It was a few stumbles before Anita registered what he said. Usually, it was an argument. Sometimes, silence. Had this one just said she was right?

She slowed to walk beside rather than ahead of her … son. Father? Son-father. Maybe she’d raised this one right. Maybe she’d finally gotten something right. Or maybe she’d just confused the poor thing so much he actually agreed with her.

Stick! Yes! A stick! They were going shopping in broad daylight! She’d actually be able to see what she was stealing! … Something seemed off about that. Like it could get complicated, fast. Nah. No matter!

“Perfect,” Anita said, giving it a smack against her palm and then using it mostly to balance better. “Thank you, son.”

It was fairly quiet in the alley behind the shops. One ragged woman was slouched against a wall, drinking. Anita eyed the bottle, then looked to her son with just a hint of embarrassment, and kept on toward the wall. She peered in a window, then closed her eyes. Thirteen windows down, and she prodded the window with her stick.

It rattled. She licked her lips. Then, tapped along the frame with the stick, palm hitting the base of it lightly against glass.

It cracked. She heard it, felt it, more than she saw it, but she knew what she was searching for. Anita steadied the stick against the glass, and pressed her weight against the weak point The crack grew. Pieces chipped. The stick gave through suddenly, and she lurched forward. Then, with a sigh, she drew the stick hard against shards to clear them from the damaged pane.

The other drunken woman looked their way. Looked Father Brennan up and down.

“Hey,” she called, blearily. “Are you a priest?”

This woman was really just breaking a window in broad daylight. With someone around to witness it, too. Said witness appeared to be in her own state of intoxication, and thus Malachi worried little about what her words could do, but she was present for the crime all the same.

Once his "mother" had chosen her window and set to tapping it with her stick, he moved to stand behind her, casting another glance out to the other woman in the alley. Malachi stood with his body angled to cover the window from view, but there was nothing he could do about that sound.

Crack.

Glass cracking outward from a center-point and then collapsing, in a mess of razor-sharp shards, over the windowpane and the ground. Distinctive sound, that.

Malachi stepped closer to the window and brushed the biggest shards away with his sleeve. He certainly hoped she didn't intend on getting him in there, because fuck if he could fit through there without causing a whole lot more of a racket. A hiss escaped him as a bit of glass sliced the side of his hand when he knocked more of it away.

Shallow cut, but it stung.

He'd stepped away to take a look at it when he heard the other woman speak up.

"Yes," answered Malachi. "Father Stanley Merritt."

His hand lifted to his mouth, and he licked away the blood that'd welled up from the cut.

"Need any help?" he questioned the drunken woman behind him, but kept his gaze on the one in front of him.

A shadow fell over her as her ‘son’ covered for her, but Anita was focused.

She did frown when her dear son started clearing glass.

“Honey, I have a stick,” she admonished, though gently. “Here.”

She slammed it into the pane, rushing now to keep her holy son from poking around. It probably would have helped if she’d waited for him to move, but. But. Did he know how amazing it felt to hit things this drunk?

Anita let out a satisfied, low hum as she smashed, forgetting her original impulse to protect him.

“Don’t lie,” Anita said in between smashes … “Father Benjamin Ward.”

The woman looked between them, furrowing her brow (though whether it was in confusion or against the bright, bright sun? Their guess was as good as any).

“I do,” Anita said, chucking the stick aside. “Help me up, son.”

Right, she had a stick. Malachi seemed as determined as she was in clearing away the glass, regardless of the nicks he scored and the careless beating of his 'mother's chosen tool.

His arm did pull out from the frame once a shard had sliced him deep enough to bleed.

The correction struck him as somewhat odd -- he could not say with any certainty that he'd heard of any Benjamin Ward, but the surname was familiar. It was... the one she'd mentioned before, in the church, and... the one given to him by that little boy that'd taken his candles.

"Father Benjamin Ward," he confirmed with a nod.

Quick on his feet, Malachi turned back to his drunken companion. Help her up, she said. Which meant, once again, touching her... piss-soaked body. A deep breath was drawn in through his nose, then he relented to do just that.

"Careful, mother," murmured Malachi, as he held out an arm and crouched down for her to use his knee and shoulder as steps.

"Did you- why did you throw the stick? Take that with you."