She looked at her brother, and they had another of those long silent conversations. I enjoyed the quiet, just driving through the evening congestion and feeling sorry for myself.
After a few minutes Astor spoke up again. “That means we shouldn’t tell Mom what we did today,” she said.
“You can tell her about the microscope,” I said.
“But not the other stuff?” Astor said. “The scary guy and riding with Sergeant Debbie?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“But we’re never supposed to tell a lie,” she said. “Especially to our own mother.”
“That’s why you don’t tell her anything,” I said. “She doesn’t need to know things that will make her worry too much.”
“But she loves us,” Astor said. “She wants us to be happy.”
“Yes,” I said. “But she has to think you are happy in a way she can understand. Otherwise she can’t be happy.”
There was another long silence before Astor finally said, just 264
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before we turned onto their street, “Does the scary guy have a mother?”
“Almost certainly,” I said.
Rita must have been waiting right inside the front door, because as we pulled up and parked the door swung open and she came out to meet us. “Well, hello,” she said cheerfully. “And what did you two learn today?”
“We saw dirt,” Cody said. “From my shoe.”
Rita blinked. “Really,” she said.
“And there was a piece of popcorn, too,” Astor said. “And we looked in the microphone and we could tell where we had been.”
“Micro scope,” Cody said.
“Whatever,” Astor shrugged. “But you could tell whose hair it was, too. And if it was a goat or a rug.”
“Wow,” Rita said, looking somewhat overwhelmed and uncertain, “I guess you had quite a time then.”
“Yes,” Cody said.
“Well then,” Rita said. “Why don’t you two get started on homework, and I’ll get you a snack.”
“Okay,” Astor said, and she and Cody scurried up the walk and into the house. Rita watched them until they went inside, and then she turned to me and held onto my elbow as we strolled after them.
“So it went well?” she asked me. “I mean, with the—they seemed very, um . . .”
“They are,” I said. “I think they’re beginning to understand that there are consequences for fooling around like that.”
“You didn’t show them anything too grim, did you?” she said.
“Not at all. Not even any blood.”
“Good,” she said, and she leaned her head on my shoulder, which I suppose is part of the price you have to pay when you are going to marry someone. Perhaps it was simply a public way to mark her territory, in which case I guess I should be very happy that she chose not to do so with the traditional animal method. Anyway, displaying affection through physical contact is not something I really understand, and I felt a bit awkward, but I put an arm around DEXTER IN THE DARK
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her, since I knew that was the correct human response, and we followed the kids into the house.