Chapter 13 #2
He laughed. They’d seen those crabs years ago, but Isabelle had never given up on the idea that they might see them again. So far, they had been foiled in this quest, but they had seen a great number of interesting things during their searches.
“Let’s do it, Busy Izzy,” he said.
She beamed, then looked up at Cadence. “Can you come too, Mom?”
It was another one of those moments of perfect connection. He and Cadence looked at one another. Mom, he mouthed, pulling a face. She’d said “Mom,” not “Mommy.” Like Izzy was some kind of teenager!
I know, Cadence mouthed back.
“Mommy!” Isabelle said, tugging on Cadence’s hand. “Don’t do the quiet talking thing with Daddy! Come to the far spot with us instead!”
Cadence gave a playful tug back.
“Yeah, okay,” she said, and Tyler tried to ignore how much his heart swelled with happiness at her acceptance.
He jogged quickly over to one of the other parents, to let them know where he, Cadence, and Isabelle were headed, just so nobody realized they were missing and got worried.
Then, feeling light as a feather, he threw his daughter over his shoulder and jogged over to the “far spot” while Isabelle shrieked with laughter and Cadence followed with a contented smile.
They did not, alas, see the crab family, but they did see a number of little fish swimming in the shallow water, and Isabelle found some shells that excited her.
The whole family grew so entranced in this activity that they missed the telltale dark clouds that streaked across the sky until fat raindrops started teeming down on them.
“Oh my gosh!” Cadence exclaimed, throwing up her hands in surprise.
“It’s raining!” Isabelle had already been wet from her afternoon of frolicking in the waves, but she acted like each raindrop was threatening her.
Tyler, who thought the rain felt nice after the day’s heat, laughed at how similar his two girls looked in this moment.
“Come on, come on,” he said, urging them along. “There’s an overhang.”
They squished into a little rock formation, barely able to see, across the cove, where the other students were doing the same under different rocks and trees. A few of the kids had taken cover under the picnic tables.
Then the rain started coming down more heavily. The outcropping that provided them shelter was just big enough to keep their little family dry, although the sloping height meant that Cadence had to sandwich between Tyler and Isabelle.
“I don’t like this rain,” Cadence muttered to herself.
Tyler bit back a smile. He didn’t want to laugh at her, of course, but this was pretty predictable.
Cadence was not exactly an outdoorsy kind of person.
Oh, she enjoyed a walk in a botanical garden or a day at the beach, but she also liked being able to go home and be safely inside when nature started rearing its head a little more aggressively.
So being caught in the rain on the beach, even if they were quite literally within eyeshot of civilization? Not Cadence’s cup of tea.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tyler soothed her. “It’ll pass quickly. These summer storms always do.”
“We’re not always near the ocean when they strike though,” she retorted.
“We’re protected in the cove,” he said. “What do you think, Izzy?” he asked, leaning around Cadence to check if Isabelle was as bothered as her mother.
Isabelle, however, was looking highly entertained by the sudden turn in weather.
“It’s like being inside a waterfall,” she said wondrously.
Cadence made a grumbling little sound in the back of her throat that Tyler interpreted as, I find that idea horrifying but I do not want to crush my child’s joy.
Tyler smiled at this, then felt his heart practically stop as she slipped her fingers into his.
At first, he wasn’t sure whether she realized she’d done it, but then she gave him a squeeze. He squeezed back. Neither of them let go.
And Tyler didn’t dare to hope.
“Wait, Mommy, do you know what we should do?” Isabelle asked suddenly, brightly.
Cadence pulled her hand back into her lap. Tyler knew this was probably for the best, as the last thing they wanted was to confuse Isabelle, but he still missed her touch immediately.
“What’s that, bumblebee?”
“Sing the campfire song!” Izzy’s face was alight with mischief.
Cadence grew very, very still.
“Oh, that’s an idea,” she said, her voice high and strained.
Isabelle and Tyler looked at one another with shared delight and impishness.
The campfire song was a song that Tyler had invented for Izzy’s first camping trip, back when she was about three years old.
It was a merciless earworm, one that got stuck in Cadence’s head beyond belief.
Whenever they’d gone camping, and Tyler and Isabelle had sung the song happily and loudly, Cadence had wound up humming the little ditty.
For weeks.
In short, it drove her nuts, and so Izzy and Tyler used this knowledge to tease her mercilessly.
“I think it’s not just an idea, I think it’s a great idea,” Tyler told his daughter.
Cadence put her face in her hands.
“You two are attacking me in a moment of weakness!” Cadence accused as the other two began to sing.
