He followed her out to the living room, where Tony was waiting by the front door, backpack in hand. All of the drapes were open, and outside four or five identically dressed adolescents were leaning against the low brick wall that separated their weed patch of a yard from the sidewalk. One kid with a shaved head ground out the butt of the cigarette he’d been smoking on top of the wall and flicked it into their yard.

Margot must have seen the look on Daniel’s face because she frowned at him, pointing her finger. “Don’t you say anything to those boys. We have to live here and Tony has to go to their school. Anything you do to them, they’ll take out on him.”

Tony said nothing, but the pleading in his son’s eyes told him that he agreed with his mother one hundred percent, and Daniel nodded. “Fine,” he said.

He watched them walk outside, waved good-bye, and shut and locked the door behind them before heading back to the bathroom to take a shower.

The hot water felt good on his skin, and he stayed in the shower longer than he needed to, enjoying the warm steam that fogged up the room and the comforting sensation of the pulsing water against his sleep-sore back.

It had been over a year since corporate downsizing had caused him to be laid off from his last job at Thompson Industries, and though the nightly news told him continuously that leading economic indicators were up and the stock market was at an all-time high, he had no immediate prospects of finding a job and saw no change on the horizon. He’d gone to every employment agency in the Philadelphia metropolitan area during the past thirteen months, but nothing had turned up in all that time and the market was oversaturated with similarly displaced middle-management workers all competing for the same positions.

More than once he’d wanted to move, but Margot was still employed, still bringing home a paycheck, and the truth was that the house was the only tangible asset they had. It was their anchor, bought and paid for, left to them fair and square by her parents, and if Pennsylvania wasn’t his favorite state, that was just too damn bad because if worst came to worst, if Margot lost her job and their phone and gas and electricity were cut off, they could always huddle in the living room in their sleeping bags and eat crackers stolen from restaurant salad bars.

He smiled to himself as he shut off the shower, amused at his own train of thought. As Margot always said, he shouldn’t be so melodramatic.

He’d always been melodramatic, though.

It kept life interesting.