Chapter 22
DENNY
I try not to fall asleep holding Ty. In reality, I don’t think I could fall asleep with him in my arms even if I wanted to.
The internet is a scary place, filled with every single horror story you can imagine.
While I can’t say that a baby dying in their sleep or being smothered truly registered just how horrific the event would be before Ty, now it feels like a direct warning.
DON’T DO THIS!
So why do I read nightmares? Honestly, once you fall down a rabbit hole, you just keep falling. There’s no stopping. No slowing. You just keep plummeting for hours and hours until something physically reaches in and yanks you out.
Following a yawn, I kiss the top of Ty’s head and gently lie him back into the side sleeper. His little face scrunches, so I hum and rub his stomach for a minute. It doesn’t take long for him to settle again.
Another yawn overtakes me, and I slip back down under the blankets, watching Ty with heavy eyes.
“I’ll feed him next time,” Tyler says from behind me.
A smile climbs, and I roll to face him. He looks very different without glasses. I love having an uninterrupted view of the perfection that is his face, but I also miss them. There’s something that feels incomplete about him like this. Maybe because I know he doesn’t see clearly without them.
Tyler seriously takes my breath away, though. Looking at him leaves a warm, tingly feeling in my chest that has my brain short-circuiting.
Except right now, he looks sad. He’s looked sad since the phone call with the funeral home yesterday afternoon, asking him what he wanted to do with his sister’s body—bury it or cremate it.
When he stopped crying, a dark cloud remained, clinging to his shoulders for the rest of the day. I still see it hanging over his head.
“Cuddle with me,” I murmur and reach for him.
Tyler doesn’t argue. He slides close, and we literally wrap around each other. Limbs tangle. My fingers sink into his hair. His arms wrap around my back, and he buries his face in my chest.
“What can I do to help you with the funeral home?” I ask quietly.
He sighs. “I don’t know. It’s not something we ever talked about. I mean, we’re not even thirty—why would we talk about death and how we want to be buried? I don’t know what she’d want.”
“I think you know,” I say. “You’ve said that you were very close. You talked all the time and about everything. What do you think she’d want?”
He’s quiet for so long, I think he’s fallen asleep. When he speaks, he says, “Both options are morbid. Either I let her body stay in a damn freezer until the ground thaws—as it is now—or I have someone literally incinerate her until her ashes can fit in a planter. I hate both of those options.”
“Well. We can see about mummification.”
Tyler snorts. “No.”
“I can build her a pyramid, and we’ll hide her inside a labyrinth.”
“You’re just pulling up all kinds of ancient culture techniques, eh?”
“In some modern cultures, people keep their deceased loved ones in their house for a year and treat them as a living part of the family,” I offer.
“Yeah, we’re not doing that either.”
Grinning, I kiss the top of his head and hug him a little tighter to me. “How about we shift gears a little? Where would you like her final resting place to be? Do you see a minimal stone or something grand?”
Tyler sighs. “I guess she should be buried here in Winnipeg, right?”
“Why?”
“This is where Ty is. He can visit her grave whenever he wants if it’s close and we don’t have any actual ties anywhere.”
“You’ve been a hockey fan for a long time, yeah?”
I can practically feel his confusion as to why I’ve changed the subject to hockey. “Yes. Since we were kids. Why?”
“Then you know this isn’t a typical job. I don’t truly accept a job offer. When I’m traded, I go.”
His entire body stiffens, and I feel his breathing freeze. “You’re going to leave,” he murmurs.
“Eventually, I imagine I’ll be traded. It’s rare that someone will spend their entire career with one team. This isn’t even my first team.”
“Where—I, uh…” Tyler takes a deep breath. His fists press hard against my back. “Where will you go when you retire? Where’s home?”
“If you’re asking where I grew up, Missouri. However, given how I grew up, I’ve never considered it home. I guess I don’t have a plan, and it’s not something I’ve given much thought to since I have no immediate plans to retire.”
Tyler takes a deep breath. “You could come back here.”
“To Winnipeg?”
“I don’t know. Winnipeg is nice. I just mean… here in Canada.”
“You want Ty to grow up in Canada, do you?”
