The Last Child Read Free Page A

beyond the black trees. His mother lay on her side, hair across her face. Magazines and books covered the bedside table. He made room for the glass and placed the aspirin on the scarred wood. For a second, he listened to her breathe, then looked at the stack of bills Ken had left by the bed. There were some twenties, a fifty. Maybe a few hundred dollars, wrinkled and smudged.
    Peeled off a roll.
    Discarded.
     
     
    The car in the driveway was old, a station wagon that Johnny’s father had bought years ago. The paint was clean and waxed, tire pressure checked every week, but that was all Johnny knew how to do. Blue smoke still belched from the pipe when he turned the key; the passenger window did not go up all the way. He waited for the smoke to turn white, then put the car in gear and rolled to the bottom of the drive. He was nowhere close to having a license, and looked carefully before edging into the road. He kept the speed down and stayed on the back roads. The nearest store was only two miles away, but it was a big one, on a major road, and Johnny knew that people there might recognize him. He added three miles to the trip and went to a small grocery store that catered to the low end of things. The gas cost money and the food was more expensive, but he didn’t really have a choice. Social Services had already been to the house twice.
    The car blended with those already there, most of which were old and American. A dark sedan rolled in behind him and stopped near the entrance. Sunlight mirrored the glass and a lone man sat faceless behind the wheel. He did not get out, and Johnny watched him as he walked to the store.
    Johnny had a great fear of lone men in stopped cars.
    The cart wobbled as he went up one aisle and down another. Just the basics, he decided: milk, juice, bacon, eggs, sandwich bread, fruit. He bought more aspirin for his mother. Tomato juice also seemed to help.
    The cop stopped him at the end of aisle eight. He was tall and broad, with brown eyes that were too soft for the lines in his face, the hard angle of his jaw. He had no cart, stood with his hands in his pockets, and Johnny knew at a glance that he’d followed him inside. He had that look, a kind of resigned patience.
    And Johnny wanted to run.
    “Hey, Johnny,” he said. “How you doing?”
    His hair was longer than Johnny remembered, same brown as his eyes, shaggy and curling over the top of his collar with a bit of new silver threaded in at the sides. His face had thinned out, and some part of Johnny recognized that the year had been hard on him as well. Big as the cop was, he looked pressed down, haunted, but most of the world looked like that to Johnny, so he wasn’t sure. The cop’s voice was deep and concerned. It brought back so many bad memories that, for an instant, Johnny could neither move nor speak. The cop stepped closer and brought with him the same thoughtful expression that Johnny had seen so often, the same look of gentle worry. Some part of Johnny wanted to like the man, to trust him; but he was still the one who let Alyssa fade away. He was still the one who lost her.
    “I’m good,” Johnny told him. “You know. Hanging in.”
    The cop looked at his watch, then at Johnny’s grubby clothes and wild, black hair. It was forty minutes after six on a school day. “Any word from your father?” he asked.
    “No.” Johnny tried to hide the sudden shame. “No word.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    The moment stretched, but the cop did not move. The brown eyes remained steady, and up close he looked just as big and calm as the first time he’d come to Johnny’s house. But that was another memory, so Johnny stared at the man’s thick wrist, the clean, blunt nails. His voice cracked when he spoke. “My mother got a letter once. She said he was in Chicago, maybe going to California.” A pause, eyes moving from hand to floor. “He’ll come back.”
    Johnny said it with conviction. The cop nodded once and turned his head away.