Free All for One by Ryne Douglas Pearson

ear off while the rake leaned useless against his shoulder.
    “Good for her she’s got lots of money,” Mr. Prentiss said. “She brings this thing in every other week. Oh, which reminds me; when she dropped it off she said that something in her driveway—”
    “Needs attention,” Michael said, nodding. “I know.”
    “Friday after school, she said.”
    Michael grimaced. The one day he did mind helping the old lady out. “On Fridays she has all those old crones are over there. She makes this stinky tea and feeds them these gross little cucumber sandwiches. She tried to get me to eat one once and I almost ralphed on her kitchen floor.”
    Jack Prentiss grinned at his son’s protest. “Friday. Mikey.”
    “All right, but I’m not eating any of those sandwiches if they’re there.”
    Jack Prentiss tested the muffler mounts with his sturdy hands and then looked back to his son. “How was school?”
    “It was okay.”
    Michael’s father nodded, his jaw squaring, chin jutting. “Anybody give you a hard time?”
    “Nothing I can’t hack.”
    “Good for you.” The greasy hands moved from the muffler to the starter. “I thought you were going to the park after school to toss some balls.”
    Michael’s nose scrunched up. “I decided not to.”
    How ‘okay’ was okay? Jack Prentiss wondered as he heard his son tell him he had chosen not to do something involving a small white ball. “Well, you want help your pop change this Volvo’s oil?”
    “Is that all it needs?”
    Jack Prentiss chuckled. “Hell if I know. It can’t hurt.”
    *  *  *
    Cooper crossed Maple three blocks past Wasatch. Joey looked at Jeff as they turned and said, “It’s a two story house, right?”
    “A big one,” Jeff confirmed. He remembered Elena talking about her room ‘upstairs’ . Not in a bragging sort of way, but, hey, if you had a second floor Jeff figured it was okay to mention it. He would if he had one. “Her dad’s loaded. Her mom doesn’t even have to work.”
    “What does her dad do?”
    Jeff shrugged and pointed. “Something so he can afford that.”
    Across the street, behind a low hedge sculpted precisely square, a house that could have been plucked from the earliest part of the century sat gracious between gently swaying pines. A deep veranda crossed its front and reached down each side toward the back. The windows set into the front doors were leaded and glinted in the waning light.
    Joey and Jeff stopped next to a tree directly across the street and admired the sight.
    “Wow,” Joey commented softly.
    “It’s a nice house,” Jeff said. Hell, it was a really nice house, he thought. He might have even called it pretty if saying so wouldn’t have sounded sissy or something. And if the outside looked this good, the inside must look... (searching for a non sissy word now)...unbelievable. But there was no way to know how true that might be, Jeff saw. “How come all the shades are down?”
    “I don’t know,” Joey answered, then stepped behind the tree and pulled Jeff with him as the front door to the house opened.
    Jeff peeked around the trunk, one palm prickling against the rough bark. “Who’s she?”
    A lady had exited and was coming down the walk. She looked old enough to be a mother, but no more. Her hair flopped loose in a pony tail and a folder of some kind was clamped under one arm.
    “She doesn’t look like Elena,” Joey said. People told him his mom and he had the same nose and eyes, and that he had his dad’s smile. “Have you ever seen her mother?”
    “If I did I don’t remember.”
    The mystery woman got into a clean gray four door parked at the curb and put her seatbelt on before driving back toward Maple.
    “The car was awful plain looking,” Jeff said.
    Joey didn’t notice. He was studying the upstairs windows. In the one farthest to the right he thought he saw the curtains sway. And maybe a shadow.
    “What if that was a cop?” Jeff wondered. “Undercover cops drive