M. Stelmack - A Roof Over Their Heads

There was a collective, shocked silence. Callie clutched Alexi’s jeans, and Alexi automatically picked her up.

“What happened?” said Matt.

“I don’t know,” Alexi said. “I’ve left a message with the landlady.”

“The place stinks,” Amy commented. “It’s giving me a headache.”

“What are we going to do?” So like Matt to quickly move to solving the problem. Except she didn’t have an answer.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t cook, couldn’t keep food cold. Could hardly breathe. She couldn’t return to Calgary. New tenants were moving into their old place even as she stood in this disaster. What had she done?

At that moment, Bryn broke free of his trance and screamed, “I want to go home!” He shot out the back door, stick raised.

“Bryn! Stop feet!” she called after him and moved to follow, Callie’s legs banded tight around Alexi’s waist. Pain tore through her ankle. “Matt! Get the back gate.”

Matt was already on it. Bryn dropped his stick and stripped off his shirt. Matt darted past him to get to the gate first, flattening himself against it. Bryn registered that, grabbed his stick and swerved in the opposite direction to the front of the house.

“I’ll open the van for you,” Alexi called to Bryn from the back door. “Then we’ll go home.” If she could get him in the van, lock the doors, then she could talk him down.

If she could open the van before he got there.

She set down Callie and did a limping run to the front door, opening it, just as Bryn, now completely nude, stick in hand, reached the van. Where were her keys? There, in the box. She double clicked on the remote and threw open the front door. Too late. She watched Bryn reach the corner of the block, turn a sharp left and disappear from sight.

“Matt!”

He was there.

“My ankle is twisted. You go. Stay with him. I’ll get Amy and Callie, and follow in the van.” A real nuisance with the U-Haul still attached and a bum tire to boot. She was snapping Callie into her car seat when Matt came tearing back, fear stark on his face.

“Mom! A man stopped his truck and Bryn got in. Then he drove off!”

* * *

SETH GREENE HADN’T lived his entire life in a lakeside tourist town not to have seen his share of young sidewalk streakers with mortified mothers in pursuit. Usually it was closer to the lake, or right on the beach. This was the first time one veered across the street in front of his truck. He slammed on his brakes, and the kid took advantage of the stoppage to dive into the cab.

“Drive! Let’s go for a drive!” the boy ordered, waving about a long stick that Seth snagged inches before it hit the windshield. It looked familiar, and then he remembered. It was his, a baseball bat he and his dad had chiseled from an old fencepost when he’d been about the size of this kid. Which meant this boy lived in his old childhood house not three blocks away.

His sister had said she was going to rent it out, her second plan after first deciding she was going to move in.

His foot hard on the brake, Seth angled the stick toward the truck floor, the boy gripping the other end. “Here. Keep it down. How about I drive you home?”

The boy squirmed, easing his butt cheeks off the hot leather seat. Seth looked fully away, because he didn’t want the kid worrying that—

Crap. There, standing frozen on the sidewalk, was another boy, taller and older, staring wide-eyed at them.

Without looking at his naked passenger, Seth pointed. “Hey, that your brother?”

“Where?”

“There on—” But the boy was gone. Probably tore back to tell his mom about the abduction of his brother. Seth edged his truck to the curb and threw it into Park, before he reached into the back of the crew cab for the only piece of extra clothing he had.

“Look at this.” He held it up for the boy. “My team jersey. Brand-new.”

The boy’s brown eyes locked on to the bright blue-and-white jersey, emblazoned with the Lakers name, the bottom stroke of the L in a sweeping Nike-like check. “Put it on,” Seth said. “You can’t be naked in my truck.”

“Is that the way it works?”

“Yep.”

The boy took the jersey and examined the back of it. “Fifty-three. Why fifty-three?”

Not getting into that. “It’s my age,” Seth said, seventeen years off the mark.

That seemed reasonable to the boy, who nodded and wiggled into the jersey, tucking it under his butt. “To the lake!”

Seth saw an opening. “Good idea. We can get your brother and you two can play together.”

“Okay! But we have to include my sisters, too. And Mom. We can’t go to the playground without her. That’s the rule.”

Fine by him. The boy glanced from one side of the street to the other. “Wait! Where are they?”

Probably calling the police. “I know where they are.”

Seth pressed the child lock button—a feature he’d never used before—then lost no time turning the corners to pull up behind a U-Haul trailer. On the paved driveway were clustered the kids, and the mom on the phone. He could only hope she was talking to the dad who was looking for the boy.

The second Seth hit the release on the lock, the boy hopped out, and for a wild moment Seth considered driving off. He’d brought back her kid, nothing wrong had happened, case closed.

But if the mom had involved the police, Seth was known to them and doing a kind of drop-and-run wouldn’t look good.

This was his one chance to clear himself. He picked up the old bat the boy had abandoned and prepared himself for whatever might come out of left field.

CHAPTER TWO

AS SETH WALKED toward the family, the boy announced, “Come on, guys. We’re going to the lake!”

None of them moved. Then the boy who had been on the sidewalk earlier strode over and slapped his brother upside the head.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For running off. Go tell Mom you’re sorry.” Attaboy. Any brother worth his salt kept his siblings in line.

A little girl with Asian features was the next to break from the bunch, doing a kind of hop-run with her right leg in a brace. She was hands-on with her runaway brother, too, except with a hug so hard it nearly knocked them both to the cement. The mom was close behind, a black girl with thick glasses riding on her hip, the phone still at her ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay...”

She slipped the girl down and reached for her lost boy, gathering him to her, his face mashed against her flat stomach. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Seth couldn’t tell if she was talking to the person on the phone or the boy. Or, from the way her voice shook, herself.

She lowered the phone and bent her head, her hair—a big, dark, squiggly tangle—tumbling onto her runaway’s head. She kissed his spiky hair long and hard.

“Bryn,” she said, her voice steady now, “glad you’re back home.”

He mumbled something and she pressed him tighter against her. “It’s okay.” This time it sounded as if she believed it. “We’ll work something out. How about you go with Matt and Amy to the garden right there? While I finish up with this call? Matt has your shorts.”

Bryn followed the other kids, while the smallest stayed glued to the mom’s leg, her brown eyes behind the smudged lens monitoring Seth’s every move. The mom brought her phone back to her ear to resume her conversation.

No way. His turn. He stepped forward. “Hello there. Bryn’s your boy, I take it.”

She held up one long finger as if he were a number at a bureaucracy and spoke into the phone. “We found him. A...man brought him back.” She paused, and her eyes lifted to his. Her deep blue eyes. The color of the lake at the far shore. “The police want to know your name.”