Chapter 20
Blastman
ZOE
Anine-year-old superhero named Blastman sits in my backseat, and he has informed me, twice now, that Blastman does not respond to the name Eli for the duration of this mission.
“Copy that, Blastman,” I say into the rearview mirror, because I’m a professional. “ETA to Kingston Lake is three minutes. Want to brief me on today’s powers, or is it classified?”
He considers this with gravity. “Speed. Animal communication. Talking to ghosts. And time travel, but only short distances. Like a day.”
“Only a day?”
“More than a day gives you a headache.”
“Of course it does.” I make a mental note to write that down for the play, because Eli’s drama teacher needs to understand the rules of Blastman, and Eli will absolutely quiz her on them. “What about flight?”
“That’s Superman. Blastman doesn’t fly. He runs and time-travels. There’s a difference.”
“My bad.”
“It’s okay.” He’s wearing the costume—a red hoodie with a jagged silver lightning bolt that’s definitely not gold like the Flash’s—that I helped him paint last night using a stencil and three swears I hope he didn’t catch. The hood is up and will not be coming down.
Method acting, after all.
The fact that we’re going to Kingston Lake is a small miracle.
Blastman, like Eli, has very specific feelings about bodies of water, none of which involve getting in one.
We sold it to him as a wildlife reconnaissance mission.
We will walk the property. We will not approach the water.
We will meet, and I quote, “real animals in their natural habitat,” which is true.
Sort of. He doesn’t know that the owner of the property, Maisie Kingston, Brooks Kingston’s grandmother, has all the wildlife domesticated and fully open to safe treats.
Mostly we’re going because Sydney’s been begging to meet Eli since he’s been at Jonah’s, and because Maisie Kingston, the unofficial mayor of everything within shouting distance of her front porch, has decreed that today is tea day.
When Maisie decrees, you put the kettle on. I learned that one the easy way.
Hey, I like tea. The liquid and the gossip.
Unless it turns to Jonah and me, and the countertop episode that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since it happened.
The thing that now makes my skin warm when I just look at Jonah, which has to be a bad thing.
Speaking of Jonah…
He’s at the rink. Drills. Suicides. Whatever men in pads do when their nine-year-old has told them they need to improve their game. I have a video of him doing crossovers on my phone that I have absolutely not watched four times since this morning.
I pull through the Kingston gate, gravel popping under the tires. Sydney’s already on the porch of the cabin, blond ponytail swinging, hand up in a wave like she’s been standing there since dawn. Knowing Syd, she has.
“That’s her,” I tell Blastman. “Aunt Sydney. She’s a sportscaster. She talks fast, and she likes you already.”
“How does she like me already? She hasn’t met me.”
“It’s an aunt thing. Genetic.”
He digests this and pulls his hood lower.
Sydney crosses to the car the second I park, and I watch her do the calibration—where her face arranges itself into something casual and unbothered before Eli climbs out.
It is one of the more loving things I’ve ever watched a person do.
She’s rehearsed this. She’s talked herself through this.
And when Blastman opens the door and stands in his hoodie and his lightning bolt, looking at her with skepticism, she just tips her chin and says, “Hey, Blastman. I’ve been wanting to consult on the animal communication thing—I’ve got intel. ”
I could kiss her on the mouth. I don’t. I just shut my door and watch.
Eli’s hood relaxes. “What kind of intel?”
“A pair of beavers live on this property who I’m ninety percent sure can be reasoned with. I think you could probably talk to them. I’ve been trying for years, but I don’t have the powers.”
A lie. Syd, Maisie, and Brooks consider those beavers family.
“What are their names?”
“Floyd and Fiona.”
“Those are good beaver names.”
“Right? Maisie named them. She has opinions about beaver names.”
“Okay.” He pulls the hood back, and Sydney’s eyes get shiny and then unshiny again so fast I’m proud of her.
She doesn’t hug him. She doesn’t ask him a single thing about Rosie, or court, or Gwen, or Jonah, or how he’s sleeping, or his therapist, or any of the questions I know are sitting on her tongue like hot coals.
March has warmed to April, and the wind’s now a breeze as Syd walks. Eli follows, and I trail behind him like a documentarian, phone already out, because I know Jonah will want every frame later.
The path along the lake’s edge is maples going copper. Reeds whispering. The lake itself is doing that gorgeous flat blue mirror thing, and it’s not even trying.
