Runaway mother chapter 3 part 2

 

‘Ok, so were looking for gold and money, ok?’

‘Where are we looking?’ he asks. ‘That’s a very good question!’

‘Why not start in her bedroom!’ Zach suggests.

‘Great idea!’ I point at Zach and then turn my attention to Ethan. ‘You sure you are ready for this treasure hunt me matey?’ I say in the best pirate accent I can muster. 

Ethan led the way into her seemingly empty room. 

‘Anything you find, put it on the bed, ok?’

I have the pleasure of going through her night stand. The one place I was dreading. I didn’t want to find her ‘Mr. Good Vibrations’, or whatever she calls her vibrator. But more to the point, I didn’t want Ethan finding it! He would probably try and use it as a sword or worse.

My presumptions are right, she has not one, not two, but four vibrators in her nightstand. I’d show Zach but he made me promise not to. He wants to think of his mom being clean and celibate since the immaculate conception of Ethan. I didn’t blame him, but a girls got her needs! 

I quickly and carefully clear a drawer to put the vibrators in. ‘At least now they’re contained,’ I sigh. I riffle through the mounds of paper work that has no order to it whatsoever. I leaf through page after page and see receipts and bills but can’t tell if they match. I decide to sort them into two piles on her bed, bills and receipts. Then I find a folder labeled ‘important’. Dare I open it now?

As I spill the contents onto the middle of the bed Zach comes over to help go through it all. The deeds to a house I have never heard about before and bank statements emerge from it. 

‘Mom is looking out for our future!’ I say as the statements show a healthy bank account.

Lastly, a check book emerges. I look at Zach who meets my eye and we smile.

‘You can forge her name still, right?’ Zach asks as I have, in the past, gotten him out of a lot of trouble by perfecting the act. I nod. He offers me a high five and the stress that I felt since I shook the milk carton subsides. I close my eyes able to breathe freely again. 

‘Whose house is this?’ I ask him. He looks at the address and shrugs his shoulders.

I place our findings in a third pile and continue to the bottom drawer of her night stand.  

I find a book of passwords for all of the sites she uses online; it includes her email password. 

‘Should come in handy!’ I say to myself.

I continue to look in the drawer. It has a stack of letters, bound by an elastic band. I tell Zach and he nods his approval to read one. They’re from my father…love letters from before he died. There must have been thirty of them. I didn’t feel right in reading them so I put them in the pile that was growing on her bed. The last thing I did was pull out the drawer completely in case anything had migrated from above. 

‘Zach,’ I say, ‘hey Zach!’ he drops what he’s doing and comes over to me. 

‘You find something?’ he asks. 

‘Yea, but can you grab it please?’

Zach turns his phone into a flashlight and reaches into the crevasse under the drawer and retrieves a handful of matchbooks. He decides to examine one of them while I’m on my knees, sweating my ass off holding the drawer. ‘Umm, Zach!’ I say, my arms ready to give out. He takes the drawer and slides it back into place with ease.

The matchbook was from some place called ‘The Mint Leaf’. 

‘Have you heard about her saying anything about this place?’ I ask him. 

He looks at me with a blank expression on his face.

‘How many more skeletons does this woman have?’ I ask. He just shrugs and rubs his finger on one of the matchbooks, the cogs of his mind thinking.

Our watches ding, its seven o’clock and the little man hasn’t had any dinner yet. I notice him yawn as he crashes a car into a dinosaur he took from his room when he got bored in search of the treasure. I realise he needs stability and a bit of structure to his day, so I ran downstairs to make some noodles. 

Once they’re ready, I call the working men down and put the paw patrol bowl in Ethans seat making sure to cut up his to make it easier to eat. He comes down on Zach’s shoulders and digs into his dinner. 

‘Did you put the flavour packet in?’ Zach asks with a furrowed brow.

‘Shi….’ I catch myself, ‘…. sugar!’ I get up from the table and get the soy sauce, the two flavour packets sitting on the counter…unopened. 

I felt guilty but Ethan didn’t seem to mind. He was sucking the strands of noodles up as he would spaghetti. Zach on the other hand drowns his with soy sauce. ‘Mmmm,’ he says, ‘much better!’ 

I took one bite of the plain noodles and decided to drown mine in it too.

I decide that Ethan can’t miss out on his bath two nights in a row, so when everyone is finished, I suggest that Zach bathe him while I tidy up the kitchen and make a shopping list for tomorrow. 

