Frog

Chapter 5 #2

After we had clam chowder and bread bowls—mine the spicy kind, the kids’ the regular—we headed over the bridge to Sausalito. Tristan had a cell phone, and used it to make the important call.

“It was really good,” he told his uncle on speakerphone. “We ate it all.”

“That’s awesome,” Cy praised. “I love it when you guys eat.”

I cleared my throat.

“Yes, yes,” he said, chuckling. “You won the bet.”

“I certainly did.” I snickered.

He groaned, and we hung up. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Spending time with Lyn’s boys was fun. Going to the psychologist proved to be a surprise.

I expected an office, a couch, everything I’d seen in the movies.

What I got was an older woman, Dr. Erin Watase, on a small farm in the foothills.

She had a few chickens, three donkeys, two cows, and four ducks.

I felt more comfortable than I had in days.

“You’re a real cowboy?” she asked when she and Micah finished their session and returned to the wraparound wooden porch. I’d been relaxing in a rocking chair, watching the boys push each other in the tire swing.

“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.”

I cleared my throat. “It’ll be me. I’m fixin’ to leave in a couple weeks, right after New Year’s.”

“Must you?”

“Pardon?”

“Is it absolutely necessary that you go?”

“Ma’am, if you knew what I normally do for a living, you’d get it.”

“Lyn said you’re a ranch hand. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

I raised a brow and gestured around.

“But could you not do something different?”

“I love how everyone thinks I can just change my whole life and who I am on a dime.”

She shrugged. “Change is like a giant hole we can’t see out of.”

I scowled at her.

“The fact is, Micah has bonded with you, Weber Yates. He might even talk, to you or about you, fairly soon. It’s in his eyes—the excitement, the expectation.

He so wanted to tell me about you today.

He couldn’t draw fast enough. He wanted to express things, and when I was deliberately obtuse, he was very irritated with me. ” Her smile was wicked.

“You tricked him.”

She shrugged. “I have a small window to bring him back from this before he closes off completely. Shocking him, putting him in a situation where someone else could be hurt if he didn’t use his voice, that’s all shit, you understand?”

I laughed. “I can’t believe you said shit.”

“Well, this is not a movie on the Lifetime Channel. We have to actually deal with this in real time and with real therapy. He had his voice shocked out of him. It won’t be shocked back.

It doesn’t work like that. It will come when it’s ready.

But if he can deal with the world without it, what’s to make him want it back? ”

“That makes sense.”

“But you, my dear man, you he wants to talk about and to talk to. You’re the anomaly, the new piece.

He was abandoned, and you appeared. Tristan has the same eyes for you, full of want and hope.

Whatever you do, don’t kill it, because I’ll have to kill you.

” She was tiny but apparently could be quite scary.

“That’s bullshit,” I growled at her. “You don’t get to lay that crap at my door. I ain’t responsible for the psyche—didn’t think I knew that word, didja?—of them three boys.”

She started giggling.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Oh my God.” She was laughing, loudly, and I really liked the sound. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“Before this?” I was confused.

And that was it: she was gone. She was a puddle of tears and snorts and raucous, howling laughter.

“Ma’am, you have lost your mind.”

It was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

I had no idea what set her off, but as she didn’t seem to be returning from the edge of sanity, I called the boys to me so we could go. This woman was insane. Why she had to hug me goodbye, and why I let her, I had no idea.

The kids’ daily schedule was a blur of activity.

Taking all three kids to karate, home for a snack, then Tristan to soccer practice, Pip to music, and Micah to art.

I was exhausted just from the driving, but fortunately for me, it was all programmed into the GPS of Lyn’s SUV.

She had taken Cy’s second car, his normal, everyday Lexus, and he had taken the BMW.

“Do you have a license, Weber?” she had asked me tentatively, and I had pulled it from my wallet and passed it to her. “Arizona?”

I nodded.

“Wait, are you kidding me?” she asked when she noticed the expiration date.

“Yep, good for twenty-eight years, you’re readin’ that right.” I waggled my eyebrows. “And the address is the PO box of a friend of mine, so I’m good.”

“How?” She could not get over it.

I pointed at the issue date. “See that? I was thirty-two when I got that.”

“Ohmygod.” She was indignant. “You don’t look like this picture at all!”

“Nope,” I agreed. “Hard livin’ ages you up a bit.”

“Yes, but this won’t expire—I’m stunned. What the hell is the DMV there thinking?”

“That they are a highly transient state, and they don’t want fifty million people in line at the damn DMV on a daily basis.”