Something a little off is going on here on At Home

Deidre Beales

June 04, 2020 5:20 PM

Something a little off is going on here by Deidre Beales

Reilly's face was scrunched up in deep concentration as he ventured a full arm's length (his arm's length anyway) from the kitchen chair. Slowly, he let go and stood on legs that held his weight and barely wobbled. Diedre smiled at the eight month old and clapped quietly so she wouldn't startle him and make him fall. He'd been doing this more and more often over the last couple of days, each time a little steadier than the last.

"He'll be walking before he's one," she wagered, aiming the remark at David, though the older gentleman was apathetic towards Reilly's antics at the best of times. He didn't dislike the boy, she thought, but he was clearly awkward around children. She wasn't surprised his own boys had picked their mother to live with when the couple split up.

"Hmm," agreed David noncommittally.

Silence fell for a few more minutes. Reilly attempted a step and ended up on his bottom, but he had a lot of padding there, so he just laughed it off and pulled himself up on the kitchen chair again.

"I was thinking," she broke the silence again as she closed the oven door on the tuna casserole she was making them for dinner. "I should check with children services again, see if they have heard anything about Mallory."

"Hmm," David agreed again. After a moment though, he expanded on the minimal reaction. "Are you sure that's a good idea? What if they try to take Reilly?"

She'd been carefully avoiding the Department of Child Services since meeting David last December. He'd promised to vouch for her, but she'd decided just not telling them where she was would be the surest way to know they wouldn't take Reilly from her. Somehow, this had worked. People just didn't seem to ever notice David's apartment. Even she walked right past it sometimes, if she wasn't paying close enough attention.

And he'd found a personal midwife to help deliver Reilly outside of the hospital system, which kept her out of any bureaucratic paperwork, and was probably cheaper. She wasn't entirely certain of that point. David had paid for it. The midwife had been under the impression David was Deidre's father. In fact, she was teaching Reilly to identify David by the term "Grandfather".

She grimaced slightly in response to his question. "I don't know," she admitted. She was stable. David saw to that. She still had no money to her name, but cooking and cleaning for him gave her room and board and a safe place to raise her son, and it was a better place than she'd been in for all of Mallory's life. On the other hand, she hadn't reported in for almost a year. The System never looked highly on that. And the last time she had, she'd been a pregnant alcoholic in detox, using a different name than the one Mallory's caseworkers knew. Whether they'd connected Mallory's case to Unborn Reilly's by now, was anybody's guess.

"I just wish I knew if anyone ever found Mallory."

David said nothing for a long moment. Then he surprised her. "I can make some calls," he said.

She raised an eyebrow, and looked pointedly around the apartment that had no phones. David had some very odd peculiarities and his refusal to pay a bill for 'a useless frippery he didn't know how to use' was one of the more notable ones. Even Deidre's grandparents had been able to operate a normal push button phone.

"Not with one of those muggle contraptions," he grumped by way of explanation. 'Muggle,' she had learned to understand, meant 'technological' as best as she could tell, in whatever non-Boston place of origin he came from. "Take the boy and get out of here tomorrow morning and I will see what I can do."

She didn't know what he did when he kicked her and Reilly out of the apartment, what sorts of secrets he didn't want them to see, but by now she trusted him far enough to just nod and ask, "Do you want us back in time for me to make lunch?" She wouldn't be surprised to learn he was some kind of white collar criminal who knew people who could forge papers that would give her a little more leverage with child protective services.

"Yes," David confirmed, "but no earlier."

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