We Live in Water by Jess Walter

The boys go back to playing and ignore him. “See you tonight.”
    Wayne goes outside. He climbs in his pickup truck. His day off and he’s pretending to go to work. Karen’s right; he is losing it. He knows Ken sometimes acts like he got called in, and then he goes and screws that Donna. Probably ball-deep in her right now. Shit, that almost makes more sense. He stares back at the house, a little one-story rambler. It’s not that different from the house he grew up in. His old man was a welder, worked his ass off, sixty-hour weeks.
    Wayne did it only once, stole from the Vacation Fund. He took two dimes. He was eight. Ed Hendry and his brother were going to the store. Wayne bought a pack of baseball cards and some stick candy with the stolen money. Worst fucking candy he ever ate. He’d thought, Who’s gonna miss two dimes? But that whole trip, from Spokane to Yellowstone, he held his breath. God, what if we run out of money? He’d pray they found a hill to park on to start the car. What if we run out of gas five miles from home and everyone turns to me? Look at that, Wayne. Two dimes short.
    Maybe Karen’s right and this is all just guilt.
    Wayne looks back at the house. But if he’s right—and goddamn it, he wishes he wasn’t, but he is—one of those shithead kids in there has stolen five or six times and keeps going back. That’s what gets him. He did it once, and it almost killed him. You want your kids to do better than you did—his dad a welder, Wayne a good job at Kaiser Aluminum, maybe his kids will go to college. But you also want them to be better. And one of them is a goddamn thief? Christ. Wayne can’t handle that. He’s never hit his kids—a spanking here and there—but he’s a little worried what he might do.
    He starts his truck. Backs out of the driveway, takes one more glance at the house, drives down the street and parks at the grocery store on Trent. Slides out of his coveralls, leaves them in the truck, and humps home the two blocks. He goes through the back gate, to the side of the house, hoists himself up on the open windowsill, and eases down into the bathroom. He listens. It’s quiet. Wayne takes off his boots, tiptoes through the bathroom, looks both ways, then slips into his and Karen’s bedroom. He leaves the door open a bit. He creeps past the bed and into the closet.
    There’s the Vacation Fund, just inside the closet doorway, the jar set with the handle pointed straight up at midnight. Wayne steps past it, deeper into the closet. He slides behind his coveralls, which hang there like a curtain. He sits on the floor against the back wall, in the dark.
    Wayne reaches for one of the beers, pops it, takes a drink. He’ll sit here all day if he has to.
    Maybe it is the Middle one. That shit about the Viet Cong? What was that?
    He hears Karen again: You’re imagining things. You’re losing it.
    Maybe. Wayne sits in the dark, drinking a cool Lucky Lager. He’s not sure how much time passes. The caps have puzzles in them. The Girl and the Middle one race to solve them. Wayne pushes the coveralls aside to let some light spill into the back of the closet. He reads the bottle cap. A key. A chess pawn. A truck. The letters ing . Easy. Key pawn truck ing : keep on trucking.
    Then he hears footsteps in the hall and lets the coveralls fall again, so he’s in the dark. The bathroom door opens and then closes. Just someone going to the bathroom. He sighs, feels strangely relieved, and realizes how happy he’ll be if he sits here all day, drinks these beers and nothing happens. If Karen’s right. On the other side of the wall, the toilet flushes. Wayne takes a sip of his beer. More footsteps, soft on the carpet. Shit, the steps are coming this way. Wayne cocks his head to hear.
    The floor creaks. One of them is inside the room. Wayne holds his breath. The steps come across the floor.
    Then the closet door squeaks as someone opens it a little wider. Wayne covers his mouth. His older