“He is Canadian,” Tyler says, and I feel his grin against my collarbone.
“His mother is Canadian, and he was born in Canada. Also, no offense, but the US is a shitshow. We believe in human decency, basic human rights for everyone, education, science, not shooting up unarmed children at school or using them as bait to force entry, and we’re not interested in a dictatorship, so… Take that how you will.” He sniffs.
I laugh. “To tell you the truth, I like that idea. Besides it being fucking cold, I like what Canada has to offer. Are you suggesting here in Winnipeg?”
Tyler shrugs. “We don’t have somewhere that we ‘came from’ that we wanted to go home to. We always talked about living in Quebec City, but life took us in different directions, where I ended up in Vancouver, and Sally was here in Winnipeg. But where doesn’t truly matter.”
I nod minutely as I think about it. It’s kind of far off to think about, but then again, is it? Who knows when I’ll want to retire? What if I get injured? What if no one wants me when my contract is up?
“Winnipeg isn’t a bad place to be,” I agree. “I have friends here. Permanent residents of Winnipeg.”
“Who? Not the hockey players, right?”
“Kroy and Carson.”
“Weird that they were born and raised here. Neither have truly Canadian surnames,” he muses.
“Kroy’s father is a transplant, but his mother is a born-and-raised Canadian.
I think his father is from Wales or… Europe, at any rate.
Carson…” I think about what he told me regarding his childhood.
I’m confident he shares his last name with his parents—his adoptive parents, who we refer to as his real parents.
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t even know if Westwood is a European name or a Western name.
Either way, both were born here, and they don’t plan to move away. ”
“So Winnipeg then?”
“I don’t see why not. Sally’s house is here, and you planned to give that to Ty, so it makes sense to be close, right?”
Tyler sighs. His body relaxes. “Yes. But I truly don’t have a say in this. If you want to be somewhere else, then who am I to stop you or try to convince you otherwise?”
“Tyler.”
“This isn’t the same as the sexy talk that we agreed not to mince while discussing. This is your child and your life.”
“You plan to be a permanent figure in his life, don’t you?”
Tyler pulls back, and I reluctantly loosen my hold so he can look at my face.
“I’m his uncle. Not his father. That’s very different.
Not to truly compare myself to your crazy mother, but that’s along the same lines as me demanding that I have uncle rights to your child.
He’s your child, and yes, I would do anything to be with him every single day, but ultimately, I’m his uncle. Not his father.”
My gut rejects everything he’s saying. It’s true enough, sure, but it all leaves a very sour taste in my mouth and makes my stomach churn.
“Is that all you are?” I ask, more to myself than to him.
“I… yes?”
The confusion on his face makes me smile.
“Okay, well… I hate it, and we’re going to pretend that’s not the case.”
Tyler’s eyebrows knit together. “What does that even mean?”
“It means.” I lick my lips. Am I saying these words? “It means that I think you’re equally a parent to Ty as I am.”
He inhales sharply, eyes widening as he stares at me.
“I mean, if that’s what you’d like to be. I’m not forcing it on you. Obviously.”
A beat passes in silence. He doesn’t move. I’m not sure he’s breathing. Just as I’m beginning to regret the words I’ve said, Tyler presses his mouth to mine, arms gripping me almost painfully to him.
“You’re serious?” he asks.
“I don’t want to do this alone. It terrifies me.
I’m not asking you to, you know, be with me.
Just to be Ty’s parent with me. Whatever else happens is separate for now.
I don’t want you to always feel like I’m going to override your decision or make you feel like you have to wait to ask me something. I want to be equals in this.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I’m trying really hard not to start sobbing again. I get that I’m allowed to cry, having lost my sister, but I’m so tired of crying. And also, not breathing through my nose.”
I grin. “You don’t have to answer now—”
“Yes, fool. Yes, I want that. I want to be his parent too. I want to parent Sally’s son with you.”
“You know, in a way I can’t fully express, this feels a lot like we’re both uncles stepping in. Maybe because I never fully hopped on board with parenthood until it was forced on me like this.”
Tyler frowns.
Laughing, I press my mouth to him. “I swear to you, I’ve thought about this a lot, and yes, the circumstances made a lot of this decision for me, right?
