followed and joined his mother at the kitchen table, armed with a box of Cheerios and a half-gallon of milk. He ate in silence as she sipped from a mug of coffee and stared into space.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting pretty sick of sunshine,” she said.
“Are you staying home with us today?”
“Peter, I just started working. I don’t think it would be wise to take a day off so soon.”
Peter didn’t answer. This sounded like more than a part-time job.
She added, “You guys are doing okay with Uncle Herb, right?”
Peter smiled and nodded. He stood and walked to the counter, dumping his half-eaten bowl of cereal in the sink. He was reaching for his medication on the shelf when CJ appeared, dressed in full Wonder Woman attire with the lasso uncurled and dragging behind her. Even the indestructible bracelets were on her wrist this morning.
Abby watched her, smiling. “Are we going to save the world today, Wonder Woman?”
Peter knew the reason for full armor. Wonder Woman was in self-preservation mode against neighbors who go boom in the night.
Abby didn’t sense the anxiety in her children, the quiet looks shared between the two, the glances out the windows. She was thinking about her day ahead, hoping for a call from a contact she’d made during the first day of her job, a young family looking for a home. Despite being a novice in real estate, Abby was confident she could sell to a young family. She knew the talking points: good school district, low crime, a neighborhood with a lot of parks and fun things to do in the surrounding area. She was experienced with young families herself—a pro, actually—and she felt certain she could thaw that realtor-client relationship into something personal. She’d make them feel like she was one of them and they could trust her. That’s what a good salesperson does, right? She looked at the clock.
“Let’s go wake Uncle Herb, Peter. I need to leave in twenty minutes.”
Walking down the hallway, Peter felt an unexpected and sharp longing for a house with stairs. In his old house, a flight of stairs ran up the center of the house. He remembered when his mother was pregnant with CJ. She’d have horrible back pains and often sat on the lower steps, because the stiff, upright position softened the throbbing. Peter recalled sitting next to his mother often, and she’d caress his head for what seemed like hours as they talked about the new baby or sat in a content silence. This was before Willow Creek Landing, before his father started his own business, before it stopped raining. Peter missed those stairs. The new house had a hospital wing feel, each bedroom branching off from a main corridor.
Uncle Herb’s room was the first branch down the hallway, closest to the living room. He’d been awake for a while now, and he thanked God when he heard voices growing stronger and heading toward him. Help couldn’t arrive soon enough. His bladder was about to burst, and that meant a bath his sister probably didn’t have the time or energy to give, plus an extra load of laundry. He was doing his part now by thinking about anything that didn’t involve water. “P-e-e-e,” he said, as loud as he could while maintaining bodily control, when he felt like he couldn’t go a second longer.
Abby and Peter broke into a jog. “Oh, shoot, sorry, Herb. Hurry up, Peter. Help me get him in his chair.”
Herb was thankful that Peter was experienced with lifting and moving him. Within seconds, they were in the bathroom propping Herb on the toilet.
“Boy, you really had to go bad, Uncle Herb. It sounds like a waterfall,” CJ said. She was tying her lasso to the bathroom’s doorknob. Herb smiled at her from above Peter’s forearm. CJ waved, and the door slammed shut with a tug of the lasso.
Happy that he hadn’t created more work for his sister before she left for work, Herb smiled as Peter dressed him.
“What’s so funny, Uncle Herb?”
“Ew.” You.
Peter led Uncle Herb’s crooked arm through the shirt hole.
“Uncle Herb, something really strange happened last night.”
Herb was all ears.
“CJ woke me up in the middle of the night. She heard someone outside. It was Josh. I think he was praying.”
“Ut wong it hat?” Uncle Herb said, smiling. He tried to poke Peter in the ribs with his free hand but missed. Peter laughed and pulled Herb’s other arm through his shirt and over his back.
“There’s nothing wrong with praying. You know what I mean. It’s just that he was doing it outside in the middle of the night, and it was also the way he was praying, like he was scared or in trouble and needed help.”
“Hats hi e-ray.” That’s why we pray.
Peter stepped back and appraised the ensemble he’d picked out for his uncle. Satisfied, he nodded and glimpsed himself in the mirror before heading toward the kitchen with his uncle in tow.
“I know. It was just, just strange, I guess.”
* * *
After breakfast, Peter, CJ, and Uncle Herb sat on the brick patio in the backyard. Uncle Herb read from the Bible in his lap as CJ colored in the chair next to him, stopping every so often to turn the page when Uncle Herb asked. Peter was in a lawn chair a short distance away, working his way through The Three Musketeers. Last year Peter’s teacher told him that he was reading above grade level and gave him a recommended reading list for summer. He thought an adventure book with sword duels sounded interesting even though it was a really old story. He was near the beginning of the book: d’Artagnan had just left home with hopes of becoming a Musketeer of the Guard and stopped at an inn, where a well-dressed man ridiculed him for the odd color of his horse.
Peter dropped the book to his side. He looked beyond the white, vinyl fence that separated the backyard from the golf course. The three grass hills of hole four had turned a shade of yellow from the lack of water, giving the golf course a desert-like quality. The heat didn’t stop the constant parade of golfers from playing through.
Peter looked further down the golf course and could see the furthest home on Colonial Drive. There were two types of homes, which the residents labeled the ranches and the manches (short for mansions, the Colonials and Victorian styles), but they all shared similar landscaping down to the brick patios in back. Only three shades of paint were available for the exterior of the home, and they were all muted colors, ones you could find if you picked up a handful of sand at the beach. This had something to do with providing no distraction for the golfers. It was all about the golf. These fine details made the neighborhood look fake, like a town surrounding a toy train set. Everything was too symmetrical for a real town. There were four roads in the community, but actually only two long perpendicular lines. At the center where the lines met stood the pavilion.
Chipper’s presence in the Creek further isolated Peter from the real world. Chipper’s dad was on the board of directors at Willow Creek Landing, and his name and picture were plastered throughout the neighborhood and the community newsletter, The Creek. He was some super-successful businessman who overtook small and weak companies, then tore them apart, somewhat similar to what his son did in school.
A whistling hiss sliced through the air, then stopped with a solid thud as a golf ball bounced off the vinyl siding of the house and rolled to