Sydney leads us off the path before Eli has time to register that we’re near water, slipping into a stand of birch where the underbrush has been cleared into something that looks accidental but is absolutely not. There’s a flat rock near a slow inlet.
Sydney sits on it, cross-legged, and pats the spot next to her. “Okay, Blastman. First lesson in beaver communication. They are extremely food motivated. Same as the rest of us.”
She produces, from a little canvas bag, a Tupperware of blueberries. “Hold a few in your hand. Flat palm. Don’t move fast. Don’t talk yet. Just… open up your power. Whatever it is. Tune in.”
He does it. Of course he does it: Blastman takes his job seriously.
He sits on the rock with his palm flat, his hood back, his lightning bolt rumpled, and closes his eyes like he’s listening to something only he can hear.
I’m doing my best not to make a sound because I’m filming this, and if Jonah Holt does not get to watch his son tune into beaver frequency, I’ll have failed at my one job.
Sydney whistles. Low, soft, two notes. Same whistle she’s used since I’ve known her.
Water ripples at the bank. Then a wedge of brown moving through the water, then another behind it, and Floyd and Fiona—because these beavers listen to Sydney Holt—climb up onto the muddy lip of the inlet and waddle over like they’re collecting rent.
“Holy, wow,” he whispers, then makes a small, knocked-over sound that comes out of him before he can stop it.
“Steady,” Sydney whispers. “Hand still.”
Floyd, who’s bigger and more entitled, gets there first. He sniffs Eli’s palm, then he takes a blueberry, neat as a thief, and gobbles it.
Fiona is right behind him.
Eli’s not breathing. I’m not breathing. The phone in my hand is shaking.
Floyd takes another blueberry. So does Fiona. They’re eating out of his hand, and Eli’s watching them like it’s a miracle.
“It’s working,” he whispers. “Zoe. It’s working.”
“I see it, Blastman.”
“They’re letting me. I think they understand.”
“I think they do.”
He turns his head, oh-so-slowly as not to spook the beavers, and looks at me. The hood slips off his hair. His mouth is open just a little. His eyes are wide, like he’s forgotten to be angry or careful or nine going on forty.
“I wish Jonah could see this,” he whispers.
“I’m videoing it, Blastman.”
He grins at me, big and wide and missing one of the back molars he lost on a piece of pizza crust last week. Then he turns back to the demanding beavers because Blastman has responsibilities.
I keep filming, my hand steady now. Behind the screen my eyes are doing something inconvenient, and Sydney pretends she’s looking at a leaf because she’s the best person I know. Her eyes might be doing the same inconvenient thing.
Jonah’s going to watch this video and possibly text me from the next room.
Jonah’s going to be sad as hell he missed it.
But Eli was right—Jonah has to do the drills.
He has to get back. And the deal we’ve made, all three of us, without ever putting it into words, is that we cover for each other in the moments we miss. We video. We narrate. We bring it home.
We let the beavers eat us out of berry inventory, and then Sydney, with oodles of experience, eases us back onto the path before either of them gets pushy. Eli holds the empty Tupperware like it’s a trophy.
“That was real,” he tells Sydney, in the tone of a scientist.
“That was very real,” Sydney agrees.
“My power works on beavers.”
“Definitively.”
He skips ahead of us up the path, hood back up, talking to himself in a low voice about what to test next. I let the distance grow because Sydney is matching my stride too perfectly, meaning she’s about to ambush me.
“How’s Maddie,” she asks, casual.
“As predicted, watching The Notebook in my parents’ basement on a loop. She says it’s the only place she can hear herself think, which is rich coming from a woman who eats Doritos in bed.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
She lets a beat go. Then, even more casual: “So, Jonah and Eli. You guys are kind of a family now, huh?”
“Sydney.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t.”
“I have eyes, Zoe.”
“Nope. We’re not doing this.”
“Doing what?” She blinks at me with the faux-innocence of a woman who’s been my best friend for clearly too long. “I’m just observing.”
I check to make sure Blastman’s still out of earshot, finding him engaged in what looks like a one-sided ghost negotiation with a stump.
“Do you want a play-by-play of the things your brother’s done to me?” I say, low.
She gasps. “Oh, shit. Not really.”
“Okay, then. It’s messy and complicated, and scorching hot. And I’m going to Seattle.”
