The Rain Barrel Baby Read Online Free

window.
    It started to slide up and the car moved forward.
    “And how can you see to drive behind all that tinted glass?” he shouted as he was forced to let go his grip on the window.
    She burned rubber as she sped away.
    Gus felt a certain amount of satisfaction from his encounter. He’d have to tell Frank about the way he’d handled the strange woman. Snooping around the neighbourhood. Ha. He could hardly wait to tell Frank about how he’d run her off.

CHAPTER 5
    The Norwood Flats was a town in itself, in the middle of the larger city. A triangle with river on two sides, main drag on the third. Lower middle and middle class. Some homes were almost a century old but most were built after the Second World War. Young families, young trees, lots of sunshine and Kick the Can for a couple of decades.
    It was blue and gold to look back on, but Frank Foote knew better than that. Horrible things had happened in the middle of the century — he had seen some of them.
    “Denise? How’s it goin’?” Frank spoke into his desk phone, a familiar tightness in his throat as he talked to his wife of fifteen years.
    She spoke so quietly he could hardly hear her.
    “Okay, I think. It’s good I’m here.”
    “I miss you,” he lied. He covered his eyes with his hand.
    “Yeah, me too. I’m sorry, Frank, I gotta go. I’m so very, very tired.”
    Frank hung up and took his coffee to the window. He was lucky to have one that opened. He pushed it up and took a deep breath of the cold spring air. It had been the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in decades and Frank could still feel it in his bones. He pictured himself on a beach somewhere soaking up the sun, getting so hot he felt dizzy and then wading into the water to cool down.
    Frank didn’t usually come to work on Sundays but he wanted to review the paperwork on the rain barrel baby. And truth be told, he wanted to get away on his own for short while. Emma was home with the kids.
    Frank did miss Denise. He missed his wife of fifteen years ago when she had been smart and kind and funny. Now the sparkle in her hazel eyes was gone. She looked only inward. And when she smiled she pressed her lips together till they disappeared. She looked as though she was trying with all her might to shut out the world.
    “Leave me alone!” her smile shouted.
    Frank felt two ways about this new smile of hers. When she used it on him and the kids he felt bereft. When she used it on anyone else he breathed relief. He wanted her to shut out the rest of the world. And in the past when her old smile, her rich open smile had been for him and Emma and Garth and Sadie, Frank had felt blessed. But when it had shone out to others…well, he wasn’t proud of those feelings. He’d rather not think about them.
    She was in the Detox Ward now; she had been there before.
    Yesterday, Frank had stopped by home in the mid-afternoon to check on his kids. He worried about them, especially Emma. He found her in the kitchen making sandwiches for the two younger ones.
    “Hi, guy. Kinda late for lunch, isn’t it?” Frank tousled her hair.
    He could hear television noise from the living room where the other two would be gazing transfixed. It was probably Garth and Sadie he should be concerned about with their TV fixation. Maybe all that was foisted upon Em would make her a stronger more resourceful person, with only the odd pocket of anxiety that wouldn’t get too odd.
    “Hi, Dad.” Emma’s face lit up when she saw her father. She kept on with the bread and lettuce and sliced hard-boiled eggs. “We were pretty late with breakfast this morning.”
    “Where’s your mum?”
    “Upstairs lying down. She’s been out to the mall but she didn’t buy anything.” Emma spread tidy amounts of mayo on one side of each sandwich and finished them off with a couple of grinds of pepper.
    “How did you get along holding the fort this morning?”
    “No problemo. But I think something should be done about the amount of TV