Part 16 (1/2)

Davey's eyes were open and he was staring at them with squinted eyes and a frown.

”Where are your parents?” she said.

”It's complicated,” he said again, as though that explained everything. ”This is my secret. No one else knows it.”

Edward-Frederick-George tottered over to them with an armload of toy cars, which he mutely offered to Marci, smiling a drooly smile. Alan patted him on the head and knelt down. ”I don't think Marci wants to play cars, okay?” Ed nodded solemnly and went back to the edge of the pool and began running his cars through the nearly scalding water.

Marci reached out a hand ahead of her into the weak light, looked at the crazy shadows it cast on the distant walls. ”How can you live here? It's a cave, Alan. How can you live in a cave?”

”You get used to it,” Alan said. ”I can't explain it all, and the parts that I can explain, you wouldn't believe. But you've been to my home now, Marci. I've shown you where I live.”

Davey approached them, a beatific smile on his angelic face.

”This is my brother, Daniel,” Alan said. ”The one I told you about.”

”You're his s.l.u.t,” Davey said. He was still smiling. ”Do you touch his peter?”

Alan flinched, suppressing a desire to smack Davey, but Marci just knelt down and looked him in the eye. ”Nope,” she said. ”Are you always this horrible to strangers?”

”Yes!” Davey said, cheerfully. ”I hate you, and I hate *him*,” he c.o.c.ked his head Alanward. ”And you're all *motherf.u.c.kers.*”

”But we're not wee horrible s.h.i.+ts, Danny,” she said. ”We're not filthy-mouthed brats who can't keep a civil tongue.”

Davey snapped his head back and then forward, trying to get her in the bridge of the nose, a favorite tactic of his, but she was too fast for him and ducked it, so that he stumbled and fell to his knees.

”Your mother's going to be very cross when she finds out how you've been acting. You'll be lucky if you get any Christmas pressies,” she said as he struggled to his feet.

He swung a punch at her groin, and she caught his wrist and then hoisted him to his tiptoes by his arm, then lifted him off the floor, bringing his face up level with hers. ”Stop it,” she said. ”*Now*.”

He fell silent and narrowed his eyes as he dangled there, thinking about this. Then he spat in her face. Marci shook her head slowly as the gob of spit slid down her eyebrow and over her cheek, then she spat back, nailing him square on the tip of his nose. She set him down and wiped her face with a glove.

Davey started toward her, and she lifted a hand and he flinched back and then ran behind their mother, hiding in her tangle of wires and hoses. Marci gave the flashlight a series of hard cranks that splashed light across the was.h.i.+ng machine and then turned to Alan.

”That's your brother?”

Alan nodded.

”Well, I see why you didn't want me to come home with you, then.”

Kurt was properly appreciative of Alan's bookcases and trophies, ran his fingertips over the wood, willingly accepted some iced mint tea sweetened with honey, and used a coaster without having to be asked.

”A was.h.i.+ng machine and a mountain,” he said.

”Yes,” Alan said. ”He kept a roof over our heads and she kept our clothes clean.”

”You've told that joke before, right?” Kurt's foot was bouncing, which made the chains on his pants and jacket jangle.

”And now Davey's after us,” Alan said. ”I don't know why it's now. I don't know why Davey does *anything*. But he always hated me most of all.”