Free Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish Page A

back, up and back. It’s nearly seven. We should go. Walk or hitch?
    “Hitch, definitely.” She touched his arm. “I won’t tell anyone about Ellie.”
    I know.
    “No you don’t. But I promise anyway.”
    The apartment glowed with one hidden light—the hallway light, oozing into the living room—and the television. The blinds were closed. Lacie and Sienna hugged their knees on the couch, skin blue in the cartoon glow, dark eyes dancing with yellow Sponge Bob irises. Heather sat in the dining area on a plastic lawn chair, feet propped on another, cigarette twined in her fingers.
    “Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” she said, took a long draw; the ash burned orange, then died. “Not like we needed anything from you tonight.”
    “We were at the library,” Skye said.
    Heather snuffed out the butt on her dinner plate, lit another. “I don’t need this garbage from you, too, Skye.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    Heather turned to look at Matthew. He nodded.
    “Dirk’s gone.” Smoke leaked from Heather’s nose, between her teeth.
    “For how long this time?” Skye asked.
    Heather ignored her. “I’m going to bed. Get over here and kiss me good-night.”
    Lacie skipped into the dining area, knocking the ashtray off the plastic chair while throwing her arms around her mother’s waist. Heather pulled the girl off by the strap of her tank top, said something; Lacie’s head flopped forward.
    “I mean it. I better not find this mess in the morning,” Heather said. She looked at Sienna. “You can’t get your lazy self off the couch to say good-night?”
    “ ’Night,” Sienna said.
    “See how I jump for you when you want something.” Heather turned down the narrow hallway, and Skye followed. Matthew felt two doors slam through his feet.
    He found the spray cleaner from beneath the sink and gave a handful of paper towels to Lacie. He squirted the floor and she wiped, then he took her into the bathroom for a shower, her limbs dingy with the day’s play. She dug around the laundry basket, finding a mismatched pajama top and bottom, put them on. He combed her waist-length hair, and she danced and stomped as he wiggled the plastic teeth through the snarls. She finally turned and said, “Matty, you’re hurting me.”
    He tried to reply, “Sorry,” but didn’t know how it came out. Lacie seemed satisfied with whatever sound he’d made, and let him finish untangling her wet knots.
    “Can I sleep out with you tonight?” she asked.
    Matthew caught himself before he sighed, and nodded instead. She didn’t ask often, but when she did, it meant the floor for him. Tonight wasn’t exactly a night he wanted to give up the couch. He went into the living room and pressed the Off button for the television.
    “Hey,” Sienna said.
    He pointed down the hall.
    “Ma didn’t say I had to go to bed yet.”
    He bent his arm and whipped his index finger toward the hallway again. “Fine,” she said, and shoved Lacie into the wall on the way by.
    Matthew covered the couch with a sheet and tucked Lacie into it, covered her with another. Then he found a sleeping bag in the closet and unrolled it onto the floor, lay down. Lacie’s foot hung over his head. He grabbed it, tickled the bottom. She jerked it back up on the cushion, and he wished he could hear her giggle.

Chapter TEN
    Benjamin called his mother.
    Usually she phoned him, once a week on Sundays; he made sterile conversation with her and his father—What’s going on at the university? At church? How is this neighbor or that colleague? — fulfilling his obligation as a son. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak to them, but it took effort to act as if he was holding it together. Today something inside him remembered his Band-Aided knees and the gharge —fried, sweet pumpkin bread—she had made for him while he lay in bed with the chicken pox, and he realized he desperately wanted to feel that security again.
    She answered on the third ring.
    “