CHAPTER TWELVE
It had been the worst day of his life.
"Daddy?"
Xeno was sitting at the top of the stairs. Confused as to why his father hadn't answered, he started walking down them. The railing was above his head, so he held the banisters to guide him down, traversing them like a mountaineer.
The kitchen was dimly-lit, the only source of light coming from the early-morning sun streaming in through the windows, catching the dust swirling lazily in the air.
He stood in the doorway and saw his dad clutching a note in his hand, white-knuckled.
It was slightly crumpled, with dents in the corners.
As he was reading it, he noticed two pink fridge magnets in his other hand.
Mummy left notes on the fridge for them all the time, and Xeno had been practising his reading. He slowly approached his dad, eager to prove himself.
"Daddy, can I tell you what it says?" He asked, looking up at his father. He jumped, clearly having been too lost in thought to notice his son.
"No, Xeno. Not now." Xeno thought he heard a wobble in his father's voice, but he couldn't be sure. He looked up and met his hazel eyes. For once, he didn't look like he knew what he was going to do next. He felt his stomach turn, he'd never seen his father like this before.
"What's wrong?"
He seemed to steel himself, looking up and blinking before saying in a gruff voice: "Nothing's wrong, Xeno. Would you want Nana to come over later?" He folded the letter twice and put it into his pocket, a feeble attempt to try and ignore it.
Xeno's face lit up. "Yes, please!" He went to hug his father, who knelt down and reciprocated, lifting him up.
The hug probably only lasted for ten seconds, but for him, the memory had stuck with him for a lifetime, following him everywhere.
Not just the hug, but that day. It had been the first time his father, a tall, burly man in his thirties, hadn't been able to protect him.
Muscular baker's hands aren't worth much in the arena of pink fridge magnets and crumpled letters with loopy handwriting.
Nana was the one who'd had to tell him they didn't know where Mummy had gone. She'd left. The letter didn't say where; the only thing that was clear was the time frame for how long she'd be away.
In no uncertain terms, it would be roughly forever.
They didn't talk about it much. Sometimes, it felt like a secret that only they knew.
Like cards kept close to your chest, away from the preening eyes of everyone else at the poker table.
Xeno held them with such force it felt as though he couldn't breathe.
His father became so busy with work at the bakery that they had little time to talk about it, anyway.
He threw himself into it wholeheartedly, as if he would find his wife hiding under a cupcake liner.
Even when he remarried, the bakery remained a constant in every Baxterson's life.
It was the one thing that his father had retained for his whole life, having inherited it from his own father, expecting to pass it down to his eldest son.
Xeno had trained under him for years. So had his stepbrothers, when they were old enough.
For his father, it seemed to be the only place he could truly relax.
Pastries and loaves and cakes couldn't leave notes on fridges, after all.