ETHAN'S KEY

Part One: The Window

Jack sat at the window and watched the flurries drift to the pavement and the bare lawns of his suburban neighborhood. The children would be out to play soon. He did very little, these days, other than watch them play. On wet spring mornings, they would splash through puddles both muddy and pristine on their way to school. In the summer, they would run, the girls in their bright swimsuits and the boys shirtless and sun-burnt, among the houses and gardens. In the autumn, they would reluctantly put on their coats again, under threat of pneumonia from their mothers, and jump through the neat piles of leaves, scattering them again and again until their parents made them rake and bag every single stray leaf on the lawn.

And now they poured from the houses, bundled and puffy in layers upon layers of nylon and microfleece, and shaped the freshly fallen snow into child-like approximations of men and angels and one very lumpy, short-legged reindeer with a withered azalea bush for antlers. The children were only distinguished as girls or boys by the color of their coats.

One boy, though, hopping out of the passenger side of a moving-van, wore only a light jacket as he carried heavy-looking cardboard boxes up the stairs of the long-vacant house across the street.

Another new family and another child to watch as he played through Easter, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Christmas...

Later, Jack thought, he ought to bake something to bring to the new neighbors. Closing the curtains, he went downstairs to see what he had in the kitchen.

Across the street, the boy had set his first box down and looked around the new house. It was smaller, but much nicer than the old one. His father's insurance policy had made the down payment plus two more. To his mother, it had been a consolation, a blessing in the hell of her husband's death. But for her son, it was by no stretch of the imagination a fair trade. The new house, the new neighborhood...it was all wrong.

“Ethan!” his mother called breathlessly, holding a box of dishes against the doorway with her hip. “Help me with this, please.”

Ethan pushed himself up from the counter with a grimace and, taking the box from his mother, he set it down by the sink and went out to get more boxes. His mother caught him before he reached the door, a pained look crossing her hastily made-up face, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“I know, baby,” she murmured, “I know it's hard.”

She turned him towards her and kissed him on the forehead.

“But it'll get better. I promise.”

“Excuse me.”

They both turned quickly towards the doorway.

An older man with dark, greying hair in a blue button-down and crisp, navy jeans was leaning in the doorway with a tartan tin of cookies.

“Sorry to disturb you. I'm Jack Parkins, from across the street,” he said. His voice bore a very faint English accent. “I saw you moving in and I wondered if you might like some help.”

“Oh!” gasped Ethan's mother, shaking Jack's proffered hand. “Well, if you wouldn't mind, we could certainly use an extra set of hands...I'm Laura, by the way, and this is my son, Ethan.”

“Pleased to meet both of you.”

With Jack's help, the moving van was empty by noon, and the house was a assembled as humanly possibly by dark.

As Jack set the last dish into the china cabinet, Laura blurted, “You should stay for dinner. I mean, it's the least we can do after all your help.”

Jack laughed. “Well, of course I'll stay. But let me go get cleaned up a bit at my place and I'll be back in time to help out. I'm a nifty little chef, myself. Though I bake more than anything these days.”

“Then you can make dessert,” giggled Laura.

“Alright. I'll be back in about fifteen, yeah?”

Ethan watched his mother flit through the house, consulting recipe books, straightening pictures, adjusting every detail.

“Mom,” he said after her third sweep of the living room. “He just helped us move in. He's not gonna care if the pillows aren't all fluffed.”

“Oh, I know,” she said breezily, tucking the slipcover tighter into the pillows of the sofa. “But it'll still be nice to have the place looking good for dinner.”

Ethan rolled his eyes and got up to wait out on the porch.

Down the street, someone was cooking out.

Someone else was playing loud country music.

Across the street, Ethan could see the window to Jack's bedroom.

He watched him change shirts three separate times through the sheer curtains. Slowly and deliberately, button-by-button, as if the world depended on his choice of exactly the right shirt.

The light went out. A few long seconds later, Jack came from around the back of his house, waving amiably and carrying a grocery bag.

“Sorry I took so long,” he called once he reached the street. “I wasn't sure how dressed up I should get.”

Ethan scoffed playfully. “It's just dinner, Mr. Parkins.”