She gives me a “duh” look. “I was leaving when Brooks was doing those things to me too. And you know how that ended up.”
“It’s different,” I say, with no real reason to give why it’s different.
“It’s really not.” She laughs and bumps her shoulder into mine the way she has since we were at W2Beaver together, then we walk in companionable silence for the last bit of path that opens out onto Maisie Kingston’s back lawn.
Of course Maisie’s on the porch. She’s been on that porch for approximately fifty years, gray hair pinned, purple track suit, a tray on the wicker table with a teapot, four cups, a tall glass of lemonade with actual mint in it, and a plate of cookies I know she didn’t bake but will absolutely take credit for.
She stands when she sees us. Eli stops at the bottom of the steps and pauses, where he reads a new adult and decides what version of himself to be.
“You must be Eli.” Maisie’s voice brooks no nonsense.
“I’m Blastman today, ma’am.”
“Blastman. Even better.” She doesn’t blink. “I’m Maisie. Now. I’ve been told you play chess.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If you can play cards the way you play chess, you and I are going to be very good friends. Come up here, lemonade’s for you.”
He climbs the steps with the careful manners of a kid who’s decided this woman is interesting. “I can hold my own,” he says.
“Can you?”
“I used to beat my mom all the time, and I beat Zoe in twelve moves last week.”
“Twelve,” I confirm.
“You should come to poker night,” Maisie says. “Thursdays.”
Sydney makes a small choking sound and tap-taps Maisie on the wrist with two fingers. “Maisie.”
“What.”
“He’s nine.”
“He can count, can’t he?”
I go bug-eyed. “You don’t understand. He’ll show up with a visor.”
“I have a visor,” Eli says.
“See.” Maisie pours him lemonade like the case is closed.
I sit on the wicker chair, accept tea, and try not to think about the way Maisie and her friend Pam run poker nights at the Sparkling Suds Laundromat, which is illegal in various ways. Let the woman have her gambling. I’m not on this earth to police senior citizens.
Eli eats two cookies. He explains the rules of Blastman to Maisie, who says, “Well, I never,” in a way that makes him beam.
Sydney refills cups. When the evening light goes long and gold across the porch boards, I’ve finished my tea, and realize I’m just watching this kid—the one kid who showed up in our lives wearing a Flash backpack over two weeks ago with grief stitched into every line of his small body—negotiate cookies with a woman who’s seen everything and still finds him fascinating.
When we stand to leave, Eli runs ahead toward the car with Sydney, who’s now, apparently, his consultant on a permanent basis. Maisie catches my elbow on the porch step. Her hand is paper-light and steel-strong at the same time, which is exactly Maisie. “Zoe.”
“Maisie.”
She brings her face close to mine. Her eyes are pale and unblinking. “You play dirty,” she says, low, just for me. “You do what you have to do. But you gotta win. That child needs you. And he loves you.”
“Maisie—”
“Hush. I know about the hearing. I’ve heard things about that woman, and I know what’s at stake.” She squeezes my elbow, hard enough that I feel it through my jacket. “Don’t you let her near him. Whatever it costs. You hear me?”
“I hear you.” My voice comes out thinner than I want it to.
“Good.” She pats my cheek like I’m seven years old. “Now go on. Tell that strapping young hockey player I said hello.”
She heads back to her tea. I stand on her porch step for longer than I should, because my brain snags on a word.
You win. Eli needs you and he loves you. Not Jonah. You.
It hits me sideways, the way the hardest things do.
It all happened so gradually, I haven’t stopped to notice it—the morning routine, the chess matches, the closet, the Blastman costume I helped paint last night, the fact that Eli asked me, not Jonah, where his shadowbox was this morning. The fact that he texts me sometimes just to tell me a joke.
I’m Eli’s good friend.
Which means—what, exactly?
What happens to him when I leave? When I pack up from Jonah’s house and drive away? What happens when this kid, who’s buried one mother already, watches the next woman in his life close a door behind her?
Goddammit.
I have to stay committed to him from afar. Zoom. Flights. Calls, texts, whatever it takes.
Down by the car, Blastman is showing Sydney a new power. He’s making her laugh. He turns and waves at me with his whole arm, the way kids do when they are sure, completely sure, you’ll wave back.
“Coming, Blastman,” I call, and I do.