SITTING ON A rock, surrounded by bushes, Emily and Kent can see through branches to the side of the Seal Rock Café. Inside, they can make out a man spooning something from a plate to his toddler.
“Was I that small?”
“Even smaller.” Emily squeezes her arm around Kent’s shoulder, taking advantage of the discomfort of the moment for physical intimacy, which her son seems less and less willing to allow.
He pulls in close.
“He got so mad at me,” Kent says.
Emily turns and looks at her son, noticing a tiny blemish of skin above his lip; she wonders if it might be an early sign of pre-adolescent hormones.
“About the puzzle,” Kent clarifies. She looks away from him, toward the street in front of the restaurant. A sedan pulls up to the stop sign but then rolls off.
“Jeremy doesn’t always know how to explain what he’s feeling. He thinks more than he feels.”
“Sometimes I wish I was little again, like that.”
“How come, sweetie?”
Kent swallows, doesn’t answer.
“Jeremy liked me better when I was little.”
“Don’t be absurd!” But the protest is too instant, aggressive. She pulls it back. “He’s adjusting. He’s trying to adjust.”
She frowns. She’s losing Kent at a key moment but it’s hard to explain, let alone understand, causing her to choose inaccessible words that lack precision, meaning.
They hear rustling in the bushes behind them. They turn, startled. Hear a voice: “Here, Binky. Here dog.”
The bush rustling gets closer. Mother and child turn around. In their little enclave of bushes stands a big-boned man with a frothy black beard and a heavy coat.
“Did you see a little dog?”
“No.” Emily instinctively recoils, begins to stand, pulling her son up with her.
“I’m sorry,” the man says, his thick accent nearly swallowing his words. But the tone sounds so sincere, out of place, that it pauses Emily.
Then she takes two steps backward with the boy. Watches with a feeling of inevitability as the man pulls a black metallic object from his jacket. A gun.
He says, quietly: “Don’t scream or I’ll kill him.”