Standing in the unlit bathroom after the event, Peter found himself staring at his reflection in the vanity mirror, illuminated by the ghostly light that filtered in through the tiny window. We’re fifty floors up, why do they need such a small window? Someone’s going to look in from the next building over? The absurdity of the thought set his belly bouncing, though he kept the laughter silent in case he woke his parents.

As it turned out, he need not have worried about that. A set of almost silent footsteps in the hall and a flicker of shadow under the bathroom door announced that one or the other of his parents was awake and moving about the apartment. Peter eased the door open a crack in time to hear a slight tinkle of keys being extracted from the keybowl on the kitchen bench. A moment later light from the hall outside the front door briefly shone down the hall, making Peter pull back lest he be seen, then it clicked shut.

As the darkness and quiet rolled back in, Peter tiptoed down to the kitchen. He felt around as silently as he could in the keybowl to try and figure out which keys were missing, hoping to be able to tell which of his parents had just snuck out of the house. Where could they be going at this time of night? He wondered. Oh, crap!

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Light shone out from under his parents bedroom door, giving him the barest warning that he could be busted out of bed in the middle of the night. He dived into the lounge room and hid behind an armchair. The light snapped off and hushed footsteps in the hall heralded a second parent making a nocturnal journey. Whoever it was paused by his door, but he had left it closed when he went to the bathroom and they chose not to open it. The footsteps resumed and shortly a second set of keys were retrieved and the front door opened and closed again.

Peter stayed tucked behind the furniture until he was certain that nobody was coming back. Where the heck are they going at, he checked his internal clock, ten o’clock at night? Who left first? What is going ON?

Rather than head back to his room, Peter curled up on the couch and pulled the cushions down on top to make impromptu blankets. So glad I’m going back to school tomorrow, he thought. The more he learned about his parents day activities the less sense they made. For now, though, Pham and Dani are waiting on me.