But ultimately, it’s my decision to stay or go.
I’m choosing to be the best parent I can be.
No hatred. No yelling. No resentment. Not because it’s expected of me, but because I want to. I promise.”
He nods.
Something shifts between us. I can’t say that anything is truly different. We get Ty up together, which I suppose is a little different. Usually, one of us sleeps while the other gets Ty up. This morning, we do so together. We dress together. We make breakfast together.
Tyler comes down to the basement gym, and while he doesn’t exactly work out with me, he and Ty spend the couple of hours I’m there moving around the equipment and being cute as fuck.
Just as we’re making our way up the stairs, my doorbell rings. I’m not sure why, but something clenches in my stomach. I kind of don’t want to answer the door.
“Go into the other room,” I tell Tyler as I hand him Ty. He glances toward the entry but doesn’t question. With the towel I’d been using to keep my sweat off Ty, I wipe my face and then hang it around my neck.
I’m apparently slow to answer because the doorbell rings again just as I’m opening the door. I recognize Nate Folley with Child Aid Services. With him is a uniform police officer. Yep. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened the door.
“Hello, Mr. Willow,” Nate greets, offering me his hand. “This is Officer Justin Shaffer.”
“Let me guess. Another anonymous tip came in,” I suggest.
Nate inclines his head.
“Fine. What’s the claim this time?” I glance at the police officer. “Abuse?”
“Can we come in and check on your son, Mr. Willow?” Officer Shaffer asks.
For just a second, I think, not a damn chance.
But I think better of it. “Yes. I’m going to give you the same instructions I gave Nate when I allowed him inside a couple weeks ago.
Don’t touch my child. He’s still young, and I don’t want him exposed to outside germs. With his mother passing shortly after birth, we’re only getting the kinds of antibodies and immunity he can from others’ milk provided by the hospital.
If you want him examined, I can call the nurse who’s been here every week since I brought him home and who has graciously taken probably a hundred calls within the first week as she talked me off the ledge on how to take care of my newborn. ”
“You’re still in touch with the hospital?” Nate asks.
“Often. Not just for milk, but I call April—the nurse—regularly. She also personally drops off milk and checks on Ty because I’m paranoid. The internet is filled with all kinds of horrors that can befall a helpless newborn.”
Nate looks at the officer, and I can just see him saying, see? I imagine that the call didn’t come into CAS this time. It was called into the police department.
“I can also log into the portal, and you can see all his well-child exams. They’ll confirm that there’s no evidence of abuse, neglect, or malnourishment. Except, I might add, when my mother forced her way in and ripped my newborn from his uncle’s arms.”
“I’m sorry,” Officer Shaffer says and pauses in taking off his shoes to face me. “What?”
“I’ll show you the videos from my cameras.” I indicate the one watching us right now and the video doorbell.
“Do you have the whole house watched?” Officer Shaffer asks as he rights himself.
“No. The outside perimeter and just inside all the exterior doors,” I answer. “I’m from the US, so I’m a little paranoid about assholes forcing their way into my house for whatever reason they’re spewing that day.”
He gives me a bemused look.
Tyler is in the living room, holding Ty to his chest. He looks absolutely terrified, though he does well in his attempt to conceal it and remain calm.
“I would appreciate speaking to your nurse,” Officer Shaffer says. “If she’s able, I’d also appreciate it if she’d be willing to join us and examine your son for us. I’d also like to view your videos of your mother. Do the cameras record voices?”
“Yes, they do.”
I make the call to April, and she agrees to come over. She was walking out of the hospital as she spoke to me, having just ended her shift.
Then I hand my phone over to Officer Shaffer and Nate so they can view my mother. I can tell by the way Officer Shaffer presses his lips together as soon as my mother’s voice is heard that she’s the one who made the call.
When finished with the videos, which they watch multiple times, I open the patient portal and let them read over Ty’s well-child exams.
The cherry on the cake is when April gets here, and she’s absolutely furious that these accusations are presented. I enjoy watching her scold both of them over and over as she does what they ask. It doesn’t take my anger away, but I feel much better with her presence in my house.