Kara, wrapped in her bathrobe, her feet in slippers, noted that the guestroom door was still shut as she padded from her bedroom to the den Friday morning. That was good; the boy was still asleep. At the end of the hall, she spotted a porcelain bell dangling from the front doorknob. Craig's idea? She found her husband stretched out on the couch, the blanket bunched around his legs. She thought she was moving noiselessly, but he sensed her presence and shifted, lifting one eyelid halfway.
She knelt down beside him. "Hey, noble sentry," she said in a low voice, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. The gray light of another cloudy morning drifted in through the den's picture window.
Craig sucked in a deep, waking-up breath and pulled himself upright, blanket still wrapped around him. "I hope you got more sleep than I did." He rubbed at his eyes.
"I slept okay. Did Zach get up during the night?"
"I didn't hear anything. Would've, too. I woke up every ten minutes."
"Sorry." She touched his arm consolingly. "What's the bell for?"
"For if he tried to go out the front while I was sleeping." Craig yawned and stood up.
Kara nodded. "I'll go check on him."
She tiptoed back to the hall, turned the guestroom doorknob slowly, and peeked inside. The bed sheets were rumpled and the comforter pushed off to one side, but the boy—he was gone.
She stepped over to the bathroom. He wasn't there, either. She glanced into her bedroom, but it was empty; so was the laundry room. "Zach?" she called, not too loudly, as she strode back toward the entryway.
Craig had moved to the kitchen. He met her eyes, already calculating. "He's not there?"
She shook her head.
"Oh, boy," he groaned. "I'll check the back yard, you check the garage."
They hurried to scan their areas, but met back in the kitchen moments later with grim faces. "Should we call the police?" Craig asked.
"Well, not yet. Did you look in the shed?"
"No." Craig moved back toward the side door.
"I'll check out front," Kara offered. She pulled the front door open—why was it unlocked? "Oh!"
The boy was sitting on the front step, watching the neighborhood. He looked up pleasantly as Kara appeared. "Hi, Mom," he said.
The words came so genuinely from his mouth that it took her a moment to fully register them. They stung—not intentionally, of course. It was just that they sounded so agreeable without her meaning for them to.
Rain was still falling lightly. Judging by the puddles and the general dampness everywhere, it must have rained all night. The boy's feet were bare and stretched out into the rain. At least the rest of him was dry.
"Zechariah," she began in a mothering tone that made her blink in surprise; how had she acquired that tone so readily? "What are you doing out here?"
He bit his lip, his eyes widening. "I'm sorry," he answered apologetically. "I thought it would be okay." His look wasn't Craig's falsely-penitent look he had displayed last night; this time the boy was genuinely concerned that he had done something wrong.
"No, it's all right," she assured him, "but we were worried when we couldn't find you. We just needed to know where you were."
He processed that information and relaxed. He gazed out across the street again. "I like being outside," he said. "I never got to go outside at home—my old home, I mean."
On a whim, Kara pulled her slippers off and handed them to Craig, who had come up behind her. He received them and stationed himself beside the door to listen. Pulling her robe tight around her, she sat down on the step next to the boy and stretched her bare feet out parallel to his. "Why couldn't you go outside?"
He splashed a foot in a tiny puddle of water on the sidewalk before them. "Grandfather wouldn't let me. It was one of his rules. One time we lived in a house with a big fence in the back, and I could play in the back yard if the nanny came with me. But not if Grandfather was there. He never came outside. So I had to stay inside."
"Oh. What about the front yard?"
"Never. It was against the rules."
Kara nodded thoughtfully. Maybe something would come of this gentle probing. "Did you ever sneak out?"
"No. If I didn't break any rules, I could have ice cream on Saturdays."
"Chocolate?"
"Usually. But I like other kinds, too. I just like chocolate the best." He stilled the one foot and began splashing the other.
"Zach, can I ask you something?" Kara asked.
The boy looked up at her. His hair was messed up and bent funny from his sleep, but he was still a beautiful child—all the more so for looking like he had just awakened, though he could have been out here for an hour already for all Kara knew.
"What would you have done if you couldn't find us? Or if we had turned out to be mean?"
The boy got that calculating look in his eyes that Craig got so often. He was facing her, but not seeing her at the moment. "I knew you wouldn't be mean."
"How did you know?" She sensed Craig shifting, leaning a little further out the door to catch their words.
The boy's eyes refocused on hers. "Grandmother used to tell me about you. She always said you were nice. She said Dad was strong and worked really hard."
"How did she know that?"
"I don't know."
Kara propped her elbow on one knee, chin on her hand. "So, what if she had been wrong? What was plan B?"
"Plan B?"
"Your backup plan. What would you have done next?"
"I didn't have another plan."
"You would have just stayed with us, even if we were mean?"
"I just knew you wouldn't be."
"Hmm." Behind her, Craig coughed into his hand. She looked over her shoulder at him; he pointed at his watch. "Oh, right. Zach, we'd better get you ready for school."
"Okay," he said, and he stood up—in the rain. He looked up and let it hit him in the face.
"Need to wet your scales a bit?"
The boy grinned. "I like it here," he said. "You don't get mad if I go out in the rain."
Kara pondered that comment a moment. How isolated, how regulated, had this boy's family kept him? It wasn't really any of her business, but it made her sad. Still, a little rain before school was enough. "I might be perturbed, though, if you get sick from sitting out here with bare feet and no jacket."
Taking him gently by both shoulders, she steered him around Craig and into the house. He stiffened when she touched him, but allowed her to direct him.
"Your own clothes are dry. I'll bring them in a second," she said as he headed toward the guestroom.
Before she followed him, she leaned over to Craig. "You didn't sleep much last night, huh?" she teased, patting his ribs playfully with the back of her hand. "Would've heard that bell for sure?"
Craig grimaced. "Maybe it's broken," he suggested. He stepped back inside, pulled the bell off the doorknob, and jiggled it. It rang just fine.
*****