Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [2]
Milo was sitting behind the wheel, a jar of jelly in his hand and four more sealed jars in his lap. His left hand wrapped tightly around the jar and his right gripped the lid, ready to turn. For a moment, he considered lying to the woman. After all, he’d spent the last three years of marriage, and two years of courtship before that, concealing these demands from his wife. His parents and even his friends were equally unaware, even though they consumed an enormous portion of his life. And even with the mounting pressure, greater than any he had felt before, he was still filled with shame of this secret part of him. Perhaps he could invent a story about contaminated jars of Smucker’s and the desire for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The story would have been ridiculous (least of all because he had no bread), but the truth, he knew, would be infinitely more so. Still, he might have tried to offer up a plausible explanation for the jars of jelly strewn about the car, but it was because he was about to open the fifth jar, and because he knew that he would need at least a couple more in order to silence the demand, that Milo finally decided to forgo the lies. Though it might have eventually proven impossible, perhaps he would have been able to put off the demands a little while longer, maybe long enough to find a hotel room and satisfy enough of them to make it back to Connecticut safely. But now that he was in the midst of satisfaction—had begun the process of release—he knew that there was no stopping. He could not simply toss the remaining jars into the backseat and drive on as if nothing were wrong. And from the look on the woman’s face as she placed the open jars on the floor, settled in to her seat, and turned to face him, it would’ve been impossible for her to ignore the jars as well.
The time for secrets had finally come to an end.
“Just give me a minute and I’ll explain everything,” Milo said, then turned the lid on the jar, absorbed the satisfying pop of the pressure seal, and sighed heavily.
chapter 1
When he first spotted the video camera sitting on the end of the park bench beneath the dying elm, Milo didn’t take it. He had wanted to take it, to be sure. Not steal it, but claim it first in the event that it had been left behind by a careless owner who might never return. But there were still a few stragglers in the park that evening, and one of them might have left the camera behind, relying on the goodness of man to keep it safe. Though a video camera was something Milo would have liked to own, the act of approaching the bench, reaching down, and placing his hands on the device would require more daring than he could ever muster. Just stopping to take notice of it had left Milo with the feeling that a thousand eyes had been cast on him, forcing him to nudge his dog forward along the path.
Opportunity lost, he had thought as he rounded the hill in the direction of his new home.
So when he returned the following evening and found the same camera in the same location, Milo couldn’t help but think that fortune was somehow smiling on him, forcing him into action. Though the north end of the park was typically deserted because of its lack of amenities (other than the single bench), the fact that the camera had lasted more than twenty-four hours without being claimed by someone, owner or otherwise, was remarkable. And although approximately the same number of stragglers was still present in the park, picnicking across the field near the gazebo and finishing up a game of basketball on the shadow-strewn court, Milo felt more emboldened this evening as he approached the shade of the elm.
Deciding to claim it for his own, he sat down beside the camera, commanding Skywalker, his newly renamed beagle, to heel while he stalled, hoping to add a perceived purpose to his stop. After what he felt was a sufficient period of time, he reached over and casually grabbed the device, which was small enough to fit in one hand, and had begun to straighten up when he noticed the nylon bag in the