"You don’t know the whole story."
Tommy's face is hardened, set. His jaw juts out a little defiantly. His eyes are fire.
"You don’t know the whole story," he says again. "Everyone blames me, all the time, but I’m not the one who started it. Ask Jay. He’ll tell you."
I’m weary. I’ve been looking after the kids for hours and they show no sign of being ready for bed any time soon. I can’t wait to curl up quietly with my book and wait for the Johnsons to come home. But now I have to deal with their latest mess: they've been digging into their dad's hand tools and their mom's favourite vase lies in pieces on the living room floor, a screwdriver next to it. It's obviously been thrown from across the room.
These kids are a handful. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to babysit. Seemed like an easy gig at the time, is all I can say.
I sigh and turn to Tommy's brothers, Jay and Ben. "Guys, it's a simple question. Who threw the screwdriver?"
"Not me," Tommy snaps at once. I strongly suspect it was him, but the other two won't say a word. They cringe and stare down at the floor. Ben has his thumb lodged firmly in his mouth.
Image: greg westfall/Flickr
A response to @mariannewest's Monday freewrite response, hand tools.