The Risk Pool by Richard Russo

hall I saw a thin crease of light below her door, enough to make the top of the stair gray instead of black. A stair creaked before I could decide whether or not to warn her.
    It was all happening too fast, as if he had somehow walked right
through
the locked door below, as if inserting, turning, withdrawing a key were mere formalities to be dispensed with since no one was present to witness them. The footfalls on the stair were not anxious, though. They came, softly and heavily, stopping on the landing, as if to listen for my breathing. I counted the stairs and before he reached the top, scrambled back into bed. Sleep, I thought. If I could just get to sleep, it would not be happening. If he thought I was asleep, maybe he would not take me. I waited.
    Surprisingly, there were no more footfalls, and the dog outside was quiet. I thought I heard low voices, and listened intently until I heard them again. Had they come from the street outside? I waited for the dog to bark again.
    When he didn’t, I crept to the door and opened it a crack. The pale ribbon of light was still visible beneath my mother’s bedroom door, and I heard her voice, soft and low, before the light went out.
    Then I went back to bed, my heart pounding. He had not come to steal me. My father had simply come home.
    I woke up early, still excited, to the sound of voices in the kitchen below. The sun was shining brilliantly and I stopped dressing long enough to locate my friend the dog, who was vigorously shaking his chain, three backyards away. Good dog, I thought.
    I took the stairs three to a stride, pulling my t-shirt over my head at the same time. I stopped at the landing. My mother was at the table, sitting in my chair, her back to the stairs. She turned when she heard me coming and smiled. Father Michaels was at the table too. He was not wearing his collar.
    “Look who’s come for breakfast,” my mother said.
    My friend, who had been studying his hands, smiled at me weakly.
    “So what’s the matter?” she said. “Are you going to just stand there?”
    When I did precisely that, she broke into song:
    ’Cause when you’re up, you’re up.
    And when you’re down you’re down.
    And when you’re only halfway up,
    You’re neither up nor down.
    “Can I go outside and play ball?” I said.
    “Okay,” she agreed. It was an unheard-of privilege before breakfast, but she was in about the best mood ever. “Don’t wander off though. I’m going to fix us all a
stunning
breakfast.”
    Outside, I checked the street for any car that might conceivably belong to my father, but there wasn’t a convertible in sight. And nothing with bullet holes. Inside, they were talking, but their voices were low. I heard my mother say, “Don’t worry.” Then she resumed humming, “When you’re up, you’re up.”
    I fielded hard, angry grounders, and when I was called for breakfast, I said I wasn’t hungry.
    “Be that way, sourpuss,” my mother said, and went back inside. Then Father Michaels said something, and she told him again not to worry. Horrid Patrick Donovan just had me all worked up over my father.
    “I’ll go talk to him,” he said.
    “No,” she said. “You’ll talk to me.”
    It was nearly lunch time when I heard him leave. My mother came out onto the back porch and called, but I was out of sight around back of the small storage shed and I didn’t answer. I heard her say, “I don’t know where he’s disappeared to.”
    Our house was next to the corner, and when the priest turned up the block toward Our Lady of Sorrows, he got a good view of the backyards all down the block. He spied me sitting up against the back wall of the shed and stopped. There was a fence between us, so he couldn’t come over. We looked at each other for a minute, and he raised his hand in a half wave. I made him waitbefore raising mine. And I only gave in because he looked like the saddest man in the world.
    My mother and I went to the nine o’clock mass on Sunday,