It only took two rounds of the song before Cadence was merrily singing along. Three rounds later, they were all laughing, and another two rounds after that and the rain stopped.
“Okay, you little monsters,” Cadence laughed, ruffling Izzy’s hair where their daughter was splayed across both her parents’ laps. “I will now be thinking about that for about a hundred years, but it did stop me from worrying about the rain, so thank you… I guess.”
Izzy gave Tyler an upside-down high five.
Across the cove, they could see the rest of the class starting to come out from their impromptu hiding spots. One of the parents, someone too far away to recognize, made a big summoning motion over their head, then pointed toward the waiting bus.
“Ah, time to go home,” Tyler said, feeling a pang of sadness that this wonderful, strange day was over.
They hurried back through the wet sand, which clung to their feet and legs.
It didn’t take a lifetime living at the beach for Tyler to know that he’d be finding sand in his car for weeks to come, no matter how many times he vacuumed.
Not that he would trade it for the world, of course.
Getting all the kids back on the bus was a flurry of chaos, Tyler lifted backpacks and directed children and lifted the coolers, which were much lighter than they had been that morning, when they’d been full of drinks and ice.
The time passed in a flash, and another smattering of rain struck before they all got boarded onto the bus, which sent the children into peals of laughter, interspersed with some shrieking.
By the time they all sat down, everyone was sandy, soaked, and smiling.
Tyler didn’t think about whether or not he ought to sit next to Cadence and Izzy until he’d already done it, but fortunately, Cadence didn’t seem to mind.
She stroked Izzy’s damp hair, their daughter dozing against her shoulder.
She reached up to push a strand of her own damp hair aside, but paused when she saw the sand clinging to her fingers.
On impulse, he reached out and tucked the hair aside himself. The look Cadence gave him was grateful, but still tinged with sadness.
The ride back to the school was a quick one, and Tyler spent it thinking about his father’s words, about how teamwork really helped remind you of the merits of loving through selflessness. He hadn’t doubted Jared’s words, of course, but that day had been a potent reminder.
He hadn’t really thought about it much, and now he realized this had been a big error, but he’d spent so much of the time that he and Cadence had been focused on conceiving thinking about his own troubles.
Oh, he’d thought about the physical burden that it had placed on Cadence, since she was the one who would be pregnant, but he hadn’t totally given consideration to her emotions in everything.
He’d assumed they’d been the same as his own, but that had been just that.
An assumption.
Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten that he and Cadence weren’t meant to be fighting each other. They were meant to be fighting their problems together. And neither of them had given the other person the opportunity to share those burdens. They’d withdrawn.
And maybe a foolish part of him had rationalized that he was doing this to protect Cadence from his pain, but in hindsight, it seemed like nothing more than cowardice.
He’d been afraid to show how scared he was of the way things were going between them.
He didn’t want to be scared anymore. He didn’t want to be selfish anymore.
He wanted to do whatever it took to get his family back.
Everything was bustling again when they got back to the school, and for a moment, Tyler feared that Izzy and Cadence had slipped away in the chaos. He was relieved beyond measure when he saw them waiting, leaning against their car. He jogged over.
“Oh, I’m glad I caught you guys,” he said.
“Izzy wanted you to put her in the car,” Cadence said, ruffling their daughter’s hair. “Something about ‘Daddy doing it the right way?’”
Isabelle shrugged, although she did not look the slightest bit repentant. “Sorry, Mommy,” she said.
Cadence chuckled and shooed them along, so Tyler buckled Isabelle securely into her car seat. When he was done, Cadence hadn’t loaded up. She was still standing outside the car.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey,” she returned.
A beat passed between them, not entirely uncomfortable, but not entirely comfortable either. He could practically feel the moment, the last one of this wonderful day, slipping away from him.
“Cadence, can I take you out?” he asked, heart in his throat. “It doesn’t have to be a huge event just… maybe we could have a chance to talk, to reconnect.”
She bit her lip and he knew she was going to say no before she said it. Despite everything, he still knew her. And he understood. It made him feel a bit as though his heart was breaking, but he did understand.
“I’m… really busy at the gallery,” she said vaguely. “So, yeah. It’s just not a good time.”
He hated how nervous she looked.
“Yeah, of course,” he said softly.
She opened her mouth as though she intended to say something more, but quickly closed it again.
“I’ll just say goodbye to Izzy, then,” he said.
She nodded, not quite meeting his gaze. He gave her arm a squeeze. He understood her being cautious, after all.
It was hard not to want to be, when one’s heart was on the line.