Chapter Text
He debated internally, an extended pause on his end of the line, but it was only a short debate.
Matt Matalin wasn't a bartender – he was a documentary filmmaker – but he did pour drinks behind the bar at Lou's in Baychester five days a week for wages and tips, and he would not be able to make his rent if Lou's was closed indefinitely during the stay-at-home order. “You're not fired,” Lou had told him. “But you can't work and I can't pay you.”
“Fire me, please,” Matt had begged.
The unemployment benefits weren't quite arranged yet – between the website crashing, dozens of calls, and hours on hold, it would have to wait for another day – and he didn't think it would be enough to cover his bills anyway, particularly his film school loans and the payments on the expensive camera and editing laptop he had - perhaps prematurely – purchased all on his own. He actually made pretty good money tending bar – at least in a global context, if not necessary a New York City one - but he had a lot of expenses, including the ridiculously high rent on his dingy, cramped apartment in a truly frightening part of town.
And no savings.
And then his mom, his dear, sweet mom, had come in on a floating cloud like an angel, inviting him to give up his apartment and move back home to his parents' house for the quarantine. “It could last for months, honey.” She had been trying to get him to move back to their home town for years, but she was really starting to make sense this time. It would be so easy...
Including undergrad, he had been in the city for eight years trying to make his dream come true – every day of it a struggle. Film school, film festivals, slaving away in shit-pay or no-pay intern jobs for middle-name assholes in the business, late nights with red eyes shifting through footage and editing other people's projects, and rejection rejection rejection. God, he wanted a break. He wanted a sunny neighborhood in a suburb with a dog, a kitchen big enough to waltz in, and his mom's french toast with whipped cream and blueberries on the side.
The thing was, everyone told him not to do it - the city, filmmaking. Everyone told him it was too hard, a waste of time, a pipe dream. Was he prepared to prove them all right? He had nothing to show for his years of dreaming...except bills. He hadn't always had a dingy, cramped apartment to himself – his old roommate, after ten years of failing to make a career doing stand-up, had given up and moved back to Missouri. Was Matt going to be just another one biting the dust? Run home to Mommy.
No, at this point he didn't care about his pride. He was going. He would take a loss canceling his apartment lease early but it would be worth it in the long run. Did he even really have a choice?
Yeah, a short debate.
Only one or two niggling issues: “Are you sure, Mom? Really sure? I might have it, you know? I don't want to make you and Dad sick.” The thought of every time he had been on the subway in the past two weeks made him cringe. New York City had 15,000 confirmed cases, 5% of all the cases in the entire world.
“Don't worry about that. I'm sure you've been as careful as you could.” And then his mom said the thing that, in spite of himself, clinched the deal - the thing that should have sent him running in the opposite direction, but didn't: “Your sister's coming too.”
Kit...
Kit lived in the city too but they hardly saw each other. She worked at the front desk at one of the fancy Manhattan hotels – the Raddington - which meant she would also be out of work. As a pretty redhead she probably made a fortune in tips, but Kit liked the finer things in life: it wouldn't surprise Matt if she didn't have much to fall back on. “What about Brock?” Matt asked with a grimace.
“They broke up.”
Was that birdsong he heard? “They did?”
Kit had been dating Brock – who was exactly as much of a Brock as his name implied - for three years, and they had been living together for at least one. The moderately older Brock had some kind of job in finance – Matt had never been able to retain the details; he was probably able to keep working from his costly uptown apartment. He and Kit wouldn't have been fighting about money, then - it must have been something else. Matt hated the guy, but Matt probably would have hated anyone Kit dated. He should have felt sorry for her, but he was pleased, like she should have learned some kind of lesson from it. What lesson, though? Don't date anyone? That'll teach her.
“Get out the griddle,” he told his mom. “I'm coming home.”
Matt gave his landlord notice, and after bothering a few restaurants on the street below for boxes, started packing right away. He had lived in this apartment for three years, but he didn't have much to pack because he had never had enough room to amass anything. Everything that was really important to him he had left behind at his parents'; no matter how long he lived in the city, going back there always felt like returning to his real home. Kit had always accused him of going off to the big city to play 'pretend' big movie man. Maybe she was right. He didn't have much but it still took all of Saturday and the better part of Sunday morning to get it ready. The furniture was a little more complicated to deal with. In the end he paid the landlord a mighty extra to have some of the larger items taken care of later, and threw away some of the smaller stuff. It was all cheap junk anyway. Perhaps tellingly, had never invested in anything that was meant to last.
