Free Break and Enter by Etienne

second story over the garage,” Mike said. “We’re going to put a new master suite for us in the addition, so Robbie can have our room, and we’ll still have a guest room.”
    “If you ever need a babysitter,” she said, “you know where to find me.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll hold that in reserve. I’m pretty sure our next-door neighbor Mrs. Tumblin will jump at the chance to run over and take care of him.”
    After dinner, Robbie went back to the little table and the coloring books, and we sat around the dining table talking.
    “He’s awfully quiet, isn’t he?” Sarah said.
    “Not nearly as much as he was just a few days ago,” I said, lowering my voice. “Remember, he witnessed his father literally beating his mother to death, and that’s a lot to process for a not-quite six-year-old.”
    “We’re going to get him some counseling when we get home,” Mike said.
    “And he has no relatives?” the chief said.
    “Just an elderly, and very ill, maternal grandmother,” I said. “She’s already signed off on the adoption.”
    “As it happened,” Mike said, “Lucinda has been friends with her for years, and she put in a very good word for us.”
    “‘As you sow, so shall you reap,’” Sarah quoted.
    “What the devil does that mean?” the chief said.
    “Think about it, Henry. George and Mike started doing good things for those two sweet boys when they first started coming up here. As a result of those good deeds, they managed to buy some adjacent property from a man who wouldn’t even have talked to them without Lucinda’s intervention, and now this.”
    “Point taken,” he said.
    “Speaking of the twins,” she said, “I guess they’re at your house.”
    “Either there, or at the beach, or hard at work at the Golden Arches,” I said.
    “Won’t it be a bit crowded at your house when you take Robbie home?”
    “We’ll work something out,” Mike said.
    “The twins can stay with us, if necessary,” she said.
    “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll keep it in mind.”
    We had finished the bottle of wine, so the chief opened another one and poured refills all around. We sat at the table, lost in conversation, through another glass of wine, until I said, “I’d better check on Robbie.” I got up and went into the next room and saw that he was sound asleep on the sofa, so I went back to the dining room.
    “He’s fast asleep on the sofa,” I said.
    “You boys are going to make great parents,” Sarah said.
    “I hope so. Goodness knows it’s not something I ever pictured myself becoming.”
    “Me neither,” Mike said, “but this little guy sort of landed in our laps, and we kind of like it.”
    “We’re just hoping the adoption thing can be handled by Friday, so we don’t have to make a special trip.”
    “Or worse,” Mike said, “so we don’t have to go home and leave him up here temporarily.”
    “A friend of ours is coming up from Atlanta to assist our local lawyer, if necessary, for the court thing,” I said.
    “Who would that be?” the chief said.
    Mike and I took turns telling them about our first meeting with Charles and Philip, adding what we knew about them and Charles’s firm.
    “They came down for the weekend and ran the River Run with us this year,” I said, “and we’re going to Atlanta to stay with them on theFourth of July and participate in the Peachtree Road Race.”
    “Your lawyer friend sounds like the kind of guy you want to have on your side,” the chief said.
    “According to our local lawyer, Charles is much more than that,” I said, and I told them some of the things Ernest had mentioned.
    “I’ll look forward to meeting him,” the chief said. “Sarah and I will certainly attend the court hearing, in case we’re needed.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “We have absolutely no experience with this sort of thing.”
    “That’s why you’ve hired professionals,” Sarah said.
    The second bottle of wine was two-thirds gone, and we