A Roof Over Their Heads

“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 (#u2f1dd2b2-3011-5f2c-ac7f-2306b161c122)

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.”

Just what he didn’t want. “Seth Greene.”

Those blue eyes pinned him as she silently mouthed his name, the tip of her tongue flicking against her front teeth to form the th, her full lips puckering on the opening of his last name.

She repeated his name aloud into the phone. She listened, frowned and passed him the phone. “The officer wants a word with you.” She drew the girl against her leg even closer. This was rich. He’d brought back the kid she’d lost, and she doubted his integrity.

“Careful,” she said, “with my phone.”

And his ability to hold her phone. Seth switched hands with the bat to take it, and walked over to the semiprivacy of his truck before identifying himself.

“Hello there. This is Corporal Paul Grayson. I have a few questions.” Suppressed laughter made the words come out choked.

Seth blew out his breath in relief. And then, because it was Paul, again in annoyance. “I’ve got to get to a store before it closes in twenty minutes and then I’ve got to get back up on a roof and finish there so I can make it to the game. You remember the game, right? Do we really need to do this?”

Seth watched the mom edge to the front garden with a limp-swing to accommodate the child still stuck to her leg. Her very long leg. The other three kids were pulling out weeds up to their chests—couldn’t Connie pick up a hoe for once?—and whipping each other with them. The youngest broke free of her mom to pull up her own weapon.

Paul cleared his throat. “I have to confirm your identity. Not like you to offer rides to boys.”

Kid-free, the mom banded one of her arms across her middle and tapped her fingers against her mouth. Long fingers. Long legs. Long hair. And from the looks of it, having a long day.

“I didn’t,” Seth told Paul. “He crossed in front of my truck. I hit the brakes and he got in. Wanted me to take him to the lake.” Seth left out the part about the boy being naked. It would bring up a whole bunch of questions he didn’t have time for. He checked his own phone. Twenty-three minutes before Tim-Br-Mart closed.

“You were hijacked?” Again the choked-back laughter.

Seth clamped down on his back teeth. “Am I free to go, Officer?”

“How does the mother know Connie?”

“How should I know?” Seth knew what Paul was getting at, and made a decision. “She looks legit to me. She has four kids and—” he dropped his voice and turned his back to the mom, even though she was probably out of earshot “—all of them except for the oldest have one sort of disability or another. I think she’s flat-out busy with them.”

“Is a dad there?”

Something he’d like to know, too. The woman clearly needed help. “Don’t see one.”

Paul made a noncommittal sound, one that had gotten him through a few tense situations with Seth’s sister.

“Okay, then. Could you put the mom back on, please?”

Seth walked over and passed her the phone, trying to check for a wedding ring but she took it with her right hand, her left slotted into the front pocket of her jeans. As if it was any of his business, anyway. If he hurried, he might yet make it to the store. He turned to go.

Then, on his bare arm, the feather touch of her fingertips. Her left hand. No ring.

“Don’t leave, Seth.”

* * *

WHAT HAD SHE DONE? She’d reached for this near stranger as if she’d done it a hundred million times, as if he were— She snatched her hand away, snapped her attention back to the cop.