Quinn sat up in his sleeping bag, the pistol rising with him. There was a span of seconds in which the sounds coming from the living room were completely wrong; they shouldn’t be there in his house. But the prior night’s events came back to him, and he relaxed, wiping away the scratching sleep in his eyes.
He climbed free of the sleeping bag, his injuries protesting, but not near as loudly as the day before. The ankle was the sorest, and he rotated it clockwise then counterclockwise, standing on the other foot. It creaked and cracked, but there was very little impingement, and the joint didn’t seem to be damaged beyond a strain. After testing it with his weight once more and finding it was definitely better than yesterday, he moved down the hall.
Alice and Ty were both awake, Alice sitting at the far end of the couch from Ty, gently pinching his wriggling toes that poked from beneath the blanket as she recited a quiet rhyme. He laughed each time she gripped his feet, his face lighting with a smile that exposed his small, even teeth.
“Snapping turtle dives, under the pond, up he comes, and chomp, he’s gone. Little froggy says, where did he go? Fish swims past saying look out below.” Alice’s voice was soft and smooth as she sang the rhyme. She recited it once more beneath Ty’s giggles before she noticed Quinn standing in the doorway.
“Morning,” she said, turning toward him.
“Good morning.”
“Hi Quinn,” Ty said, still smiling and wiggling his toes.
“Hi. Are you guys playing a game?”
“An old rhyme,” Alice said, rising from the sofa.
“It’s Grandpa Fischer’s. He made it up,” Ty said.
“Yeah. Okay, Ty, get dressed now.”
Without protest, the little boy swung his legs free of the blanket and began to grope on the floor for his pair of jeans.
“They’re to your left,” Alice said. Ty adjusted his reach and snagged the pants and began to put them on.
“How did you sleep?” Quinn asked, moving toward the kitchen. Alice followed him, pausing in the doorway.
“Okay. I think I may’ve gotten a concussion yesterday. It felt like I was lying on a boat last night.”
“How do you feel this morning?”
“Better. A little weak, but that might be the vodka.”
Quinn poured two bottles of water into a pan and brought it to the fireplace. In a matter of minutes, he had the few leftover coals stoked into a blaze, the pan heating beside it.
“When that water’s hot, you can bring it to the bathroom down the hall and clean your forehead. There’s washcloths in the closet beside the door along with hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet.”
Alice blinked at him, her mouth opening and then shutting again. Her eyes roamed his face, and after a moment, he glanced away. No one had ever looked at him the way she did. Not unkind, but curious, probing. He was onstage and she the only audience.
“Sorry,” Alice said, noticing his discomfort. “I—”
“It’s okay. I know how I look.”
“It’s not that, I just—”
“I’ll find something for us to eat,” Quinn said, turning away. He rummaged in the food bag with his head down until Alice retreated from the room. After a few minutes, she passed on the way to the bathroom carrying the pan of water. Quinn cut four apples into sections and put them on plates, then opened a bag of chips, placing a handful beside the apples for each of them. He brought the food into the living room and found Ty sitting beside the glowing hearth.
“Are you hungry, Ty?”
“Yeah, really hungry.”
“Okay, here you go. There’s apple slices there along with some chips.”
Ty took the plate from his hands and lowered it to his lap.
“What kind of chips?”
“Salt and vinegar.”
“Oh, that’s my favorite.”
A smile tugged at Quinn’s lips. “Mine too.”
“Mom might be mad that I’m eating chips for breakfast,” Ty whispered.