Toby finally gets his hands in the butter and pulls it on to the floor. ‘Oops.’ He turns huge brown eyes up at Sam.
Moxie has a very satisfied look on her face. ‘Oh, how fun it is to serve penance.’
Sam cleans it. He flips pancakes. He even holds the baby for a terrifying nine seconds while Moxie finds some teething rusks in the pantry. The house is noisy with fans working overtime, butter crackling in the pan, and Toby staging a brief tantrum about wanting butter and jam on the same pancake but not on the same pancake.
They sit on the table, an impromptu midday picnic, and eat as many pancakes as they can hold. And Sam makes a fine pancake. They’re crisp around the edges and perfectly cooked inside. He’s been making them for ever, especially when he was nine and it was all Avery would eat without panicking.
Moxie tears a pancake in half. ‘So if you have an older brother … why doesn’t he take care of you?’
Sam feels a little sick. ‘Avery needs someone to take care of him.’
‘Ah.’ Moxie reaches over and wipes the baby’s mouth with the edge of her T-shirt. ‘And where do you sleep when you’re not creeping in my house?’
‘Anywhere. Other houses. They’re usually … empty.’
‘Where are you going tonight?’
It’s a trick question. He cycles through a million lies and half-truths and tries to block out the picture of the warm armchair in the office.
‘Probably the park,’ he says, and then quickly adds, ‘it’s a warm night so it’ll be nice.’
Moxie snorts. ‘Nice? Liar.’ She slides off the table, tugging a sticky baby after her. ‘I know you excel at dishes, so have at it. I’m putting the boys down for a nap.’
Toby looks up from where he’s fingerpainting in jam. ‘No!’
Moxie eyeballs him. ‘Oh yes, sir. And another bath.’
She hauls a kicking Toby and an overtired flailing baby upstairs and Sam tackles the dishes. He does feel bad for her. He obviously has the easier job here.
He wraps the remaining pancakes in plastic and hides them under the steps outside. For an easy grab and run.
Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful, Sam.
He doesn’t mind the dishes, with warm soapsuds up to his elbows, but he’s scared of finishing. Scared of leaving. He wipes every dish dry, just to prolong it, and finally Moxie comes downstairs. She’s changed shirts and brushed her hair and looks a little self-conscious about it. But she still walks with her back straight, chin jutted out, and leaps over the back of the sofa. She folds legs underneath her in perfect triangles and then glares and crooks her finger at Sam to follow.
He does.
‘They usually sleep for two hours,’ she says, ‘which is the time I love them the most. Sit.’
It’s a small war to find space around the huge load of washing that covers most of the sofa, but Sam sits. His leg bounces. He’s so close to Moxie and she smells of marmalade. Her clean shirt is a patchwork of pinwheels, all hues of deep purple and mint.
‘You made this?’ he says.
Moxie stretches her shirt out a little to admire it. ‘Yes. I’m making enough pieces for a portfolio so I can get into an amazing art school. I was going to work on it all summer, but obviously no one in this freaking house cares about my future.’ She makes a low growling sound and picks up the remote, snapping the TV on. ‘Want to watch a movie?’
Of course he wants to watch a movie with her.
He never wants to go.
‘Not horror.’ She peers sideways at him through dark curling lashes.
Sam’s smile is sheepish.
She puts on a superhero movie, all car chases and impossible powers and the occasional bomb detonating. He can’t focus. All he can think of is how Moxie sits beside him. Sits beside him. And she knows who and what he is.
‘There’s still flour on your face.’
He scrubs at his cheek hurriedly.
‘No, you missed it. More to the – oh, here.’ She reaches across the infinite black chasm of theft and lies and hungry hearts and brushes flour off his forehead.
Something explodes on the TV screen but Sam stares at his hands, fingers tangled in nervous disarray on his lap, and Moxie is still watching him.
‘You’re kind of like Goldilocks,’ Moxie says suddenly as the superhero and heroine swoon into each other’s arms on screen amidst an exploding building. ‘But with pancakes instead of porridge.’
‘Goldilocks wasn’t sorry.’
‘But you are.’ It’s not a question.
Moxie’s body relaxes and her shoulder leans against his. The pressure is warm and soft and everything. And he falls into it. Just a little. He won’t let himself get too comfortable – he’s not that stupid. But for the barest moment between patchwork frowns, he’s wanted.
He falls asleep.
How could he?
Sam snaps awake so fast that he swallows his heart. His limbs flood with terror, real terror, because he can’t be caught sleeping right out in the open in the De Lainey house again. Moxie is gone. The sun has dipped and the room is full of shadows. He’s been nestled into the laundry, his head cushioned amongst tea towels and dozens of soft shirts.
And the house is anything but quiet.
Car doors slam outside and boots tramp across the wooden floors accompanied by the clash of voices.
‘Dad said we’d knock off at three. Does it look like three to you?’
‘Dude, we were waiting on that timber shipment. It’s not Dad’s fault.’
‘I need a sandwich.’
‘Shotgun the shower.’
‘You can’t shotgun the freaking shower—’
‘Whoa, Moxie did the dishes?’
‘Holy hell, she’s finally been possessed by aliens.’
Mr De Lainey’s voice booms from outside. ‘Jack. LANGUAGE.’
Sam is suffocating. It’s like last time, when he woke in the office to a flood of De Laineys and the knowledge that he was about to feel fists in his stomach. But this time he has nowhere to hide.
He’s sitting in the L-shaped sofa in a mound of washing and Moxie is gone.
‘The one who stinks to high heaven,’ says Grady, ‘gets the shower first.’
‘But that’s not fair.’ Jeremy hops in a circle, unlacing his boots. ‘Jack perpetually smells like a sewer. I was cutting timber with Dad. I have more sawdust than hair.’