Now, how the hell was he going to get himself and all this junk to Sheffield? And then, as if the question had been heard on the other side of town, his phone rang.
Kit.
Kit calling. She never called.
He answered, and she didn't say anything in the way of greeting even though they hadn't spoken in months, she just got down to business: “Do you want to drive together? I've had to rent a U-Haul.”
“Uh, yeah, sure. That would be great. Is there going to be enough room for my stuff or do we need to make two trips?”
“Do you have stuff?”
He let out a slightly offended laugh. “Yes.”
“There should be room. Can you be ready in an hour?”
“I might need two.”
Kit let out a loud sigh. “All right.” And then she hung up.
///
She texted him later, asking him to pick up the truck she had booked and then bring it to her apartment. The traffic was light coming from the rental agency but parking on Kit's street was impossible because everyone was home, and a lot of these people were rich enough to actually keep cars. He gritted his teeth and double-parked, frantically messaging Kit to move her ass.
Matt and Kit were only a year apart, so they should have been close, but they weren't. They didn't have very much in common: Kit liked parties, Matt liked movies. Kit liked beauty, Matt liked food. Kit liked buying things, Matt hated consumerism, and he liked hating it. They got along all right, they rarely argued. In fact they had never had any of those ugly sibling fights growing up – to the point that their aunt had once called it 'freaky'; but given Matt's maniac cousins, he didn't trust her opinion. They bickered a little sometimes, of course, but they didn't get angry. Coexisting in harmony was great and all, but they did little more than coexist: they hadn't really 'played' together or hung out since they were little. Kit always seemed to have something better to do, and Matt had never had the courage of vulnerability to tell her that he just wanted to spend time with her.
It had been eight years since they had lived together, since he had seen her every day. And they had never been friends. But it didn't matter: he still really missed her. Maybe that's about to change, he thought hopefully, watching her as she came out to meet him, a large box in her arms dwarfing her tiny frame. In terms of spending time together, she wouldn't have much of a choice. “How many more?” he asked, opening the back doors of the truck.
“Only 19. And a table."
“Christ!” Kit gave an adorable little shrug after setting down the box, and he probably would have carried a hundred of them for her. “You're buying me pizza.”
Once she was free of her cargo he could see she had dressed up for moving day, apparently wanting to give Brock one last taste of what he was about to lose. Her long hair was loosely curled into waves with a third of it pulled back into twists, her green eyes were accentuated with mascara and a dramatic application of eye shadow, and she was dressed in a wildly impractical sundress with wedge heels that probably brought her up to 5'5. God, she was a real knockout. “Aren't you cold?” he remarked as they took the elevator up to the 10th floor.
“Shut up, George." His middle name. She loved to call him that when she was mildly annoyed.
Kit flung open the door of her apartment commandingly, with a dramatic flourish. Inside, Brock had tried to make himself scarce: he was in the bedroom with the door shut, 'working'. There was a very embarrassed woman at the kitchen table on her laptop, determinedly typing.
Matt had only been there once before – he looked around, satisfied it was no longer the place where Kit lived. It had never looked like a home, it looked like a movie set or a magazine photo. Everything was either black, white, or silver and he couldn't name the purpose, origin, or appeal of most of the items on the shelves. The art wasn't bad, but Matt didn't doubt for a second that someone else had told Brock what to buy and why he should like it. As for the rack of books, they were probably cardboard.
“I probably shouldn't come in,” Matt said. “I'm not even wearing a mask.”
“No need to worry about that. I hope you make them sick!” she shouted cheerfully, certainly loud enough for Brock to hear it through his door.
“Kit,” Matt said quietly, amused but conflicted, “they could pass it on.”
“Like to their mothers? Good: I hope they die!” Kit turned to the other woman, who, though she had AirPods in and was pretending like she couldn't, could certainly hear her: “Do you hear that, Jeannette? I hope your mother dies!”
He put a calming hand on Kit's shoulder; apparently this had not been a mutual break-up. “Who is that?” he asked with a whisper.
Kit did not keep her voice low: “Oh that? That's Jeannette, Brock's 'colleague'. Brock decided if he was going to be confined to his apartment for a month he would rather spend it with Jeannette than with his girlfriend of more than three years who already lives with him.”
