31. The Verdict
He stepped into the kitchen and looked at them, bouncing the passkey a few inches up off his left hand, making the chain on the white metal tongue jingle, then catching it again. Danny was pallid and worn out. Wendy had been crying, he saw; her eyes were red and darkly circled. He felt a sudden burst of gladness at this. He wasn't suffering alone, that was sure.
They looked at him without speaking.
"Nothing there," he said, astounded by the heartiness of his voice. "Not a thing."
He bounced the passkey up and down, up and down, smiling reassuringly at them, watching the relief spread over their faces, and thought he had never in his life wanted a drink so badly as he did right now.
32. The Bedroom
Late that afternoon Jack got a cot from the first-floor storage room and put it in the corner of their bedroom. Wendy had expected that the boy would be half the night getting to sleep, but Danny was nodding before "The Waltons" was half over, and fifteen minutes after they had tucked biro in he was far down in sleep, moveless, one band tucked under his cheek. Wendy sat watching him, holding her place in a fat paperback copy of Cashelmara with one finger. Jack sat at his desk, looking at his play.
"Oh shit," Jack said.
Wendy looked up from her contemplation of Danny. "What?"
"Nothing."