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Toby arranged one-inch bowling pins in a perfect triangle, laid his head on the carpet, and closed one eye to look at them.
“You really like bowling, huh?” Peter clicked together the last sections of the HO scale railroad track and sat back to admire his accomplishment.
Track wound through clothes hills, made a loop around block and book towers, then ran under Toby’s bed.
“Go bowling again,” Toby whined but without the same intensity as when he hadn’t been bowling for a while. “Peter knock ‘em all down.” He rolled a little green ball toward the pins. The two on the end fell over.
“Yeah, that was fun. I didn’t think I wanted to go, but maybe Dad was right, and we needed to do something together as a family.” Peter crawled to the train. “I got a few strikes, didn’t I? You did good, too. You crack me up with your follow-through. I didn’t know you could hold a pose for so long. You reminded me of those guys in the bowling videos you watch over and over and over.”
Toby’s head bobbed up, his brown eyes turning to the TV.
“No, let’s not watch TV,” Peter said. “You’ve been begging to play trains and here it is.” He worked on getting the engine’s wheels on the track. “Aren’t you even going to look?”
Toby rolled the green ball toward the little pins that remained standing.
Peter attached the train cars and pushed the engine back and forth to get all the wheels lined up. “Come on. Aren’t you even interested? This was a lot of work.”
Having successfully placed the entire train on the track, Peter leaned against the bed and yawned. “You wouldn’t by chance be getting tired, would you?”
Still lying on his belly, Toby set the pins up again.
“Because, you know, we’ve been playing all night. First bowling, then casting off the front stoop, then a movie, a boring movie that you’ve seen a hundred times, but a movie none the less.” Peter’s head fell forward and his eyes closed. He could sleep right here. “Are you ready for bed?”
“No.”
So he was listening. “Let’s run the train around the track a few times and get some sleep.” He yawned again. Maybe he could sneak up to his own bed and let Toby conk out on his own. No. Bad idea.
The last time Toby was left to fall asleep on his own, Mom found him fishing in the kitchen sink and the floor flooded. Another time, he had removed all the light bulbs from the light fixtures and lined them up on his dresser. Then there was the night he left the house.
Toby rolled the little ball. “Knock ‘em all down!”
“Good job.” Peter cracked an eye open to see. “Now let’s run the train.”
Toby pushed himself up and wrapped his fingers around the remote for the train. The train came to life and lurched forward, chugging around the track.
“I’ll pick up a few things.” Peter stood and stretched. He gathered at least twenty pocket notebooks and a dozen loose crayons and went to shove them in a dresser drawer. When he pulled the dresser drawer open, his heart leaped.
“What’s this?”
Amidst the balls and playing cards, fishing lures and crafts from school, sat a box of assorted keys.
“You’ve got a key collection?” Peter rifled through them. “I can’t believe it.” His eyes grew wide as he dug. “Why didn’t I think of this? You love keys. You probably found my key in the laundry room. I bet you were fishing in the deep sink again. I should’ve guessed when I saw your fishing pole—”
In the bottom of the box, he found it. The key!
“Toby, this is unbelievable!” He slammed the drawer shut with his hip and dropped onto his knees by Toby. “My key! You found my key!”
Toby’s forehead wrinkled, and he grasped at it. “Toby’s key.”
Peter gave Toby a big smooch on the forehead. “Thanks, Toby. I owe you one.” He wrapped his fingers around the key and flopped down on the bed.
Toby giggled and returned his gaze to the train as it chugged under the bed. He lined his face up so the train would come right at him.
“You know what?” Peter hung his head off the bed. “You’re coming with us tomorrow. Yeah. Father Carston said this relic might-a come to me for a reason. And maybe that reason is you. You know what? I think God wants to heal you.”