Eric lay face down on his bed plucking away at what remained of the carpet threads that lay directly below his swaying hand. It was Sunday afternoon and ordinarily they would have been out at some forced family fun afternoon, but due to the previous week's disastrous outing and the emotionally draining week they'd all had, Peter and Elizabeth had declared during breakfast that they'd be spending the day at home. Of course, it probably went without saying since the deluge of rain that had bucketed out of the skies the night before, had continued to pour down non-stop throughout the day, with no end in sight. Earlier, Eric had gazed out the bedroom window at the water flowing down the street like a raging stream, desperate to reach the river mouth, taking along with it, tree leaves, and litter and the occasional pedestrian battling against the odds. For a little while it had been fascinating to observe the occasional car, stupid enough to think travelling on a sheet of water was justified by whatever desperate emergency the owner of the vehicle deemed unable to put off till the weather subsided, but when he was unable to distract his mind any longer, he had flopped back down on his bed where his thoughts drifted once more to his mom, to Neal, to the Burkes and of course, to his dysfunctional existence.

As the trouble thoughts continued to churn over and over in his head, the sound of approaching footsteps had him quickly scrambling to cover up his handiwork and flipping onto his back, just as Elizabeth strolled into the room carrying an armful of school shirts and pants.

"Hey, Sweetie, how you doing up here?" she asked while hanging up the ironing in the built-in-closet space. "You don't feel like coming down and watching a movie with us?"

"Isn't Peter watching a game?"

"Yes, but three votes wins against one. If you feel like watching something, I'll break the news."

"I feel like watching Zombies from the Burning Abyss 12: Gates of Damnation."

Elizabeth closed the closet door and turned with a smile, "Is it G or PG?"

"What do you think?"

"Then maybe sometime you can watch it with us when-"

"Scott-Allen's gone to sleep…I remember you saying it, like fifty thousand times already."

"Then why suggest it in the first place?" El asked as she helped herself a spot on the end of the bed.

Eric instinctually slid his legs across until they were practically touching the wall under the window, creating a substantial buffer zone. "Because I don't watch baby movies and you asked me what I felt like watching and the Zombie movie is what I felt like."

"Well, sweetie, if that's what you'd really like to do, I suppose Scott-Allen and I can come up here and play a board game or do a craft activity?"

Eric shook his head, "Don't bother. It's not like I'm gonna lose any sleep over of it anyways. It's probably just the same as the other eleven movies."

"No doubt," Elizabeth concurred. "And your mom didn't mind you watching these types of movies?"

"No, of course she didn't," Eric frowned, somewhat offended that it had even been suggested. "Why would she? I'm not a baby you know?"

"We know that, Eric. It's just these particular movies are made for adults and sometimes when younger people watch them, they can have trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction and they end up getting concerned that some of the things they see in the movies might be real and sometimes they have nightmares as a result."

"That's not what I have nightmares about." Eric pushed up on his elbows as he defended angrily, "Maybe I have nightmares about been stuck here in Lollypop Land for eternity."

Elizabeth eyed the boy for a moment before patting his leg and pushing up from the bed, "Okay, sweetie. If you think you're okay with it, I'm sure Peter will enjoy watching it with you sometime."

"I'm sure there's not much chance of that," Eric grumbled under his breath then without being able to stop himself, he mentioned to Elizabeth's retreating back, "Mom let me do a lot more things that I'm not allowed to do here. It wouldn't hurt you and Peter to take a page out of her book and chill out a little."

Elizabeth turned back, the smile gone from her eyes. "Yes, Peter and I should probably 'chill out' more," she accepted while returning to her seat on the bed, "but it's not easy to do something when you don't feel is the right thing to do."

"Is that cryptic codded message by way of saying, my mom did the wrong thing by me?"

"No, sweetie. All I meant was, sometimes, it's hard when you are faced with having to do something, even though it goes against every grain in your body saying, 'Don't' - especially if you have the choice not to. You know what the right choice is, but in order to do so, you have to compromise your loyalties to those you love… It's not an easy conclusion for an adult to come to, so it must be even that much harder for a little boy who is missing his mom."

"I've never had any trouble deciding anything, Elizabeth. Not before and certainly not now. Just because Mom's not here at the moment doesn't mean I'm incompetent."

"Of course you aren't," El reached out and brushed a noticeable piece of fluff off the bedspread while swallowing hard. "Last Sunday, back at Yankee Stadium, you had a chance to take off with your mom but you didn't feel it was the right thing to do, leaving Scott-Allen on his own."

Eric looked up like he'd just been betrayed by a close friend.

"Yes, Scott-Allen told me. Bit by bit I got the whole story out, even the part about you meeting your mommy later at the 'King's Bridge.'"

