A Tap on the Window

Forty-three

The woman says to him, “I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to be totally honest with me.”

He sits in the wheelchair, avoiding her eye. “Of course,” he says.

“Did you write anything in the book other than the usual?”

“I... I told you, I can’t find it. I need you to get me another empty one so I can start writing things down again.”

“I know you gave it to the boy. You admitted it the other night. What I want to know is what you wrote in it.”

“Like you said, just the usual. Nothing to worry about.”

“But you always wrote down the dates.”

The man says nothing.

She puts her fists on her hips. “What the hell were you thinking? Can you tell me that?”

“I don’t know.” He speaks so quietly she can barely hear him.

“If he gives that to someone, someone who remembers your little habits — I swear I don’t know what gets into you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really—”

She doesn’t hear the rest. She steps out of the room, closes the door and slips the lock on. Her son is standing there, by the washer and dryer.

“He’ll be the death of me,” his mother says. “What are you doing here?”

“I think the detective might be getting close.”

His mother nods. “I get the sense he doesn’t give up easy.”

“But this is good,” the son says. “I’m going to drop everything for a while. Indefinitely, I guess, while I see where he goes.”

“We need a contingency plan,” she says, and lowers her voice to a whisper. “If the girl, and the kid, show up on their own, before Weaver finds them, we need to be ready. We need to be able to deny everything. We need to be able to show the kid up as a liar. We say we don’t know what he’s talking about.”

The son leans against the washing machine, folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head. “You’re talking about moving Dad?”

The woman hesitates. “I guess you could say that.”

“Where would we move him? Where could he go where we could still look after him?”

His mother says nothing. Her silence speaks volumes.

“No, Mother. We can’t do that.”

“I can’t keep this up,” she says. “I just can’t.”

“Look, just let me see how this plays out with Weaver. If we’re going to have to get rid of anybody, I’d rather it was him and the others, not Dad.”

“Of course,” she says. “That goes without saying.”

“That Weaver guy, God, he’s as big a pain in the ass as his kid was. At least everything worked out the way it should have with him.”