Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 48446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
“Not anymore.” I smiled at her, standing up, taking off my hat. In the new jeans, peacoat, scarf, sweater, hiking boots, and dress shirt, I didn’t look like one anymore either.
“Micah says you are.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Micah says?”
“Okay”—she grinned, black eyes glinting—“you caught me. Micah draws.”
“I know, I’ve seen him.”
“Go run,” she told Micah, who bolted off the porch and joined his brothers. “I’m glad to see the worthless nanny is gone and you’re here.”
“Only for a couple weeks.”
“Are you certain?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Well, because Micah likes you. He feels safe, like you won’t get hurt or leave him.”
“Get hurt like his grandmother, leave him like his dad.”
“Yes.”
“How would you know that?”
“Well…” She sat on the porch railing. “When I asked him to draw something that represented you, he drew a mountain.”
“Because I’m bigger than him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mountain, huh? Okay.”
“You don’t seem pleased.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“What’s wrong with being a mountain?”
“It’s so boring,” I grumbled. “I couldn’t be a mustang or a cheetah?”
She laughed softly. “A mountain is a very good thing, Mr. Yates.”
“Weber.”
Her eyes flicked to my face.
“Pardon me, ma’am, but if you would please call me by my given name, I would be much obliged.”
She nodded. “Obliged. I haven’t heard that word in years.”
“I suspect not.” I sighed.
“Well, Weber, I will tell you that a mountain is precisely what Micah needs right now. His grandmother died in front of him, the nanny ran away from home, and to him, in his mind, she took his father with her. He feels abandoned by both of them. Change is not good for him. He needs a foundation.”
I squinted at her. “Are you supposed to be saying all this to me?”
“Maybe not, but Lyn wanted you and me to be able to speak freely about Micah, so she signed paperwork this morning to make certain we could.”
“Waivers and such?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, but I would point out that Micah has the best foundation in his mother.”
“Who is frantically trying to build a new life for herself and her children and does not have time to sit and hug him…she just doesn’t.”
“But he’s a big boy.”
“He’s six. Six is not big. Six needs to be loved on very hard.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, again, he has a helluva mother.”
“Agreed, but like I said, she’s doing the best she can to navigate her loss and that of her children. She’s a single parent to three boys, each requiring her full attention. It is a daunting task that will greet her daily.”
“True.”
“I commend her, but she needs help. Children who don’t get what they need at home—love, rules, responsibility—look elsewhere for it. Kids are in crisis right now, Weber. All of them, not just these. We’re talking thousands without enough support. She needs help.”
“Like she needs to get remarried pronto?”
She laughed. “No, sir. I’m thinking more like a village,” she explained. “Single parents are amazing, astounding—my mother was one, for goodness’ sakes—but help, relief of some kind, in some form, is needed and necessary. Lyn needs support, and so do the boys.”
“Sure. That’s why she’ll get herself a full-time nanny after I leave.”
“Weber, what children all need, across the board, are people who care about them unconditionally and are invested in them. Children need role models, and not just heroes and miracle workers, but simply someone to stop and ask them how their day was, to pack a lunch sometimes, and sing along to the radio in the car.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You need to understand something that you might have missed.”
I waited and noticed, again, how lovely she was. Her heart-shaped face, black eyes, high cheekbones, and porcelain skin all added to her beauty.
“The day their nanny and their father walked out, you walked in.”
She lost me.
“Close a door; open a window. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
“Even if their father returns—which I find highly doubtful—the children are already scarred by his leaving. If he returned, the trust could, in time, be mended. But with his absence, the space between them grows wider and wider. Right now, these kids fear being abandoned, and so as adults they will either push people away so as not to be hurt, or hold them too tight and suffocate them.”
“I dunno, that seems much too simple to me.”
“And maybe it is, maybe this won’t affect them at all. What are your thoughts?”
“I have no idea.”
Quick nod. “I think the lesson of leaving will remain. We all carry what we’ve learned with us, our experiences, and for Tristan and Micah, now they won’t be so free with their hearts.”
I looked across at them, three little boys squealing in delight as they played on the tire swing, faces red from exertion and the chilly December air. The thought was sobering and sad that what their father did was imprinted on them forever.
“Phillip is young. He might not hold on to his father’s disappearance, but the other two are old enough to wonder, now, who else will go.”