I Wonder If I Care as Much

Chapter Twenty

He only tripped twice on his run to her house. Sherrie's last words of question were punctuating in his mind the farther he ran, her annoyed tone ringing in his ears. He couldn't stop to explain, as Travis could be back from the police station any minute. The night before, Travis had been called and informed of his and Hannah's current situation, and wasn't too happy when he arrived. Without a car of his own, he asked the friend he stayed with that night to drop him off and pick up the two in custody. Being as early as it was didn't lessen his dark mood when he found out his car had been stolen by two people he wasn't a huge fan of. Angus was kicked out of the car a block away from the house, and Travis and Hannah were let off at the gate. Travis' friend drove home through the dark, Angus forced to walk back to his hotel without a goodbye. Sherrie was asleep when he got there. He slept on the couch that night anyway.

The car had been kept at the station the whole morning for further investigation. Travis called to find out where it was and he practically threw the phone down when he was notified about the delay. Hannah kept to herself, staying in her room, and not bothering to join him for breakfast. Most of it was already gone anyway. Rather she stayed by her piano, pressing the keys to find new combinations of sound that didn't offend the ear.

Malcolm had been asleep when Angus rang him last night, another bottle empty. A glass of water had been filled and emptied more times than he bothered to count, and finally he allowed himself one small drink. The next morning he woke up hangover free, and considered checking on Angus to see if he was going to Hannah's place. When Sherrie reported Angus gone, and that he wouldn't be back for another several hours, Malcolm took to the streets and explored, getting out of his room for a while.

Getting out of his bad habit for a while.

Angus' jacket got stuck in the gate as he nearly knocked it down opening it. His fingers gripped the material and worked it around the metal but it wouldn't come out. Deciding he liked his jacket in one piece, he took it off and left it there to be fixed later. The garage was wide open and empty, Angus figuring the door to the house to be unlocked. He was right, and he closed it quietly behind him.

The house was a mess. Still attractive to the eye, but bits of clutter strewn about the floor and tables. Expired newspapers on the coffee table, articles of old laundry in the living room, and several dirty dishes in the sink. It hadn't been like this when he came to visit a few weeks ago, what had happened while he was away? Angus glanced at the newspapers and saw one headline: 'Military Loses One After Regulations Demolished.' He frowned. The picture was smeared at the corners with a giant hole right through the middle, the edges black and bent. A second pile of papers was beside it, columns of numbers jumping out at him. Angus picked one up.

One sheet had prices next to dates written on it, each day the prices higher and higher, crowded with negative signs. The other sheet had another list of numbers, this one going lower and lower, without any negatives. He set them back down and walked out of the living room to where the music was coming from.

Music? How long had that been playing?

A piano song came from the hallway, from the back rooms. On a normal day, he would wait to be invited down there, rather than take it upon himself to investigate. But this was not a normal day, and ordinary people did not live in this house.

He passed the first few rooms, then turned around. The second door, one whose access had not been granted before, was now open a slight way, and music seeped from the room within. Pushing the door open wider, he could not help but believe the owner was a rather busy beaver. It was not at all tidy, with works of art propped up by anything else in the room, and crumpled papers lying beside a filled waste basket. There the girl was, the girl he came to see. Her fingerprints textured the keys, stained with the pains of time, leaving a score of hills and valleys. She didn't see him, and he left the door open the same way he found it behind him.