Free Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card Page B

didn't have a clue.
    She went to the front door, opened it and stepped out onto the porch. Then, in spite of the scoffing of her rational mind, she had to leave the porch and walk across the lawn and stand at the curb and look at the storm drain up the street. The yucky hole. Just to see if the kitten had come out.
    Of course it had probably come out while she was in the house and so it was absurd to stand here, watching. She would go back inside. Right now. This was foolish.
    A movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned toward the house, and there in the side yard between the house and the neighbors' fence was a grey rabbit. Robbie had told her he had seen one, but she hadn't believed that a wild rabbi could really be living in their neighborhood. It looked at he steadily for a moment, then loped off into the back yard.
    She followed it, hoping to see where it went. Rabbits might cute and furry, but they were rodents, like rats and mice, and the could carry diseases. She had to get some idea where it lived or least where it came from. But when she got to the back yard it was gone.
    She walked the wood-slat fence, to see where it might have gone under, but she couldn't see any rabbit-sized gaps. She also examined the latticework skirting around the base of the house, though the thought that the rabbit might live under her own house made her shudder. She hated the way that southerners built their houses up off the ground instead of putting in a massive concrete basement the way houses were supposed to be built. Anything could get in under the house- it must be filled with spiderwebs and beetles and who knows what other disgusting creatures, right there where all the waterpipes and wiring and heating ducts were. It made her feel naked, to know that her house was completely exposed on its soft underbelly.
    But it didn't look as though there were any place where the rabbit might have slipped through or under the skirting. It was just gone. Probably went across to the driveway and back out into the front yard while I was walking around the other way, she thought.
    DeAnne walked back around the house and was horrified to realize that she had left the front door standing wide open. She had never done that-she was an inveterate door locker. But this time she had forgotten. I was just stepping onto the porch, she remembered. I didn't plan to go into the back yard chasing a rabbit.
    That was no excuse.
    As she hurried toward the door, a man stepped through it. A man had been in her house! A stranger! With her children! She screamed.
    He looked at her, startled and abashed. An old man, white hair sticking out like tiny feathers under a baseball cap. "Ma'am, I'm so sorry-
    "What were you doing in my house!" Somehow she had covered the gap between them and now shoved past him, to stand in the doorway between him and the children.
    "Ma'am, the door was open and I called and called-"
    She yelled over her shoulder. "Robbie! Robbie, are you all right?"
    "Ma'am, please, you got to understand-"
    "Get away from here before I call the police," she said. "If you have harmed my children in any way, I-"
    "Ma'am," he said, "I used to live here. I just haven't shook the habit yet of walking in. I shouldn't have done it, I know, and I am so ashamed of myself, giving you a scare like that, I was plain wrong and I apologize, sometimes I think I still live out in the country I guess where a open door means come on in, folks is to home."
    Robbie came up behind her. "Did you call me, Mom?"
    "Is your sister all right?"
    "We got a fuzzy channel on the TV and she's watching this guy who hits people in the head."
    "Thanks, Robbie."
    "Can I go back now, Mom?"
    "Yes, please, thank you."
    The old man resumed his explanations. "My boy Jamie owns this house."
    "That doesn't give you the right," said DeAnne.
    "I know it, like I said, I was plain wrong and I'm sorry, I won't ever do it again. But ma'am, you ought to be careful and not leave your