“Your dad in?” I ask him while setting him safely on the lawn.
“Yeah.” The boy scowls. “He kept me home even though I’m not sick.”
“You don’t like that?” Jeez, I would have loved it at his age.
“Not when he’s drinking.”
“You got a safe place to play around here?” The entire neighbourhood looks safe to play in; money soaked into the streets along with the bitumen. But there are as many rich creeps as poor creeps; me, for instance, and this suburb doesn’t come close to the wealth of my backyard.
The boy doesn’t immediately answer, dragging the toe of his sneaker over the long grass. “Could go to the park.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I dig into my pocket and pull out a few notes. “Take this and buy yourself an ice cream at the service station.”
His eyes light up and I wonder how long his dad has been keeping him in relative poverty. The house must be mortgaged to the hilt, and I can’t see a car, probably because it’s long since been repossessed.
Terrible, really.
Of course, the dude could have gone home and spent time with his adorable kid instead of racking up debts at the club.
It’s not my choice to be here. It’s his.
Once the boy has scampered out of sight, I walk to the front door. There’s the noise from a TV inside, loud enough to cover my knock, but I try anyway. Nothing’s in the rulebook to say I can’t be a polite heavy.
“Ding, dong,” I sing out when three attempts at the old-fashioned way fail. I walk around the side of the house—just because my earlier outburst didn’t draw attention from anyone but the boy, doesn’t mean neighbours aren’t watching.
My target naps on a recliner as I stare in the side window and the rear door doesn’t get answered any more than the front. A bonus of being back here isn’t just being shielded from nosy neighbours; there’s a lovely conservatory built mostly of glass.
Well, that should wake up old sleepy-head.
My heart rate cranks up again as I line up the first shot. One colossal strike that would have hit it out of the ballpark if there’d been a ball, a park, or a game in progress.
No one comes running, so I go for another strike. Excellent. The glass is double-glazed, so it doesn’t explode so much as lean inwards with darting lines to show where the bat lands. Good. I wouldn’t want to think of that youngster coming back here after a nice day out, only to end up cutting himself on the wreckage of his dad’s life.
“Strike three,” I call out, hitting against the side wall. The sagging glass annoys me now. I want more excitement. I kick out one pane, stomping it to the ground as I crawl inside the house. “Anyone home?”
An indrawn breath tells me Mr Man woke up in the past few minutes. He woke up, but he didn’t bother to come answer my banging. How rude.
“We can do this the easy way,” I say, busting out the top pane of glass in the connecting door and sticking my hand through to unlatch it. “Or the hard way.”
A shelf full of collectible knick-knacks goes flying, shards puncturing into the wallpaper. That’s more like it. I jump on one that miraculously survived whole and crush it into dust on the beige carpet.
Beige. No wonder his wife left him.
“If there’s no one here, I’ll have to start a fire to stay warm.”
Another gasp from the owner. I tilt my head to pinpoint the sound and shift my weight to my toes as I creep across the room in the right direction.
“Surprise!” I shout, hitting the bat into the wall and burying it deep in the plaster. It takes three tugs to get it out. Three tugs while the man behind the wall cowers in fright.
“D-don’t,” he calls out, finally joining in the game. “My son’s here.”
“Eh,” I say, mimicking an incorrect buzzer. “Wrong answer. Try again.”
“He’s only four.”
“Really? Shouldn’t let him talk to strangers then. We had quite the chat.”
“Y-you… what?” A rush of footsteps leads me back to the room where I first met his son, albeit from the other side. “Where’s Caleb?”