“Jack,” he corrected. “I absolutely insist. I refuse to be Mr. Parkins until it's what the nurses at the home call me.”

“Cool. You wanna go in? I think Mom's still cooking.”

When they went into the kitchen and Jack set his bag on the counter, Laura was darting between the stove and the sink, boiling green beans and frying potatoes. Her makeup was markedly heavier and more careful than before, and she had changed into a flowery summer dress that was about five years too young for her. The fruity notes of her perfume rose even above the cooking smells.

“I'm almost done here,” she said, pulling a steaming casserole pan out of the oven. “I've just got to get everything on plates.”

Jack pulled a spatula out of the open drawer by the sink and took the casserole pan out of Laura's hands. “Let me get this. You can finish up everything else and then I'll get on the dessert.”

Laura drained the green beans while Jack cut careful portions of lasagna onto the three plates on the table.

Jack clumsily led grace – he hadn't prayed aloud in a little over fifteen years.

“Are you married?” Ethan asked suddenly.

Jack laughed softly. “Oh, no, I've never had the opportunity.”

“You're wearing a ring.”

“This?” he asked, holding up his left hand. A thin silver band set with a smooth black stone wrapped around his ring-finger. “Habit. A gift from an old friend from back before my father and I moved to the states. It's actually got quite an interesting history. It was found at the tower of London. The man who picked it up on a tour tried to turn it in, but the people there determined that it had no historical value whatsoever and let him keep it. A few days later, though, he had it appraised. The appraiser put it at around four hundred years old.”

“Why didn't anybody pick it up before?” Ethan asked, stirring his fork through his potatoes.

“The silver was so badly tarnished that it pretty much looked like everything else around it. That, and he had been poking around in places where he wasn't exactly supposed to be. I'm not sure of the exact spot where he found it, but I'm told it was behind a loose brick in one of the torture chambers.”

“Cool, so, like, somebody hid it there while they were being tortured?” Ethan gushed.

“Possibly. Actually, my guess is that a guard lifted it off of a victim and hid it for himself. He might have forgotten it, or just never had the chance to come back.”

Laura cocked an eyebrow at Jack. “That must have cost your friend a fortune.”

“Actually, no,” laughed Jack. “It was his uncle that found it. And anyway, it's not worth as much as you might think. A couple hundred at the most. But history fascinated me when I was younger, so naturally, it's worth a lot more to me.”

By morning, the snow turned to freezing rain. Jack didn't even bother to go to the window.

The next day, Ethan started school. It was still raining, but Jack went to the window around seven. At 7:15, Ethan came through the front door, locking it behind him, and walked to the bus stop at the end of the block. He didn't have an umbrella.

Jack dressed hurriedly and drove to the end of the block.

Ethan was sitting apart from the other kids at the stop, under the awning of the church, trying not to get soaked through. Jack rolled down the window and called to him, “Need a ride?”

The other kids stared. They weren't used to seeing Mr. Parkins out of the house.

“Sure,” said Ethan, getting in and strapping on his seat-belt.

“Don't you have an umbrella?” Jack asked.

“Couldn't find one.”

After a few silent moments, Jack added, “Turn on the radio if you like.”

Ethan fiddled with the buttons until he found something whiny and popish.

“Where are we going?”

“Brentwood. It's over on--”

“I know where it is. I used to help out with their bake-sales.”

After about ten minutes, they pulled into the parking lot.

“Will you need a ride home?” Jack asked.

Ethan grimaced. “If you can. I mean, don't do it if it's too much trouble or anything.”

“I'll be here at 2:45.”

Jack spent the remainder of the morning baking brownies. He took a batch to Laura at work which they started in on over coffee outside of a Starbucks on her lunch hour.

At two-thirty, Jack started towards the school, the rest of the brownies on a plate in the back seat.

When he pulled up, Ethan approached cautiously, as if he wasn't exactly sure that it was Jack's car, but when he got close enough to see through the tinted windows, he slid into the passenger seat.

“Brownies in the back,” said Jack. “If you want any.”

Ethan ate three on the way home. The radio remained blissfully silent.