Page 14 of Price of Angels

“Mama,” Michael said now, as he nibbled on his pencil eraser and stared at the page of multiplication tables in front of him. “When are we going home?”

His mother glanced up from the potato she was peeling, paring knife catching the lamplight in one slender, long-fingered hand. She tipped her head to the side as she regarded him, locks of dark hair, come loose from her ponytail, sliding down her neck, falling on her shoulders.

“I don’t think we can go back, baby,” she said, her smile sad. She had the prettiest face, but so much of the time, it was stamped with sadness. It made Michael sad, too.

“Are we gonna live here?” he asked, thinking that might not be a bad thing. He was starting to like Uncle Wynn, and he’d liked the dogs immediately. The biggest, a black Dane named Caesar, Uncle Wynn’s prize stud dog, slept on the living room sofa in the main house and licked Michael’s hands in greeting every time they met.

“Would that be okay with you, if we did?” Mama asked.

“I think so.”

She smiled. “Your uncle says you can pick a puppy from the next litter if you want. It can be your dog. He’ll teach you how to train it.”

He sat up straighter in his chair, excitement fluttering in his stomach. “Really?”

She nodded. “That’s what he says. Berta’s due to whelp next month.”

Michael smiled. Berta was a sweetie, a huge black and white Dane with silken, floppy ears. She’d been bred to Caesar. The idea of one of Caesar’s puppies to call his own, to train and raise and love – that was wonderful. He’d never had anything so nice, something he’d wanted so badly. He knew not to ask for things – Mama always said, “We can’t afford that, darlin’,” and it made her sad. Again. Always sad, poor Mama.

“I’m sure,” Mama continued, “that you’d have to do some chores around here to cover the cost. If he keeps one, that’s eight-hundred dollars he doesn’t make from selling it.”

“I can do chores,” he hurried to say. “I won’t mind.”

She smiled at him, one of those dreamy smiles that told him she was drifting into her thoughts, staring at him and seeing things that weren’t. “I know you won’t, baby. You’re the best boy.”

They both heard the crunch of feet on gravel at the same time. Both of them sat up tall in their chairs, like marionette strings had pulled them.

“It’s Wynn,” Mama said, but her eyes widened and her nostrils flared at the edges, and her hand tightened on the potato peeler, the potato landing quietly amid the strips of peel on the table.

The steps came closer. If it was Uncle Wynn, he wasn’t walking with his usual hearty strides, his big, swinging walk that he’d developed so he could keep up with his long-legged Danes when they went walking around the farm.

“Stay here,” Mama said, getting to her feet.

Michael went perfectly still, the pencil falling from his hand.Smack, against the table.

Mama wore clothes that Uncle Wynn had pulled from a box in the attic, clothes she’d worn in high school, and that had been boxed up once she moved away from home; her mother had packed them up, before she’d died. White overalls with a red t-shirt beneath, her feet bare, her toenails painted a drugstore red from a bottle she’d bought on their way to the farm, when they’d stopped for snacks and a map. Her dark ponytail swung against her back as she walked to the door, potato peeler held low, down along her thigh.

The footsteps hit the porch stairs, and moved up them. Clomp, clomp across the boards.

“Mama,” Michael whispered.

The knob rattled, but wouldn’t turn.

“Michael, run,” his mother said softly. “Go upstairs, into your bedroom.”

“But, Mama–”

“Run, go now!”

He climbed down from the chair…

And the door exploded. With an awful great crash, it flew back on its hinges, dust and splinters flying.

“Go!” Mama screamed at him, and he went, hot with panic on the inside, boiling with fear.

He bolted from the kitchen, clambered up the stairs two at a time. Behind him he heard a man’s voice, dark with anger. And his mother’s voice, shrill and high.

He paused, at the top of the narrow wooden stair, hand on the rail, chest heaving as he breathed. He should go back. He should help her, protect her.

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