Chapter Five Madelyn
It’s everything I have not to lecture. Not to crack, crumble, and fall apart. Instead, I give Zack a bubble bath, where I watch him like a hawk, washing the lake water off of him, thrilled that he’s not upset about the idea of getting wet again.
I make Zack frozen waffles, since he lost his first breakfast, and hot “tiny guy tea” (which is just honey and hot water). I wrap him in blankets, put him on the couch with me, and put on a show that Zack will watch a dozen episodes of without complaining.
Is that shitty parenting?
I sit with him, trying to answer work emails, trying not to think about Eli’s threats—and how much weight this near-drowning could have on a judge’s decision on who gets to raise my son.
My son. Almost drowned.
Everything in me is shaking, and I don’t know what to say to Zack. I don’t want to make him more afraid.
I close my computer and pull Zack into my lap. He immediately cuddles in, head tight under my chin. “Mama,” he murmurs.
“Little man... That was scary today.” My arms tighten around him. I have to swallow hard to keep my voice steady.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know how much I love you?”
“Yeah.” Zack squirms around to look up at me, a sleepy smile on his face.
“So you have to be careful. Have fun, but be careful. Because if anything ever happened to you, my heart would break. In a million, billion pieces.”
“Mine would break in a trillion, billion,” Zack’s hand reaches up and grabs my hair softly, little fingers holding onto it with gentle possessiveness.
“We’re going to take good care of each other,” I whisper. “Stick close together.”
Zack nods. “And Mercer.”
“Mercer?” I’m surprised Zack remembers the heroic kraken lifeguard’s name.
Why would you be surprised at that? This kid remembers everything, even things you want him to forget.
“He’ll help.” Zack reaches under his little blue bathrobe and tugs on the whistle that’s still around his neck. “You should swim with us.”
“I... I know how, sweetie. The lessons are for you.”
“I want you,” his voice has an edge of a whine, and right now, I can’t handle anything making him unhappy. I keep thinking about all the time I miss out on really playing with him, even though we’re in the same house, the nights I prayed he’d go to sleep fast so I could have a little time alone...
If Mercer hadn’t been there—or if Eli is serious about fighting for custody—alone could be my new reality.
“I’ll swim, too. If Mr. Mercer doesn’t mind.”
“He won’t,” Zack says with the ease of an infallible almost-three-year-old.
“Do you like this show? Do you want to go do something else?” I ask, suddenly uneasy with how sleepy my child seems, even though he’s been breathing, eating, and chattering away for a few hours now with no evidence of his earlier ordeal.
“Sit on you,” Zack says, head tipping back.
Just sitting. Holding him. Keeping him safe.
“Sounds amazing.”
I love the feel of this little, warm form in my arms. I love the way the light in our new living room spills in, and the summer sun isn’t too aggressive here in this lakeside town. In moments, I start to feel myself drifting off, too.
Then, Zack’s voice drags me back to alertness. “He’s cool.”
“Who?”
“Mercer,” he murmurs in a sleepy voice, snuggling in deeper. “He’s blue. Or green.”
“I think it’s a shade called teal. Or maybe aquamarine.” I blush when I think about the kraken lifeguard.
I kissed the heck out of him.
He kissed me back in a second, startled into it, probably.
My cheeks get hotter. I haven’t kissed anyone in over three years. Eli and I stopped being “romantic” towards the end of my pregnancy, and by the time Zack was three months old, we were separated.
If I think about it (which I wasn’t, thank you very much, until Zack started it), it was a thankful kiss, with no carnal implications.
Until maybe at the very end, when the kiss was over, and Mercer was staring at me a little too long.
That mention about doing things with eight tentacles.
Eight useful tentacles, plus two arms...
No. No, no. Krakens obviously wouldn’t get into anything serious with a human.
Humans don’t live in the water. He wouldn’t be a long-term partner, and that’s all I would ever consider.
Zack doesn’t need men to come and go in his life.
If I ever get involved again, it’ll be with someone good, someone who stays, who understands.
“You’re so soft. Squishy Mommy.” Zack turns sideways to burrow into me, both little arms locked around mine.
It’s the best thing to be his soft, squishy mom, his huggable person in a world that should already have treated him better.
I hug back, content to be a pillow, even while I acknowledge that so many men wouldn’t like this post-partum body that kept an extra layer of padding, that has new sags and droops at thirty-one that it never had before.