Eric couldn't resist a small, knowing smirk and for some reason, didn't withdraw his arm when Elizabeth's hand came to rest on his.

"Eri, despite the consequences, at that moment you did what you knew to be right. And when I found out what you did, it reinforced what I had known all along - no matter what goes on in your head sometimes, it won't change the fact that I'll always consider you a man of strong principles and a good heart. And if it came to the crunch, sweetie, if I had to trust my son in your hands, I'd do it in a flash, because in here," Elizabeth tapped her index finger against the boy's chest, "no matter everything else you've ever said or done, or will do…this is what counts, and it's the Eric Hunter I see every time I look at you."

Elizabeth patted the boy's hand once more and without waiting for a response to her disclosure, she departed the room, leaving behind one bewildered young man.

Eric waited till he heard the footsteps reach the bottom of the steps and diffuse on the carpet of the living room before turning over and brushing his suddenly watery eyes against his pillow. He hadn't been expecting Elizabeth to say what she had, rather he'd been waiting for her to go on about what an unfit mother Alex Hunter was and how she had her vote for the Worst Parent on the Planet Award. But there'd been no mention of bad parenting and what she'd actually said had left Eric perplexed. He'd never cared much for 'Mrs Brady,' thinking she was not too far removed from a cardboard cut-out masquerading as substitute for the real thing and in turn, Eric had figured Mrs B had similar, if not far worse misconceptions about her resident gate crasher. It was possible Elizabeth had just done a stellar job of bullshitting him in order to gain his trust so she could screw him over at a later date, but then again, that didn't really seem like Elizabeth's modus operandi…In the end, he didn't know what to think.

Eric's head was heavy with thoughts as his brain worked over time to make sense of his world and the people who controlled it. He felt a pressing pain formulating somewhere in the back of his skull but instead of getting up to seek out a tablet to relieve the ache, he rolled off the bed and onto his head, hoping that a sudden knock might chase away the inevitable. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect and he lay on his side on the floor, nursing his damaged cranium, feeling completely sorry for himself. Once more he had tears in his eyes and it wasn't until he was able to blink most away, that he focused on the rejected cardboard box nestled at the back against the wall.

Feeling as though he was powerless to stop himself, Eric reached under the bed and retrieved the dusty package. He sat up and leaned against his bed with the box nestled between his knees. The box had his name in bold letters printed across the front, but other than that, there was no indication of its contents. But Eric didn't need a label to know it was a painting, and more specifically, a painting of a boat. Why Neal would think he'd care to hang an insipid painting in his room, Eric would never know. Perhaps because he'd spent a lot of time, in and out of fishing boats and the likes, Neal may have thought he hand an affinity for them, but he didn't.

Eric picked away at the packaging tape and removed it quietly from the box, least someone nosey come up the stairs to inspect and ask, 'Whats oo doin, Air-wick?' He scrunched the tape up into a ball and tossed it towards his desk then reached in and slid out the canvas frame. It was facing away from him, but before he'd even half turned it over, he could tell it wasn't a painting of a boat.

'My bad,' he shrugged while recalling the conversation he'd had with Neal but the blasé attitude soon dispersed as his eyes locked onto the image before him. It was his mom, and him sitting on some beach with a rocky outcrop behind them and aqua blue water lapping at their feet. In the painting, Eric was depicted as a boy of a much younger age but his mom, she was exactly how Eric recalled her, every feature perfect, every line, every colour, every nuance – just how she looked every time he closed his eyes and pictured her. It was unlikely his mom had given Neal a photo of the two of them, but maybe Peter had found one amongst his mom's personal possessions and given it to him. In any case, Eric couldn't recall having ever seen a photo to match this painting. He was mesmerised by his mom's likeness, but also by the scene that reminded him so much of all the wonderful days they'd spent lazing by the ocean, wondering what the poor people were doing. At moments like the one portrayed in the painting, Eric and his mom would consider themselves, the richest people on the planet. Unfortunately, it couldn't always be that way and as the years went on, moments like this one became further and further apart.

Eric ran his finger down his mom's beautiful flowing hair and touched the side of her face like he could feel the warmth of her skin in the tips of his fingers. The tears flowed once more as he carefully returned the painting to its box and slid it back under the bed, well out of sight. After a little while, he pulled himself together and stepped into the bathroom to splash water on his face and check his eyes for any incriminating evidence before tracking down Scottie to see if he could talk him into suggesting they all watch either Sharknado or Butcher in the Basement.

