Free Redhanded by Michael Cadnum

order of danger.
    â€œSteven’s doing good,” Dad said, a way of claiming responsibility for me that made it sound as though I was planning a career in sainthood, doing good .
    â€œBut Steven looks so—”
    â€œHe’s growing up,” said Dad, meaning: You should be around to see it.
    Mom wears her hair tied up in a knot at the back of her head, and wears lace-up work boots, hiking boots, steel-toed, heavy-duty footwear. Her mother and father run a construction supply company near Barstow, selling tar paper and linoleum tile wholesale and retail, and Mom always dresses like someone prepared to hike into a quarry, her clothes well ironed and even attractive in a desert-warfare way.
    â€œI guess that’s it,” she said. She touched her mouth, asking with her eyes what was wrong. “Why not football?” she had asked in an E-mail message months ago. “Why not basketball? Why boxing?”
    â€œI did catch a punch on Monday. It healed up.”
    â€œHere, in the mouth,” she said. “I can see it.”
    â€œIt’s okay.”
    â€œWhat’s okay about getting slugged in the mouth?”
    I gave a laugh, and said that the point is to avoid getting hit.
    â€œYou wish,” she said, looking around at the furniture. My parents had agreed that I should live in East Bay with Dad because the schools were better than way out in the country, but I had begun to wonder if Mom might change her mind and invite me to move into an A-frame up north, somewhere close to a rural high school. I knew that if I waited long enough Mom would finish her dissertation and come home.
    Dad had slipped into his well-worn Southwick tweed, and needed only a briar pipe to appear collegiate and gentlemanly, someone you’d pick out for an ad for single malt scotch. They both looked great. Dad didn’t gaze off dreamily at his hands or at the view the way he often did. He concentrated on what Mom was saying, his head tilted forward, looking wide awake but at ease.
    Mom rested her hand on the top of the piano, filling us in on what the tule elk were up to, overbreeding, filling up the acreage in Point Reyes National Seashore, needing birth control devices. If you put birth control chemicals in the water, other animals would drink it, with unpredictable consequences.
    She tapped the piano’s wooden surface, a string inside vibrating softly. Mom lived in a world of rock and talon. She liked to dance to music, and got vaguely restless sitting through all four movements of a symphony.
    â€œThe place looks good,” she said.
    I stooped and picked up a tiny yellow feather behind her back, over by the sofa.
    Dad put his hands in his pockets, jingling coins, letting himself enjoy the compliment, maybe afraid to look at me or say anything abrupt, nervous that the rosy mood wouldn’t last.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Dad had mentioned his choice of eating places the night before, wanting to know what I thought. Dad and I ate there once or twice a month—the choice was no surprise.
    The veal was plastic, but no one in my family ate it anyway, since it comes from baby cattle kept in cages. I knew that the chicken was dry, but Mom likes that. She thinks if it’s sinewy and hard to swallow it must be low-fat and practically health food.
    If Mom enjoyed seeing the old sights along Solano Avenue she didn’t say so. Dad had wiped out his passbook savings account to lease this sage gray Acura, sure that it would impress Mom. Our other car was parked on a side street near the apartment building, a Nissan sedan with foam rubber stuffing coming out of the dash.
    Mom didn’t complain, though, when Dad hunted for a place to park. He was not quite sure how to maneuver this car, bound to go back to the dealer in a few weeks. Mom could tell the car was a special effort to impress her, and she played along, getting the car stereo to play, adjusting the bass.
    â€œOh, this is nice,” she said,