Eli hated that. We used to bike together—that’s how we met, on a biking trail with a group of mutual friends.
He told me he used to ride behind me so he could watch my ass straddle the saddle.
Watch my toned thighs hugging and pumping.
That was sexy and flirtatious then, back before I realized it wasn’t only flirting, it was a way he determined my worth.
Mercer, just as an example, mind you, looks like he’s nothing but solid muscle.
I had never felt a kraken’s tentacle before today, and I didn’t register it at the time, but now I remember the feel of his tentacle on my waist in the water, guiding us all to shore.
Not a long touch, not a wrong touch, but suddenly memorable for the sheer muscular weight of it.
That heroic, waterbound hunk of pure muscle meant nothing flirtatious at all with his tentacle comment, or with his intense stare. He was just trying to educate you after you confessed your complete ignorance of anything to do with krakens, Madelyn.
But he is a really nice guy. And aside from royal purple, I think that particular shade of teal is going to be my new favorite color.
“You nap, and then we’ll make some popcorn and color in the new coloring books Grandma sent you in the Moving Kit.”
“Ooh, we can open it?” Zack’s voice loses some of its sleep edge.
“After a little rest. A mini-nap.” I kiss his curls and smile, thinking about my mom’s brilliant plan of filling a big cardboard box with dozens of books from thrift shops, new coloring books and art supplies, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and who knows what else, and then telling Zack he could only open it after we were officially moved in.
New things to enjoy in your new home, she’d said.
“I miss Grandma.”
“Me, too. Don’t worry, honey. We’ll make new friends here. They won’t be family like Grandma, but they could be almost as good.” I hope.
“Like Mercer? And Allison?” Zack’s hand goes back to his whistle again.
“Like Mercer and Allison,” I agree. Maybe especially Mercer.
Don’t be so silly, Madelyn.
“Buddy, I really, really have to do work today. If I don’t, we’re going to be in trouble,” I tell Zack the next morning as I strap him into the bike seat and tug his sweatshirt up close around his throat. It’s cool before seven, even if it already looks like it’s shaping up to be a hot, sunny day.
“Can you work on the porch? I can play in our park?”
“Yes, you can, but I can’t play with you too much. I want to, but when I take playtime breaks, I have to keep ‘em short,” I strap on my helmet and tug down my second pair of swim shorts, which are also tight and hug my marshmallow thighs, making them suitable for biking.
“We can set the timer.”
“We can. You know, you’re a big, brave helper.”
“I’m brave.”
I look back, but before I do, I already know he’s clutching that whistle again. He slept with it in his hand since I wouldn’t let him wear it around his neck to sleep in case it tangled around his throat during the night.
“You are brave. Even without that whistle,” I say gently, starting to pedal. “I don’t want you to think that the whistle is what’s doing it. It’s your brave heart that makes you courageous.”
Zack chews on that word a little. “Courgous,” he finally attempts, rhyming it with gorgeous.
“Courageous. Full of courage!”
“Courage-us.”
“Better.”
“Is Mercer courgous?” He reverts to his first version, making it sound like “gorgeous.”
Mercer is kind of gorgeous, isn’t he? I mean, for being the first kraken I’ve ever seen.
Heck, any man I’ve ever seen. I didn’t really care about it at the time, of course, but upon reflection, wow.
Gorgeous. And “courgous.” I smile to myself and answer, “Yes, I think lifeguards are very courageous. They have to react fast and think of others first. They have to know all kinds of medical and safety stuff.”
“Could I be one? When I’m big?”
“You could. I would be proud of you for picking a job like that. But I’d also be proud of you for picking any job that you do well, that you give your best.”
“But I can’t be a dog, right?”
I let out a single blast of a laugh. This kid.
I never know what he’ll say, and even though I usually think of Zack as purely sweet, smart, and silly, sometimes he makes me laugh like no one else.
“No, buddy. You can’t be a dog. You could be a vet and take care of dogs.
You could be an animal trainer and train dogs. You could groom them.”
“Why do they put the dogs on trains?”
Another snicker as I ride my bike along the quiet street, loving the lack of traffic and the simple, homey scenery, a blend of small towns, green lawns, and trees. “No, to train is a fancy word for teaching, but it’s a little different.”
“Can we go on a train?”
“We can. Someday. Okay, here we go. Oh, look, Mr. Mercer is already waiting for us.”