The yard lay still; afternoons were dead time here in the quaint Town of Maloch. The boy detective was at his own house awaiting her return, her decision. Nobody was doing much.
The customs that had been brought into existence in the glare of the combat fires of the revolution had been forgotten generations ago. Locally there was law and order. If there was any action, it occurred at night.
Between lunchtime and dinner there was no need for anything but serenity, which was how the neighbors liked it.
She sat on his sumptuous couch again trying to draw breath.
From what sounds like a great distance she can hear a resounding splash-SPLASH sound, and she knows that the boy is in a nearby indoor pool acting his age.
Oxygen going down her windpipe and then easing back out again in a series of little pants, but that doesn't change the feeling that she's drowning here in the lavish living room, looking at a satellite photo of her children from the spot they were taken. There is an unknown, suspicious looking man in the picture too.
Not that she disbelieves anymore, but that she does now believe.
The indignity that she is about to commit is too great for her to worry about such minor matters as breathing.
Her heart throbs like the tides of the world glowing deep down in the middle of her, in a place where until today there was the quiet.
There has never been any sensation like this throbbing, not that she can remember — not even when she was thirteen and had her first sex . . but that discomfort had not been this agony.
This terrible surrender.
Her hand on her breasts registers flesh that is no longer familiar.
Oh God please, she thinks. 'Please, just let my babies be okay and I will....'
it feels as if she's swallowed a... hot stone—
She can see her ex-husband's shadow, as twisted and elongated as a nightmare.
Suddenly a thought! And that is: calling the police! Taking the photo from here and calling the police, demanding that they re-open the investigation.
Ridiculous, of course — the boy detective was far more capable than the police, he could and would bring back her children.
Then the boy appeared, dripping on the immaculate, polished floors wrapped in a very plush towel. “well, Miss, what is your decision?” he asks, a bit to direly for her.
She wants to delay... "..."
“WELL?” he demands with a raised eybrow.
Just that faint irritation in his voice is enough to renew her terror and fill her mouth with a iron taste. Who would cross him, contradict him? Oh, who would be so foolish as to do that? Only someone who didn't know him, of course —
“Of course I will say yes to you, young man, do you think I'm an idiot?”
Her attention shifts – up her skirt – and up her long, smooth thigh to the now soaked, now hot cotton fabric of her tight, white panties.
'Please', she thinks.
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