I have wrestled with this story under several other titles. Received a number of rejections and have now re-edited and added a new title and intro which I believe finishes the work. I will quote the new intro here, a small piece of a vocal work from the 1600’s.
__________________________

Tell me, some Pitying Angel
by William Baker

Tell me, some Pitying Angel
Tell me, some Pitying Angel quickly say,
Where does my Soul’s sweet Darling Stay?
In Tyger’s, or more cruel Herod’s way?
Ah! rather let his little Footsteps press
Unregarded through the Wilderness,
Where milder Savages resort,
The desert’s safer than a Tyrant’s Court.
Nahum Tate (libretto,lyricist)/Henry Purcell (composer)from The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation, 1693.

His mother gone a week and it was two days since talking to his father. The cheap townhouse rental became an oven and the refrigerator and cabinets, spare on the best of days, now absent of anything. Mid-summer in Central Indiana and stifling hot, brutal hot, savage hot. Hot that breaks the air conditioner and the landlord doesn’t fix. Now hot where Roger must get on his junk bike and ride to the other end of town to find his father because he doesn’t answer the phone. Something needed to happen before CPS discovered he was alone. The CPS lady already told his mother that she was on her ‘last nerve.’