# # #

Eric slammed shut his Math text and pushed up from his desk while sighing with boredom. The set homework tasks were mind-numbingly simple and he considered, not for the first time, how easily he could use his talents to supplement his pittance of an allowance. He often heard his peers big timing themselves by suggesting they would jump at the chance to pay someone to complete their homework assignments but as tempted as he was to put his hand up to get the extra cash, he'd have to be an idiot to commit to something that would see him sitting at his study desk even one second longer than he was already forced to. Happy to be finished with the afternoon's excruciating exercise in futility, he made his way down stairs where he flopped onto the couch, snatched up the remote and began flicking through the channels.

"Hey," Scott-Allen pushed up from his pillow-pet and spun around to face the older boy. "I was washing that, Air-wick."

"You've been hogging the TV ever since we got home. It's my turn now, squirt."

"But I didn't get to see hows day get Milos back."

"They don't. I've seen this episode before and Milo accidently makes his way into a pet food company and gets stuck in the meat-grinding room where he-"

"Eric," Elizabeth called from the kitchen. "Come here please."

Eric glared at the young child before stuffing the remote down the back of the couch and moseying on over to the kitchen like he was out for a lazy afternoon stroll. "You rang?"

"Yes," Elizabeth checked on something in the oven then turned to her young charge. "Have you finished all your homework already?"

"Yeeess," Eric groaned while rolling his eyes. Every afternoon he got asked and every afternoon it was the same answer. "You know you could just assume that since I'm down here and not up in my room doing it, that it's done."

"I could or I could just ask."

"Whatever," Eric mumbled and started making his way back over to the TV.

"And since you are done, you can peel the potatoes and cut up the carrots."

"Oh man!" he wined. "Why do I have to? I don't see you ever asking Scott-Allen to slice up the tomato or take out the trash."

"He has his own jobs to do. Plus, he's not having to do extra chores to pay back a large sum of money, so it's a little different for him."

Eric stared at the woman, deciding if it was worth mentioning that he still had an English essay to write up but in the end he simply huffed and moved back across to the kitchen counter. "How many?"

"About five medium sized potatoes should do it, and maybe three carrots."

"Fine." Eric collected what he needed before coming back around and planting his butt on one of the kitchen stools. He'd hoped that at some point Elizabeth and Peter would stop playing the supplementary chores card as retribution for the Barkley heist but so far, there appeared to be no end in sight.

"Christmas is just around the corner," El started in on the obligatory small talk. "What are you hoping Santa will bring you?"

Eric looked up and issued her the most offended, most disbelieving, most outraged expression he could muster. "Seriously?"

Elizabeth smiled with genuine innocence and held up her hands in mock surrender. "I didn't know. I'm not up to speed with what age children stop believing in Santa Claus. I didn't want to just assume and be the one to burst your bubble."

"Rest assured," Eric dropped his gaze back down to the task at hand and continued to peel, "my bubble got burst long before you came along."

El's smile dissipated in an instant and once more she found herself comparing this child's upbringing to that of the child slouched on the pillow-pet. "Uh, I only asked because I know a few weeks back you asked about an electronic scooter. Is that still something you'd like for Christmas?"

"You don't need to get me anything."

"Of course we'll be getting you something for Christmas, sweetie and it's not that we have to, it's because we want to."

Eric checked his watch before stating matter-of-factly, "A scooters not such a good idea, anyway. Mom will be coming back to get me soon and I won't be able to take it with me when I go."

Elizabeth went about stirring a sprinkling of spice into the meat sauce while she considered how to respond. "You know…you could always leave your scooter here so it'll be something to look forward to when you come visit."

Eric paused with his peeler resting on a fresh potato but didn't look up as he also considered an appropriate response. "If you insist on getting me something, how about something small. Mom always got me little things so it was easy to pack up and take with us when we moved on, or," he shrugged, "something consumable is a good, practical idea."

El turned away and busied herself with looking for an item in the pantry while she forced back the moisture welling in her eye sockets. The length and breadth of what this child had gone through in his short years upset her to no end, but she couldn't afford the luxury of displaying her feelings on the subject in front of him. It wasn't easy though – eleven-year-old boys shouldn't have to be concerned with the practicality and size restrictions of a gift.

"You looking for something?" Eric was alerted by the sudden lull in the conversation.

"Ah…yeah," El made a show of checking the spice rack before turning back. "I just can't see the oregano."

Eric made an oops motion with his mouth. "I…I may have used the last of it one day last week when I made a grilled cheese sandwich after school…but there was only a little left anyway," he hastened to add.

"It's okay, sweetie, these things happened."

"That's not what you said when you caught me," the boy challenged.

"Because the dinner was five minutes off being served, I'd just stepped down to the laundry and when I came back, the first thing I see is you and Scott-Allen devouring a huge pile of sandwiches."

"We were both hungry."

"And I'd told you that dinner was almost ready."

"Fine, but can't you admit that maybe it was just a slight overreaction on your part – I hardly think it was worth the hiding you gave us."

