under his chin. “Thanks, kitty, you did a good job bringing me down here,” he told him. Toby purred. Sean picked the dead man up and carried him up the stairs. Sally gasped when she saw her husband in Sean’s arms.
“Oh, my God, Sean, you shouldn’t be carrying him,” she said. “Bill; honey are you alright, Granddad, is he alright?” she asked with a worried look in her eyes. Sean shook his head.
“No, Sally, I think it was his heart that gave out, he’s gone, darling,” he told her and she began to cry. Carrie came running and she cried too. Now their household was down to four.
The next day they buried Bill and everyone who was over fifty-five began to look around at one another and began to speculate on who was going to die next. Sean had played this very game twice before, in Ennis and back on the Ridge and it wasn’t much fun and he really wasn’t looking forward to playing it again. But he had lived and laughed with these people for forty years now and he felt that he owed it to them to be there for the end of their lives. It was only fair. They had loved him and trusted him and given him their loyalty and to abandon them or desert them when they were old and afraid would be cowardly. So he smiled and hugged his family and prayed with them and wondered who would be the next to go to heaven and say hello to Bobby, Maggie and Claire whom he knew were all waiting for him and having the best time talking about him.
Over the next fifteen years all of his relatives died one by one, heart attacks, cancer, pneumonia, one died when he cleaned his rifle and forgot to take the bullet out and the damned thing back-fired and blew half of his face off. They had a closed casket for that funeral. A few had accidents and fell down breaking their necks, one woman was stupid enough to climb up on a chair to clean the top of a cabinet and fall off and break her neck. She should have known better at eighty-seven. Everyone died until all that was left was Old Sean, Young Sean and Lonnie and they all lived in the big house with Jake the hired hand and two young women, a Fey couple named Rose and Faith to look after them. They were seventy-five, sixty-eight, and seventy-three and all of the Valley loved them and watched anxiously for the next of them to die. All three men laughed and knew it would be either Young Sean or Lonnie because they knew granddad was going to live forever but they appreciated him growing old with them.
“Hey, Granddad, did I ever thank you for giving me the cars?” Young Sean said one day in August as the three men were sitting on the front porch and watching the activity going on in the valley below them. Sean grinned as he sipped his iced tea.
“Only about a million times, lad, but I never get tired of hearing it,” he teased and they all laughed. Rose came out with some crabby cheese balls she knew the men liked and they all grinned.
“Oh, lass, you’re spoiling us,” Sean gushed and she grinned.
“That’s what you pay me for, Granddad, besides I love you old geezers,” she teased and Lonnie patted her backside while they all laughed. “Watch your hands, old man, or I’ll call Faith out here to spank you.” Young Sean giggled.
“Don’t do that, lass, he might like that,” he teased back and they all laughed again. Young Sean sighed.
“I knew when I saw the carriage with you and Ryan pulling up to the house on the Ridge that something wonderful had come and I was right,” he told them. Lonnie nodded.
“Oh, yeah, we had heard all the stories of the Fairie Cave and the Moon Pearl Pool and Sean Donoghue who was going to live forever and had left the Ridge to go live in Queensland but who one day was coming back but we never really believed until that day you did come back,” he said. Sean nodded.
“I wouldn’t have believed it myself either until I saw it for myself,” he told them. “I never believed that part of the legend either; I knew the strength of a dozen men was true because I got that right away. I could pick up stuff I could never have picked up before so that was true. And the invincible part was true when that Mauraider hit me in the head with a mace and it didn’t kill me, so that part of the legend was true,” he said. They both nodded.
“When did you realize that the forever part was true?” Young Sean asked. Sean sighed.
“When Bobby made a comment about my baby face,” he told them. “I went to the mirror and realized that although I was supposed to be twenty-five I still looked like I was twenty or could even pass for nineteen and he didn’t like that so I grew my mustache to make me look older and that worked for a few years. Then in about ten years I had to grow the beard because he made another comment about my baby face compared to his older looking one. And then when he got gray hairs I began to dye my hair gray to match his and I kept it up over the years dying my hair gray and then white to match his.” Lonnie grinned.
