Son of the Morning

Don’t borrow trouble.she told herself as she gathered her possessions and inched out from under the car. She had enough problems without worrying about something that hadn’t happened.

She hoped that while she had slept, enough time had lapsed that her two pursuers had given up hope of spotting her in this area. She didn’t dare stay any longer; she had to risk being seen. But the night was darker now as fewer cars were on the street, houses had darkened, stores had closed.

She was stiff from the cold and her cramped position under the car. She moved slowly, staying in a crouch to keep out of sight behind the parked cars. But finally there were no more cars, only a naked expanse of parking lot. She moved fast, then, almost running as she scuttled along the edge of the pavement, the duffel banging against her left hip and her food supply bouncing against her right. As soon as she cleared the fence she swerved into deeper shadows, and was swallowed by the night.

Chapter 6

GRACE BROKE INTO A HOUSE. She had chosen a hiding place well before dawn, in a lower-middle-class neighborhood where there weren’t likely to be security systems, only nosy neighbors. She had watched the houses, picking out the ones that didn’t have toys, bicycles, or swing sets in the yards. She wanted a house without children, a house where both husband and wife worked and no one was at home during the day. Children would complicate the issue; they got sick at inconvenient times and disrupted schedules.

The darkness had barely begun to lessen when the houses began coming alive, windows brightening with lights, the muted sounds of radios and televisions seeping through the walls. The scents of coffee and bacon teased her. She didn’t know what day it was, weekday or weekend, if children would be going to school or playing in the yards and street all day. She prayed for a weekday.

People began leaving, the exhaust of cars and pickup trucks leaving plumes behind in the chill morning air.

Carefully Grace took note of how many people left each house.

Finally she selected her target. The husband left first, and about twenty minutes later the wife drove off with a clatter of lifters marking her progress.

Still Grace waited, and her prayers were answered. Children began appearing, carrying books and backpacks, their voices loud with a shrill giddiness induced by the approaching summer vacation. These past few days of chilly weather hadn’t cooled their enthusiasm. Soon school would be out, the weather would be warm, and a long summer stretched before them. Grace envied them the simplicity of their joy.

The bus arrived, the street emptied. Silence ruled the neighborhood again, except for the occasional departure of a few whose workdays didn’t start until at leasteight o’clock .

Now was the time, when the street was mostly empty but there was still enough customary noise in the neighborhood that people were less likely to notice the little extra noise made by the breaking of glass.

Grace slipped around to the back of her targeted house, concealed by the neatly clipped hedgerow that separated the property from its neighbors.

As she’d hoped, the upper half of the back door was glass panes. Someone was still home in the house on the left, but the curtains were drawn so no one from that side was likely to see her. The house on the right was a ‘fifties-style ranch, with a longer length but shallower depth than this one; anyone looking out a window wouldn’t be able to see the back of this house.

Hoping for an easy way in, she looked around for a convenient place to hide a key. There weren’t any flowerpots, and the doormat yielded nothing. Breaking the glass was more difficult than she’d expected. Television and the movies made it look so easy, panes shattering at a tap from a pistol or a blow from an elbow. It didn’t work that way in real life. After bruising her elbow, she looked around for a harder weapon, but the yard was neatly kept and no handy rocks were left lying around. There were bricks, however, carefully laid to form the border of a flower bed.

With the red sweater held over the glass to muffle the noise, Grace pounded the brick against the pane until it shattered. After replacing the brick, she took a deep breath, then reached in and unlocked the door. It took every nerve she had. Walking into that strange, silent house shook her. When she put her foot over that threshold, she officially became guilty of breaking and entering, she who had always been so conscientious that she’d actually obeyed the speed limit.

She wasn’t there to steal anything, except hot water and a little electricity. The close call in the grocery store had made it imperative that she begin blending in with the population, and also work up some disguises. She could no longer look homeless; she had to look… homogeneous. Blend inor die.

Her heart pounded as she stripped out of her filthy clothes and put them in the unknown lady’s washing machine. What if she had miscalculated, what if either the ladyor her husbandhadn’t left for the day, hadn’t gone to jobs, but instead one of them was just on an errand and would return any minute? At the very least the cops would be called, if a strange woman was found naked, and showering, in their house.

But she hadn’t dared try to rent a motel room, assuming no one would let her take a room the way she looked and smelled, even if she paid cash. And perhaps Parrish’s men were checking motels; a clerk would definitely remember her. Just this once she needed to take a bath and wash her clothes where she couldn’t be seen, where no one would notice her, and after this she would look more respectable. She would be able to go into alaundromat and wash her clothes, to go into stores and buy the things she needed to disguise her appearance, to lose herself in the immense sea of respectability.

She should have hurried through the shower. She knew she should, but she didn’t. She stood under the spray of water, feeling the grit wash off her skin, feeling her greasy hair soak up the moisture. She shampooed twice, and scrubbed herself until her skin was bright pink allover, and still she didn’t want to get out of the shower. She stood there even when the hot water began to go and the spray grew chilly. She didn’t turn off the water until it was so cold she’d begun shivering, and she did so then only because she’d been cold for three days and she was tired of it.