By Paths Coincident

Chapter 14

Eliot heard Parker scramble out onto the roof. The fact that he could hear her in spite of the rain meant she wanted him to know she was there. He would have preferred being alone, but Parker had no respect for privacy. Hell, bacteria had more respect for privacy than Parker.

"Hey, Eliot!" she called from over by the chicken coop, flipping on the area light.

Eliot squinted in the sudden glare as the world off the edge of the roof turned black, streaked with silver rain. Parker looked like a drowned creature, her hair soaked and hanging in seaweed-like strands. Just how long had she been out here before she made enough noise to alert him?

"Do you wanna help me steal the eggs?"

He was not going to be able to ignore her. City girl Parker never got tired of pickpocketing eggs from the chickens. Since she didn't usually share this chore, Eliot knew she was worried about him, and this was her way of asking if he was all right. If it had been Hardison interrupting him, he would have had no compunction at telling him where he could stuff his concern, but this was Parker.

Eliot resigned himself to reassuring his thief that he was perfectly fine. Getting to his feet with a twinge of muscles too long inactive in the cold, he joined Parker.

She did not, of course, have a basket. Parker collected eggs like she lifted necklaces off wealthy dowagers at embassy balls—you never saw her do it, and you never saw the eggs. Eliot had honestly tried to catch her at it, but Parker could lift an egg from under a hen so that the old biddy never even noticed. She would arrive in the kitchen, and the eggs would appear. Eliot always expected to find Parker oozing yolks and broken shells, but she never lost an egg. He had about come to the conclusion that she had an extra-dimensional space tucked away in her pocket where she stashed her loot.

Eliot only kept a few hens on the roof, enough to give him eggs for personal meals and to keep the bugs off his garden while adding a little fertilizer. The Brew Pub purchased its eggs from a local farmer after Eliot had assured himself that the hens were free range. He had bought these particular chickens with Parker in mind—an eclectic mix of Araucanas and Easter Eggers, so she could find colored eggs, and a couple of Silkies because he thought their fuzzy heads and feet would make her laugh. The Silkies worked far better than he could have hoped. Not only did Parker nearly sprain something the first time she saw them, scaring the poor things out of a change of feathers with her snorts of laughter, but she had the same reaction to them every time she saw them. "They look like David Bowie in Labyrinth," she said, and they kind of did. Her forays into the chicken coop were always punctuated by joyous cackling. Eliot never got tired of hearing her; Parker's laugh was one of the things that let a little sunshine into his darkness.

Not having Parker's talent for pickpocketing chickens, Eliot grabbed a basket and, making his way among the raised beds of his garden, joined her at the coop. Flipping on the low watt light, they ducked in the door. The roosting hens rustled at the interruption. Eliot could sympathize. Together, he and Parker collected the eggs, Parker stealing them and giggle-snorting at the Silkies, Eliot simply reaching under the hens and putting the eggs in his basket.

He'd done this when he was a child, with his mama. But these hens were far different from the giant black and white Plymouth Rock chickens his mama had loved. Eliot preferred not to be reminded. He didn't really know what he believed about an afterlife, except that if there was a hell, he was going to it, but he hoped that wherever his mama was, she couldn't see what her son had become.

When they emerged from the chicken coop, Parker skipped off, dancing from the edge of one raised-frame garden bed to another. Eliot had visions of yolks and shells, but he should have known better.