A Tap on the Window

Thirty-one

The porch light helps her as she slides the key into the front door and turns the dead bolt. She’s surprised, when she opens the door, to see her son standing there in the front hall, having seen him only a few hours earlier.

“You scared me half to death,” she says.

“You’re not usually out this late.”

“What’s going on?”

“Things are working out,” he says. “I had to tell you. I didn’t want to wait till morning.”

“You’ve found them?”

“No, but I may have found a way to find them.”

She throws her purse on the closest chair. “Please don’t get my hopes up.”

He tells her what he’s done. He has been, she must admit, a busy boy. “That’s a lot of running around,” she says. While she remains skeptical, he does seem to have thought this through.

She likes one of his ideas in particular. “That’s a good plan, to use the detective,” she says. “I saw him earlier.”

“We put him to work for us, except he doesn’t even know it,” he says.

“It could work.”

“I feel like it’s coming together.”

“Don’t get carried away,” she snaps. “We’re a long way from being able to put this behind us. If the boy took the book, when you find him, you have to get it back. I should have cottoned to the fact that he’d given it away sooner. Usually when he fills a notebook, he asks for a new one, and I get him one. But he didn’t ask this time because it was too soon. He’d probably only filled half of it. He figured I’d get suspicious.”

“You’re worried too much about that damn book.”

“No, I’m not. You need to take this seriously.”

“Are you kidding? You think I’m not taking this seriously? Really? Look at the shit I’ve had to deal with. I’ve been thinkin’ on my feet. Like with the other girl, how I made it look like something it wasn’t. How about a little credit for that?”

“I’m going to bed. I can’t deal with this one more minute.”

“It’s your fault, anyway, you know,” he says.

That stops her on her way to the stairs. “What did you say?”

“Leaving the house while the dryer was running, not being here when the lint caught on fire. If there’d never been any smoke, none of this would have—”

Her hand moves so quickly he doesn’t have a chance to stop her from slapping him across the face.

“I will not have you speak to me that way. Who do you think all this has been for? Huh? Who’s it all been for?”

He puts a hand to his hot, red cheek. “It’s been for Dad,” he says.

“No,” she says. “It’s always been for you. All of it. I did it all for you, and so help me, God, it looks like I’m going to have to do more before we’re done.”