Home of Frank Cosgrove
32nd Street near 30th Avenue, Queens
12:30 am Tuesday, September 3
Frank opened the door to his daughters' bedroom and shone his flashlight at the ceiling. The reflected light was enough to show 11-year-old twins Audrey and Zoe apparently asleep . . . although his mind's eye couldn't help but picture them in the same sad state as the two still-unidentified girls he and his colleagues had attended four hours earlier.
He pulled the door shut and went to Jordan's room. At that door he could hear faint and tinny, yet discernible sounds of combat. Jordan was playing a war-game — Call of Duty, maybe. Frank opened the door with all the stealth that his police training had given him and saw that he'd guessed right.
He pulled off Jord's headphones and said, "Hey! School night. Now shut that machine and don't play it again until Thanksgiving at the earliest. You're going to have many calls of duty from me and Mom, from your school and from our neighbours."
"Yessir," Jord said, although the 15-year-old appeared to be less intimidated by The Look than before. That was, thought Frank, a mixed blessing. Jord was aspiring to be man-gutsy, and it would be good to see him fit to be man of the house if worse came to worst on the job, but he was sometimes more headstrong than Frank wanted. But Frank had a rebuttal: Headstrong and work-weak.
"We'll discuss how you cleaned that car before breakfast," Frank said icily, giving Jord his strongest Look. It still had some effect. Jord's work hadn't been really bad — he at least had cleaned all the glass — but small spots on the exterior needed washing over and the carpet was decidedly imperfect. Mind you, cleaning that car's carpet was difficult at best. Liz was usually pleased with Jord's work, and the neighbours always seemed to be.
But the way the world was changing, the kids needed a superior work ethic if they were to stay out of poverty. What Frank had seen this past evening had strengthened his long-standing sentiment that they needed to be reined in and kept busy.