Matt felt a flare of fury: What the actual fuck? “Is that right?” he demanded, marching towards Brock's closed door to give him an earful. Finally he could lay into someone who had pissed him off without risking his job for it. Hell, he didn't even have a job anymore.
But Kit caught his arm and pulled him back. “You don't have to do that.”
“Oh, I want to, believe me,” he assured her, beginning to move again. He might even punch him. He had never punched anyone before but this might be the day for it.
She smiled sweetly, hugging his arm to hold him back again. “It's not worth it. It's his loss.”
“Yeah, it is,” he told her, looking her intently in the eyes. Flattered, Kit popped up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. She was being demonstrative for Jeannette's sake – Kit had never once kissed him on the cheek before – but he really didn't mind.
Matt didn't understand how someone could cheat on Kit. Brock had Kit at home and had somehow fallen for this anemic-looking bimbo? Jeannette - who was aggressively ignoring all of this - had mousy hair, weirdly prominent cheek bones, and eyes that were way too far apart. She was nothing compared to Kit. And judging by this situation, she was uglier on the inside too. Kit was everything - smart, funny, beautiful. You had to be a real fucking idiot to go looking for something else.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jeannette was appraising him in return. She wouldn't be impressed either – Matt had dull brown hair that he usually trimmed quite short for practical reasons, and he dressed very plainly in unstyled jeans and loose t-shirts or gray pullovers. He was clean-shaven – there was nothing to hide nor anything to show off. Just a very boring face with eyebrows that were maybe a little too thick, decent bones, and a nose that thankfully didn't make a spectacle of itself. He had never been too disappointed by what he saw in the mirror – there would always be someone who was more handsome, he didn't let it bother him.
Kit pulled him over to the stack of boxes and bins by the door. Crowning the pile was a gold cage and Kit's turquoise and black-and-white-striped budgie parakeet, Kiki, who let out some alarmed clicky chirps.
Concerned about his parking situation, Matt tried carrying two boxes the first time, but it didn't go very well and he really hoped there was nothing breakable in either of them or else he would be hearing about it later. He asked at the desk if they had a dolly or hand truck, but they didn't – probably because everyone who lived in this building always hired out everything they needed done. An elevator was a lot better than stairs like at his place but it was still tedious and slow. Up and down, up and down. Nine trips total, each one fraught with the stress of not knowing if a meter maid was going to come along and give him a ticket.
On the last trip, Kit strolled into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and dumped all of the milk down the drain while a wide-eyed and disbelieving Jeannette watched on in horror. There were a handful of eggs and she smashed them all in the sink. Then she took the loaf of bread off the counter, went over to the balcony, opened the door, and chucked it down to the street. On the way out, with a smile on her face, she grabbed the bananas. “Have fun at the grocery store, shitsacks!”
///
“I'm sorry about Brock,” Matt ventured timidly as they crossed town to his apartment. “Especially about how it went down. It really is, you know. His loss, I mean.”
Matt couldn't claim to have been insightful about Brock – he hadn't liked him, but he never would have thought him capable of something like this. Matt's main gripe with Brock – beyond not wanting him or anyone else doing God knows what to his sister – was that Brock thought himself a very big man, but Matt knew he lived in a very small, very selfish world.
Kit, munching on a banana, sighed. “I was bored with him. I already knew he wasn't 'the one'. It's just my pride that's hurt, you know? And I can't believe I wasted three of my best years on that asshole.”
“You're only 25. You've got a lot of best years left.”
“We used to have so much fun... But now I'm starting to think that maybe we didn't have that much fun together, maybe I was just drunk for most of it. I don't think he was fun at all – I think I was fun. I can't believe I never noticed.”
“Well, he had money, so I'm sure a lot of it was fun, and wasn't a waste. Didn't he take you to the Maldives?"
“I'm surprised to hear you saying that.” She laughed. “Yeah, I guess if I think of myself as a whore instead of a girl looking for love, it was pretty successful. It was cheaper than being single, that's for sure.”
“There you go. And more of a mistress or a 'kept woman', you know? It's not like you were entertaining five johns a night. Or maybe you were – I'm not judging. I know those Louboutins are expensive.”
Kit playfully hit his arm. “'Kept woman',” she repeated with amusement. “Matt, only you would even know that phrase.” She turned her head and quirked a smile at him. “Thanks for being...gallant.”
