Page 49 of Prodigal Son

“He…wait,what?”

“He was in Dad’s file. Number three. Dad was the one who introduced me to him,” he said, a frown tugging at his mouth.

Dimly, he was aware of her shock in the passenger seat, but he felt the memory rushing up on him, an unwelcome wave of something that was almost nostalgia – but not quite. Memory, in his mind, was never fond enough to be nostalgic.

~*~

He was seven the day Dad took him to meet Abraham.

A rare day. Charlie rolled out of his bed and landed in a crouch, reaching to gather the comics that had slipped off the top of his comforter in the middle of the night, all their glossy covers sliding water-like over one another. He heard Mum’s footfalls come down the hall, and cursed quietly under his breath, hurrying. But when she swept into the room, it wasn’t with the usual admonishments that he’d be late for school if he didn’t hurry, and why had he been buying comics with his lunch money again, and when was he going to clean up his pigsty room. No, she was smiling, breathless, high color in her cheeks.

“Charlie, get up, your father’s here. He’s come to take you on an outing.”

Charlie stood upright, comics falling from limp fingers. “He’s…Dad’s here? Right now?”

She bustled over to his tiny closet and began pulling out t-shirts by the handfuls, examining each one with a grimace and flinging them down on the bed. “Yes, isn’t that what I just said? Now, hurry, go brush your teeth.”

She always got a little…frantic, when Dad visited. And after he left, Charlie would listen to her sitting up in front of the TV long after he was supposed to be asleep; listened to the cabinet above the stovetop open and close several times as she pulled down the dusty bottle of whiskey he wasn’t supposed to know she kept. Her eyes always looked red the next morning, her face puffy.

Charlie didn’t understand why she cried over him; he never stayed, and he wasn’t very interesting anyway.

(Okay, that was a lie. But Charlie wouldn’tlethimself find the man interesting.)

Once he was scrubbed, and combed, and dressed in his mother-deemed least offensive shirt and jeans, he was marched out to the lounge where Devin waited on the sofa, bored gaze fixed on the TV.

He glanced up when Charlie appeared, a smile splitting his face. He had a nice smile, Charlie could admit – the kind of smile that made you want to smile back; that made you feel welcome, in the presence of someone truly delighted to see you.

(As an adult, Fox would realize it was this exact on-demand smile that kept getting women into bed with the guy.)

“There’s the little fox. Ready to go?”

Devin had a motorbike these days, a Bonneville, beautiful and dark blue. He produced a spare helmet, too big, a Union Jack sticker plastered across the back of it. It kept sliding down over Charlie’s eyes, but he didn’t care, arms tight around Devin’s whipcord waist, wind in his face. Flying, flying – he wanted to leave this part of the city, their shit apartment, school and Mum’s secret whiskey…wanted to leave all of it behind for good.

Dad parked in front of a building that looked like one warehouse in a long line of others just like it. Bricks grungy from smog; bits of paper rubbish littering the curbs. The metal roll-top door in the front was half-open, just high enough for an adult to need to duck.

Charlie paused, helmet held in his hands, the breeze cool on his sweat-matted hair. “Um.” He wasn’t afraid. Afraid was for babies. But this didn’t look like the sort of place he wanted to be.

Devin had already stepped up on the curb, and looked back now. “Coming?”

“I – where are we?”

“Someplace you’ll like,” he said, cryptically, and winked. “Let’s go.”

Charlie, with nothing else to do, hooked the helmet over the handlebars and followed his father into the dodgy warehouse.

Inside, it was dim and cool, and smelled faintly of sawdust.

“Halloo,” Devin called, voice echoing off the wide space and the brick walls. “You in here, you little bastard?”

Someone was.

The inside of the warehouse was set up like a gym: mats, heavy hanging punching bags, racks of free weights, mirrors, and even a boxing ring. A man stood in the center of one of the mats, in a blue shirt with the sleeves cut out of it, and loose gray sweats that cuffed at the ankles. Barefoot.

He stood in an unfamiliar pose, feet braced apart on the mat, one arm held forward, fingers curled into a flat palm, his other arm held back for balance. He looked caught frozen in a moment of intense movement: a snapshot.

A small man, by some standards. But arms carved with lean, stark muscle. A hard expression –noexpression. His head turned toward them, and then his pose relaxed. He stood upright, arms folded across his chest, head tilting to a disapproving angle.

Devin’s hand landed on Charlie’s shoulder. “Charlie, this is my old friend, Abe. Abe, this is the one I told you about.”

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