Mommy had said to him, after emerging from the kitchen and seeing him standing rooted in the center of the vast expanse of floor, tears welling in eyes that had been blankly staring at the wall that he had once covered in crayon.  “This is where the town is!” he had told Justin, who, giggling, drew a bulbous airplane approaching it at an alarming angle.

She fumbled in her purse.

“Shit…”

A jingle of keys, and a rattling of unseen objects, preceded her extracting a rumpled envelope.  She walked back to the kitchen and placed it on the counter.

She returned to the living room, where he remained, the tears now falling steadily.

“You think you’re sad?  You think Daddy only left you?   Are you the star of this particular tragedy?”

This only made him cry harder.  Sarcasm had not yet become a concept, much less the weapon he would discover first in his later quest to Fight Back, but her words were a shove, and he angrily flung his arm across his face, wiping away tears and snot.  “Fuck her,” he would later imagine himself thinking in words he’d had yet to acquire.

Wordlessly, she began walking toward the front door.  “Stay here if you want.”  He ran to join her as she opened the large wooden front door with its familiar creak, and they hurried down the walkway as he heard it shut with a SLAM-CLACK as the force of it sealing that empty tomb caused the door knocker to fly up, and then down.