“At their training facility,” Theo said.
Nodding, Auggie said, “Or at their parents’ house. Flip a coin?”
“No need. Jesus, you remember what those people are like. Ma and Pa Reese made museums out of those bedrooms. And Chris said something about the boys in the family, how they still liked to sneak up to their rooms.” In a rush, Theo added, “She was talking about Orlando too, Auggie.”
Auggie just nodded again. “Ok. Let’s go burgle my friend’s house.”
15
Theo objected to every part of the plan.
At first, Auggie tried to explain to Theo that the food and the medicine had helped. His head was much better. Then, when it became clear that Theo wasn’t listening, Auggie tried to explain that it was his decision, and Theo had no say in it. When that didn’t work—Theo started shoving his hair behind his ears, the movement agitated and repetitive, and parroting back phrases from Auggie—Auggie settled for ignoring him. He requested an Uber, and they rode out to the Reeses’ country-farm illusion of domestic bliss.
The January day was almost over. Behind a thick windbreak of cedars, the sun was fat and golden as it slipped behind the horizon. The light made the world look like it had been painted two-tone, with shadows and gold-leaf: the needles on the cedars, the fescue blades, a sagging split-rail fence, the culvert in the runoff ditch. More important things too: Theo’s face in profile, his cheek, his nose, his eye, strawberry-blond hair catching fire. His shirt and coat hung askew, exposing inches of collarbone and a hint of one powerfully defined shoulder. With his gaze fixed somewhere outside the Uber, he looked relaxed. Sometimes, when he talked about Shakespeare, when he forgot all the rules he’d made for himself and doled out fragments of his life with Ian and Lana, he looked like this, suffused with light that had nothing to do with sunset. Then Theo turned, gold and shadow warping across his face, and he just looked tired.
When the Uber dropped them off, Theo said, “I think I should be the one to search. Before you tell me that I’m treating you like a child—”
“Ok.”
“What? I mean—what?”
“Ok,” Auggie said. Wind snapped the cedar branches and rustled the grass, and he hugged himself. “I’m more charming, and you’re basically the equivalent of a professional home intruder. When it comes to searching, I mean.”
Theo blinked. “I’m sorry, run that by me again.”
“Hurry up; we look weird just standing out here.”
On the porch, Auggie knocked. The wind kicked up again, howling through the trees, snaking between his legs. He rocked back and forth and knocked again. “How do people live here their whole lives without their feet freezing off?”
“We wear socks,” Theo said. “For starters. Real socks. Not those paper-thin things you’re wearing. And you could try a pair of boots.”
Auggie made a face. “Next thing you’re going to make me wear overalls.”
Sighing, Theo leaned past him to pound on the door.
When a couple more minutes had passed and still no one had answered, Auggie looked at Theo and raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s take a very careful look around outside first,” Theo said.
“In case they have a home security system,” Auggie said.
“Exactly.”
“You’re so smart.”
Shaking his head, Theo went down the porch stairs.
“It’s all that age,” Auggie said, following. “The distilled essence of experience. Your vast expertise concentrated on this particular problem.”
“Now would be a good time for quiet.”
“Does Cart know about your criminal predilections?”
“Hit the brakes with the SAT words, Auggie.”
“Does he have any idea that you’re a nefarious older man initiating a tyro into the mysteries of felonious larceny?”
Theo stopped, put his hands on his hips, and looked up at the sky—a nice sky, Auggie thought, purple bleeding to black, a breath of cirrus clouds in the west. “I hate people,” Theo announced. “All of them, more or less. But God, I really, really hate undergrads.”
Auggie stumbled. “Oh shit, my head.”
In less than a heartbeat, Theo was there, catching him. He had one arm around Auggie’s waist. The other had caught Auggie by the shoulder. Their legs slotted together, and Theo bent at the waist to compensate for Auggie’s weight.
“Oops,” Auggie said. “Never mind.”
But with the heat of Theo’s thigh between his legs, the joke was too thin. Some of Theo’s hair had swung in front of his face, and it hung there now, trembling when the wind picked up, flattened one moment against his high cheekbones and then whipped back when an eddy changed direction.
“Must have been a mini-stroke,” Auggie whispered. He was painfully aware of his hand on Theo’s arm, the corded muscle under the thick coat. “I’m fine now.”
Theo held him a moment longer, pupils dilated, and then they disentangled themselves. Neither of them spoke again while they circled the house.
When they ended on the back porch, Auggie said, “Nobody’s home, and I didn’t see a security sticker. We might as well try.”
Theo nodded. He squatted, rocked a planter onto its side, and then let it fall back into place.
“Can’t you just pick the lock?” Auggie asked.
“Why bother? They’ve got six kids who lived here as teenagers. They’ve got a key hidden somewhere.”
“They might have removed it after the kids grew up.”
“They didn’t.”
Auggie glanced around the porch: Adirondack chairs, terracotta planters, a welcome mat.
“Are you just going to stand there thinking up your next way to make me look stupid?” Theo said as he kicked back the welcome mat. “Or do you want to help?”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
Theo moved away, lifting one of the Adirondack chairs, shaking it, and then dropping it. It sounded like a gunshot when it hit the boards. He moved on to the next one.
Sighing, Auggie rubbed his temple—the headache really was coming back—and began to search along the porch in the opposite direction. He checked the planters, even digging into the frozen soil a few inches. He checked the Adirondack chairs in the same way as Theo, although less forcefully. Then he started on the window frames, dragging one of the chairs with him so he could reach. Theo, he noticed, could conduct his search simply by stretching up.
Auggie was climbing down when he spotted the key. A piece of molding stuck out at an angle from the base of one of the porch columns. Brass glinted. Auggie knelt, worked the molding back and forth until it came loose, and retrieved the key.
“Got it.”
Theo just grunted. After unlocking the door, Auggie returned the key to its hiding place, and they went inside. The house smelled like rising bread, and Auggie guessed that Ma Reese was preparing something delicious for Sunday dinner. A few lights were on, scattered throughout the house, but the only noises were the slosh and whir of the dishwasher. A cuckoo clock broke the quiet.