As they ascend up to the bath it dawns on me that ducky had a bath of his own today…twice. I quickly, and inconspicuously, take him out of the washer and put him in the dryer. ‘Please let him be dry before bed!’ I chant as I wash the dishes and put them away. I take stock of what we have and what is needed in the form of groceries. 

I’m going to have to ask Zach if we can use his money to complete a big shop online and have it delivered to the house. There is no way I was bringing a four-year-old shopping!

I decide to go down to the bank tomorrow before I collect Ethan. I’d have to skip my last class, trigonometry, in order to do that and collect Ethan in time. It could mean I will be uninvited to the robotics class. I sit and tell myself that family trumps everything. I want to get as much out as I can as I wouldn’t put it past my mother to empty the account and leave us with nothing. 

The dryer dings, bringing me back to the here and now. Ducky is ready just in time as Ethan is getting out of the bath, beginning to ask for him. I take out my brothers security blanket and decide he looks no worse for wear before  delivering him to the lord of the manor.

‘Why is he warm?’ Ethan asks. 

I have to think on my feet, ‘he’s just out of the bath…like you!’

‘Ok!’ Ethan yawns and pulls ducky in close. ‘He smells funny!’ I close my eyes and pray that this isn’t going to be a repeat of the night before. 

‘He smells just like you, nice and clean!’

‘Ok!’ 

I was going to offer the little mite a story, but his eyes are rolling back in his head and he is asleep within seconds. 

We leave the room, closing the door gently and high five. Our watches pinged; it is 8pm. Both of us are exhausted but there was so much more that needs to be done before we could go off to dreamland. 

 

I go into my mother’s room and take the check book from her bed. I meet Zach downstairs and ask to use his card to get groceries. As he fishes it out of his backpack, I boot up the computer. 

I ask Zach if I should send mom an email asking her where she is and that we miss her. I show it to Zach before I press send and he nods his head with approval. As the ‘schist’ sound confirms the email is now in cyberspace, I move onto more pressing matters.

‘Is there anything you need from the shop?’ I ask Zach. 

‘Deodorant and shower gel,’ he answers looking at the shopping list I scrawled together when Ethan was in the bath. 

‘I think you should get three milks, not two!’ he offers, ‘oh and could you get me some protein bars?’ 

I nod writing it all down so I don’t forget.

I watch as Zach begins to do something I haven’t seen him do in a long time…his homework. He sits opposite me and each time I’m unsure of something I’m putting into my virtual basket I ask him about it.

With what my vision for the shopping is done, I turn the computer to face Zach and he adds an extra few bits in. ‘Who knows the next time we’ll have the money to do this?’ he states. He’s not wrong!

When he turns the computer back towards me, I notice that he’s put in a lot of practical things I didn’t think of, like flour! I don’t cook but Zach makes the pancakes on the weekend and he uses flour for that. Then I see he also put; sugar, rice krispies, Nutella, a new toothbrush for Ethan, toothpaste, bananas and chocolate chips in as well. It gets me thinking of Ethans lunch and how he likes the yoghurts with the chocolate balls in it and string cheese. 

Finally, after much deliberation, we have a list, a proper shopping list that included all that I believed we needed for the week ahead. As I’m putting in Zach’s banking details, I ask him how he came to have so much money saved. With the transaction complete I hand him back his card. 

‘When you think of nothing but basketball, the only thing you really need are sneakers every couple of months, so I squirrelled away the rest of my allowance and it just built up. I decided to brown bag it every day so I could save the money I got for a lunch and…well…’ he shrugs his shoulders and puts his card away. 

I nod respectfully. I was never the type to plan ahead with anything other than my studies. I begin to panic when our watches ding again. ‘It’s nine o’clock already?’ Panicking I put the computer away and quickly run into the hall to grab my backpack. I see Ethans lying beside it. ‘Shit!’ I say under my breath, ‘we forgot to do his homework!’ 

I bring both bags into the kitchen with me and open Ethans bag. I take out the homework to see if it was anything he couldn’t do in the morning. Luckily all he has to do is colour in the letter ‘M’.

‘I’ll do that in the morning with him!’ Zach offers. 

I smile down at him and envelope him in a hug. Out of nowhere, tears begin to form in my eyes. I pull away and clear my throat determined to finish tonight what I failed to finish last night…my own homework. 

As I pull the folder from my bag, Zach asks if I could help him with algebra. I honestly didn’t have the time, but there was no way I could survive another day living off of coffee so I decide I’m just going to do the bare minimum for the first time in my life and help my big brother. The feeling is liberating!