“Well, I know you didn't need me to stand up for you. I was just so mad.”
“Maybe I didn't need it, but...it was nice.” She angrily bit her lip. “It kinda made me realize that Brock isn't worth his weight in toilet paper, because he's never made me feel supported like that. I don't think I ever saw him for what he really was. I feel so stupid, that's the worst part.”
“You're not stupid – he's stupid.” Matt laughed: “You should have taken all the toilet paper.”
Kit winked at him. “Why do you think I had so many boxes? And I took all the booze too.”
As if Kiki understood, she let out a string of emphatic chirrups.
Kit was one of a kind. She wasn't the most beautiful, or the most brilliant, and she definitely wasn't the sweetest, but she was more herself than anyone Matt had ever met. There was no one else like Kit. She had always frolicked through the world, sure-footed and confident. This was one of the first times he had ever heard her express regret about life choices she had made or question the things she had chosen to value. It was kind of reassuring to learn that maybe even Kit didn't have it all quite figured out yet.
///
He couldn't believe his luck – he pulled right up to a space in front of his apartment. Parallel parking the large truck was an adventure, one he hoped never to repeat, but he managed it - eventually. One wheel on the curb was still legal, right? Kit had never been to his apartment before, and he didn't really want her to see it: “Stay with the truck, OK?”
Her eyes were wide. “Matt, I'm scared.” It was starting to get dark and there were some sirens in the distance. “What's your meth-addict-per-capita ratio on this block?”
“Uh, competitive. Don't worry - it'll be fine. Dodgy will keep an eye on you.” Matt pointed to a homeless man sitting against the side of the brick steps of his building. “Hey, Dodge!”
Dodgy waved back. “Hi, pretty lady.”
“This is my sister, Kit. I'll give you $40 if we don't get robbed.”
“You got it,” Dodgy agreed.
“I was going to give him a farewell $40 anyway,” he admitted to Kit in a low voice. Matt sighed: “He's my best friend.”
She had gripped his arm and was digging her fingernails in. “Matt!”
“He's a good guy! Useful, too.” Matt lifted his gaze away from her. “Show her what you've got, Dodge!” The man proudly lifted up a jagged broken bottle, a savage glint in his smile. Matt laughed, shaking his head: “He's bonkers with that bottle.”
“You know that 'dodgy' literally means 'can't be trusted', right?” she pointed out.
“Oh, they just call him that because he's good at hiding.”
“Why does a grown man need to hide?”
Matt had fewer boxes than Kit but he had to go slowly with his equipment so that it wouldn't be damaged. It was a tight squeeze but it all fit. Kit opened the flap of his last box to go in and lifted up a book with a yellow cover. “Midnight In Chernobyl,” she read. “Christ, Matt. Is this your idea of a good time?” After paying Dodgy, wishing him the best, and saying a brief farewell to his crappy apartment, they were on their way, headed upstate.
Kit made him drive, and he told her that meant he got to pick the music, and she begrudgingly agreed. She liked whatever was on the radio, whoever the big names were at the time. He put on something particularly obscure to annoy her – the alternative alternative station, the one that played the songs that were a little too alternative for the alternative station. She made silent faces of protest at him, and he turned it up a little though even he could barely stand the first song that came on.
Their parents' house was about 50 minutes away without traffic, and considerably longer most of the time. There was no countryside that separated Sheffield from the big city – it was part of the greater metropolitan area, technically – but it was more of a suburb to the big suburbs than a proper suburb of its own. A sub-suburb. Their parents lived in a moderately upscale neighborhood with lots of trees, big yards, and wide roads. Most of the houses were built in the 70s and 80s and had designs unique from each other. Their mother, who had old-fashioned tastes, had chosen a white colonial-style house (with lots of columns, dormer windows, and shutters) – and had named her children Katherine Amelia and Matthew George.
“So, did the hotel lay you off, or are you furloughed?” he asked.
“Furloughed. They laid off the cleaning staff and the restaurant and room service staff but kept a few of us others. They could never fire me – I'm the one they send in to bat my eyelashes when an older gentleman is unhappy.”
“Are they paying you?”
“They forced all my vacation and sick days on me. Depending upon how long the shut-down lasts, they're going to give us weekly stipends, which they are calling 'compassion pay'. As you can imagine, it's only a fraction of what I would normally make. Real fucking compassionate.”