"It was one whack each. If Peter had been home, you'd have got a lot more and you know it."

"Speaking of the tyrant, where is he anyways? Shouldn't he be well home by now?"

"He has a inter-departmental meeting that he said wouldn't finish until quite late." Elizabeth closed the pantry door and went about turning all the knobs down on the stove. "They were going to order food in."

Eric noticed that Elizabeth had turned off the heat and asked, "What are you doing?"

"We're just going to slip out and get some oregano. "Scott-Allen," she called out across into the living room, "get your shoe poddies on, sweetheart."

"Hey," Eric wiped his hand on the kitchen towel, "it's okay. I'll just run up to Kwan's. It'll take me five minutes. No need for us all to go."

"Ahhh…" Elizabeth considered. Eric was allowed to go up to the Seven Eleven with the neighbours kids if he asked first and a couple of times, he'd gone by himself thinking he could go unnoticed, but she just wasn't sure, "How about we all go for a quick walk. We'll take Satchmo and stretch his legs-"

"And before you know it, this three-ringed circus has turned a ten minute event into an all day marathon. How about I take Satchmo, if you're that concerned and at least the two of us can get it done before theses vegetables go out of date."

Elizabeth eyed the boy suspiciously, "How come you're so keen to go? You don't have cash in your pocket for a Slurpee do you?"

Eric huffed and pulled out his pockets, turning them inside out. "No, no such luck. I'd just hoped that if I went and got it for you, when I came back, this," he indicated the potatoes, "would be done already."

Elizabeth smiled as she collected her purse from the counter and took out a five dollar bill, which she handed over to the boy. "Okay, fair enough. But take Satch and don't go making any detours into the Seven Eleven."

"Why would I?" Eric sprouted with cocky innocence as he pocketed the money and called the dog over so he could attach the lead. "The Slurpee machine has been busted since before the weekend."

"And how would you know that?"

"Uh…I…" Eric shrugged on his jacket with haste and shuffled out the front door while mumbling some inaudible explanation that was never intended to be understood.

Once out onto the street and a safe buffer zone had been established between his current position and the house, Eric checked the inside pocket of his jacket and smiled when he discovered a twenty nestled deep in the corner. He knew he had stashed it there a little while back but he wasn't sure if it had been discovered and reclaimed by either of the oldies. He turned the corner and began jogging up to Kwan's. "Come on, boy," he encouraged the Labrador, as he wanted to make the green walk light before it changed. "If we're going to have time for the Seven Eleven, we've gotta speed it along."

Eric tied Satchmo up outside the convenience store and went in to find the oregano. Because he was in a hurry of course, it was so much more difficult to locate on the shelves but he eventually uncovered the small glass jar behind a bottle of sage. He whipped out the note Elizabeth had given him and dashed around to the counter, only to be beaten by some ancient old lady wielding a basket of non-essential incidentals. Eric wanted to scream at her and explain that this was a 'convenience' store, to be used for the occasional cooking item that one suddenly and unexpectedly realised they were out of, and not for a weekly grocery outing but he didn't. Considering he probably would have had to listen to her for a day and a half while she mumbled on about how her broken hip prevents her from travelling in cabs, he remained tight lipped and lined up behind her, whiling Kwan to rush through her inventory like there was no tomorrow. Even though the Slurpee machine was busted, the frozen yogurt dispenser was going strong and he calculated he'd need a good five minutes to consume a cookies n cream flavoured large serve, least he got a brain freeze.

Finally, after what seemed like the longest two minutes in all of eternity, the old rhino moved away with her collection of bags allowing Eric to dump his one item onto the counter.

"$3.30…" Kwan scanned the item and held out his hand.

Eric handed over the note and checked his watch. It had only been six minutes and twenty-eight seconds since he'd left the house and if he ran back, he'd still have a couple of minutes spare up his sleeve for the frozen yogurt. As soon as he had the change in his hands, he snatched up the bottle, and bolted out the door. "Come on boy," Eric hastily unravelled Satchmo's lead and pulled him to the edge of the curb. "You want to go across and get us a treat?" Eric glanced to the left – a lone car was coming but as soon as it passed, his path was free…although, the car didn't pass. As it approached it indicated and slowed down and soon came to a complete stop in front of the boy and his dog. Eric was about to curse when the passenger window came down and a wonderfully welcome face appeared. "Mom!"

"Hey, my beautiful Prince. Get in."

This time, Eric didn't need to be told twice and he certainly had no qualms about leaving the family pet by the side of the road. Tying Satchmo's lead once more to the nearest pole, he instructed the dog to sit, placed the bottle of oregano between the animal's front legs and jumped into the car. "Let's go!"