“And he never noticed?” he asked. Sean shook his head.
“None of them noticed except for Maggie, she noticed that I dyed my hair and even pointed out one night that I had missed a spot,” he said. They both laughed. Sean sighed.
“She was a smart one my Maggie, I miss all of them, some days I can’t decide which one I miss the most, I loved them all so much,” he told them. Both of the men nodded.
“I miss my Emily,” Young Sean said wistfully. Lonnie sighed.
“And I miss my Sarah, she had the most lovely brown hair, the exact color of honey,” he told them. Sean grinned.
“That’s very romantic, Lonnie, I hope you told the lass that a time or two,” he said and Lonnie blushed and nodded. Young Sean grinned.
“I hope you did more than tell Sarah her hair looked like honey, I hope you used some honey and got creative in the bedroom,” he teased just to watch his cousin blush. Sean laughed. Just then a car came racing up to their driveway and another Sean Donoghue, his grandson, his youngest son Zack’s son came running out. He waved at them.
“Hey, did you hear the news, some guy in Ennis just invented the radio and Dad just bought ten thousand of them and they’re on their way up the river,” he informed them. “Pete and Doug are going to build a radio station and start playing music and stuff for everyone to listen to.” Sean grinned.
“Ah, lad; those Ennish are clever bastards,” he declared and everyone laughed. Young Sean shook his head.
“Let them invent all they want, but they’ll never beat the telephone, the car, the truck or the plower,” he told them. Sean grinned.
“No one is ever going to beat the telephone,” he declared and they all agreed and laughed.
“I like the car the best, Granddad, I would die without my car,” his grandson Sean told him earnestly. Sean nodded and reaching into his pocket pulled out a handful of cash and handed it to the lad.
“Here, lad, take your lad to the hall tonight and dance away the night on me,” he said and Sean’s eyes lit up.
“Hey, great, Granddad, thanks,” he gushed and Sean got a hug and a kiss for his generosity. The lad who was about seventeen hopped in his car and drove off, beeping his horn and waving. The other two men laughed because they all kept a big wad of cash in their pockets for the very same purpose. All of their grandkids and great-grandkids knew they could always depend on the three old men for a cash advance and a great story.
Lonnie was the first to go and Young Sean howled like a baby when his cousin went to sleep one hot August night and didn’t wake up in the morning. Sean held him in his arms.
“Ah lad, it’s going to be okay, he’s in heaven with Sarah and the angels,” he whispered and Young Sean nodded, tears running down his face.
“I know, Granddad, I know, it’s just me now, I’m the last one left,” he cried. All the kids looked confused but Sean kissed him and Young Sean rested his gray head on his granddad’s strong shoulders. Sean rubbed his back like he would a baby’s. Kalin and Bobby smiled thinking of all the times their dad had done just the same thing to them and then to their children.
At the funeral Sean could see everyone looking at him and then at Young Sean and wondering who would be next, people were so predictable. Young Sean laughed about it later when the two ‘old folks’ were sitting in their rockers on the front porch.
“Everyone’s betting on you, Granddad,” he told Sean smugly. Sean just lifted his left eyebrow and sipped his beer. Young Sean grinned and added. “Cuz, you’re like a good ten years older than me, so you’ll have to go first,” he smirked. Sean chuckled.
“Actually, I’m about two hundred and thirty years older than you, lad, I turned two hundred and forty-one my last birthday,” he said with a big grin. They both burst out laughing with that and Young Sean choked a bit and coughed. Betsy came out of the house to smack him on his back.
“Slow down, you fool,” she admonished. They both grinned. She shook her head. “A couple of old fools are what you both are,” she muttered as she walked back into the house. Sean laughed.
“Remind me to give you a raise, lass,” he shouted and both men laughed again.
That winter sixty-nine year-old Sean Kevin Donoghue, still known as Young Sean by his family died peacefully in his sleep. He didn’t even get sick. Sean went to wake him up for breakfast and found him dead, a small smile on his face, the right side slightly twisted, much like