“You'd think the owner could sell one of his yachts or something.”
“Right?”
“Or maybe just lease it. Do you even want to go back to work there?”
“I don't see why not.” For a girl with almost no ambitions, Kit had always been extremely successful. Her job at Raddington reception was one most people would probably happily do until retirement.
“Well I don't want my job back at Lou's. I hated it.”
“You made good money, didn't you?” Kit, more than anyone, had told him not to pursue filmmaking.
“Some things are more important than money.” Kit looked skeptical. “And it wasn't that much.”
///
They picked up a pizza in the last strip of civilization before the endless blocks of residences in their parents' neighborhood. Matt narrowly avoided the mailbox while backing into the driveway, pretty proud of the way he had handled the truck all day but not in a hurry to ever have to do it again. It was 8:45 PM, a little past Cuomo's deadline but not too bad considering all they had had to get done that day.
Their house – a three-floor picturesque thing sitting in a large, well-maintained lawn entirely shaded by enormous oaks – was on the 5000 block of Beacon Street, and looked like heaven. It was Sunday evening, after dark, and the street was quiet.
So. quiet.
Both their parents came outside to greet them. Matt dropped into the cold, wet grass on his back and let Bode crawl on top of him and lick his face. The hardest part about moving out had been leaving Bode behind. The family had adopted him as a puppy, just as soon as he was old enough to leave his mother; he was 14 now - fat, gray, a little stiffer and a little slower, but still the best dog that had ever lived.
“You still love me as much as before, right, boy?” he asked, sitting up and staring the dog in the eyes. Bode, a lab mix who had always had expressive ears, perked them up and then tilted his head, trying to understand. Matt wrapped his arms around him and hugged him.
“I even miss his farts,” Kit said, petting Bode's head from behind and scratching him underneath his collar.
“Maybe now that you're here he'll get walked,” their dad said.
“That was directed at me,” their mom replied good-humoredly. “But it's not my fault I prefer aerobics classes, and we both know you're the one who slips him bacon, Steve.”
“Enjoy your time with him, kids. He doesn't have a lot of days left,” their father said gravely.
“Poor pooch,” their mom said, then she turned to her daughter, palming her cheek. “Oh, honey.”
Kit made an instant crying face and fell dejectedly into her mother's arms. Matt watched Kit for a second in surprise, realizing she was more demoralized by the break-up than she had let on. Then his attention was distracted by a boy whizzing by on a bike that was several sizes too small for him. “Who was that?” It took him a moment to remember that he had been gone for the better part of a decade and a lot had changed. He used to know everyone in the neighborhood when he was a kid – especially which neighbors gave out the best candy at Halloween.
His mother, who was rubbing Kit's back, shook her head. “I don't know his name. They're not very social.”
“Where do they live?”
“That's the family right behind us,” his dad answered. “The Deans. There's one child – Joseph.”
“The Deans? What happened to the Ocampos?”
“Hmm, let me see, where did they go?” his mom pondered. “It must have three or four years ago now.”
“Daniel took a job in Georgia,” his dad informed him. “They sold the house in a hurry.” He cleared his throat delicately, indicating perhaps that the Deans wouldn't have been anyone's first choice under better circumstances, or perhaps that they wouldn't have been able to afford it except for having been lucky enough to find a motivated seller.
///
Matt's room wasn't quite as he had left it, but all the same furniture was still there. There was still the one blue wall, the gray blinds, his framed An Inconvenient Truth poster.
And a twin-sized bed. Sigh.
“You had might as well unpack,” his mom had said. And she was probably right. Instead of stashing his boxes in some corner of the house, he put his clothes into his old dresser, and tried to stuff everything else into his closet around his mom's sewing and crafting supplies. The camera was large enough that it had to go somewhere else; with some trepidation he put it into the basement. It felt like he was exiling it. (And he would be taking his life into his hands if there was a fire and he had to run down there and save it). Should he just go ahead and put the listing on Craigslist now? Would he ever, realistically, be using that camera again? The longer he waited, the more outdated it would become and the less it would sell for.
Setting up his laptop on his old desk was the thing that finally made him feel home again. He sat down in the desk chair, spun once, then took off his socks and tossed them into the laundry hamper. So this was it? The official beginning of...whatever the hell stage of his life this was.
He couldn't hate it too much: it did his soul good to see Bode, to relax under his parents' loving care, and with Kit across the hall...he actually felt happy. For a little while, she's mine again... Not that she ever really had been.
Never in a million years did he think he would get to live with Kit again.
Matt kept peering at his old book shelf. There was something on it that he wanted to look at, but he knew he shouldn't. The shelf was an eclectic collection – textbooks, fantasy, bent and worn paperback copies of his favorite novels. The odd dictionary and reference book. Some DVD box sets. He pretended like he wasn't sure where it was, that he had just left it tucked away in 'some book', but he knew. He knew which book, and how far in. He knew.
“Do you think you're sick?” Kit asked, standing in her door frame across the hall.
Matt almost jumped out of his skin. “Wh-what?”
He had left his door open hoping to see her again before bed – hers had been closed but was open now, and she had changed into her pajamas. He really hadn't thought he would ever seen his sister in her pajamas again – white flannel shorts with a red bird pattern and a white long-sleeved tee. Kit loved birds. Her wet hair after her shower was creating a trail of near-transparency down one side of her chest. She had washed all the makeup away. He hadn't seen her without makeup in years.
“Coronavirus,” she replied, lifting her brow to indicate its obviousness. “I wasn't paranoid about having it until I got here. I don't want to make Mom and Dad sick. I feel...city-dirty, even though I just showered. Plus Brock was cheating on me with Jeannette and God knows who else. I could have a whole array of viruses. I could be a walking Petri dish.”
Matt and Kit's parents were in their late 50's but they were in fine health – he didn't think they were particularly at risk for a serious case of the virus. “I'm sure Brock and Jeannette's set get that kind of thing taken care of right away. Plus she looked like the kind of woman who insists on a condom.”
“You can tell that about a woman from sight?”
“It's more like you can tell when it's a woman who wouldn't.” Kit rolled her eyes at him but Matt piped up to defend himself: “Don't look at me like that. I don't go for that kind of girl.”
Kit bit the corner of her lip and smiled affectionately at him. “I suppose I knew that.” Feeling the wetness, she wrung a few more drops out of her hair and then tossed it to her back. “You didn't leave anyone behind in the city?”
“No.”
She pursed her lips sympathetically. “Whenever I ask, you're never with anyone. You've never brought any dates to anything.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Why not?”
He gave a little shrug, resting his arms on his desk and looking back at her impassively. “I guess I'm picky.” Matt had had dates, had had girlfriends. ...On occasion.
Kit exhaled loudly. “Well, I suppose I could stand to be a little more picky.”
Matt thought that too, but he didn't dare say it.
///
In his dream, he seemed to understand what was going on: someone was shaking his arm. In between the dream and waking up, he was a lot more confused.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Matt!” He groaned and blinked his eyes open; Kit was standing over him, an apologetic look on her face. His blinds were open and the moon was bright, he could make her face out pretty well.
“What?”
“I'm sorry! It's just-I hear something outside. Like crying, maybe?”
“It's probably just the Findlays' cats.”
“It's not cats.”
Matt glanced at the clock – 12:30 AM. He and Kit had both been so tired from moving that they made an early night of it – he had already been sleeping for over an hour. Matt studied her face, debating whether or not to tell her that he really didn't care about some noise; instead he groaned with the effort of making his tired body move and swung his legs off the bed. “OK.”
He followed her into her room, which was even more untouched than his had been. His parents had been using it as a guest room, not that they had all that many guests. He figured his mom probably slept there more than anyone else – whenever their dad was snoring too much. Kit still had her pink canopy bed that she got on her eighth birthday and all the matching white furniture. It might have been flamboyantly childish, but at least it was a double, unlike his twin. Matt and Kit's bedrooms were both on the second floor: his bedroom was in the front of the house and his window faced the street; Kit was directly across the hall, and her window faced their backyard. She approached her window – the curtains and blinds were wide open and the window was cracked - and slid it open all the way. Then she went very still, putting her finger over her lips. He strained his ears, but heard nothing. “It could have been a lot of things,” he told her. “A whining dog, the TV.”
“I know,” she agreed.
“Were you scared, or just concerned?”
“It was a little freaky. Mostly concerned, though - it wasn't a happy sort of noise.” They listened again, but it was quiet. “I'm sorry I woke you.”
“It's OK. I'm glad you came to me.”
///