Page 73 of Missed Sunrise
“Don’t let him do flips. He’s not four yet, and that’s how old you have to be for big tricks.”
Putting my hand over my heart, I vowed, “I’ll keep him safe.”
The middle kid, whose name I hadn’t gotten, took the opportunity to poke his brother with a whispered “Tag,”and they both took off like little screeching, rabid hyenas.
I smiled after them and then turned back to Sully Buddy. “Do you want me to carry you, or do you want to chase?”
“Chase!” he yelled, and then his body was suddenly akin to Jell-O that I couldn’t hold for anything as he got himself to the ground and took off toward the bounce house.
I kicked off my slides and ran after him. I caught him under the armpits just as he made it to the little entrance to the house and hoisted him inside. He immediately started to tumble around, demanding for me to“Watch this”and“Look at me,” and it was roughly ninety-two of those later that my dad—or excuse me, Mr. Frankie—appeared in the yard with baby Maggie nestled over his shoulder.
He even had a yellow burp cloth under her chin, protecting his button-down from potential spit-up.
Glancing wildly around the yard, he looked absolutely panicked for a moment as he obviously performed a head count of the kids. When his gaze finally landed on me and the bounce house that was shaking violently under Sully Buddy’s cool tricks, I wasn’t sure what I was bracing myself for, but it definitely wasn’t his massive face-splitting grin. His relief.
Jaxon and Jaxon’s unnamed other brother ran up to him and starting cooing at Maggie. I knew I’d met all these kids at some point, but it’d been in passing and more than a couple of years ago, so they’d changed enough for me to not recognize them. And my brain leaked information freely enough that I’d never quite kept their names in permanent storage.
“Cody! Cody, look! Cody! Look!” Sully’s desperate cries drew my attention back to the inside of the castle, where he had his hands planted on the floor and one leg kicked into the air.
“Woah!” I exclaimed, sensing that there was a reason this kid was literally begging for attention. I clapped my hands and hooted in encouragement, and he lit up like a Christmas tree and then started spinning around the bounce house with no rhyme or reason.
“Wow, Sully!” Dad joined in from behind me, still smiling widely. “Show me one more spin move, and then guess what we get to do?” he asked the toddler excitedly—and rhetorically—and though I could sense some strain around his eyes, he seemed genuinely excited as he announced, “We get to have your birthday cake!”
And that’s how I found myself sitting on Mr. Frankie’s nice backyard patio furniture with grass stuck between my toes and baby Maggie in my lap, shoveling caramel cake my dad had imploded his macros for to make for Sully into my mouth.
For a long moment, everything but what was right in front of me had dissolved to background noise. I forgot my stresses, my failures, my fuckups.
My tornado dissipated, and a miniature bouncy house broke my fall.
The boat, Austin, AJ, my truck of contraband mementos—they were pushed far away, out of my mind. But all it took was the scent of the salty breeze and finding a stray colored pencil on the kitchen island for Liem to be there.
Taking up space, demanding my attention.
Pulling out my phone, I looked over at Jeanne, who had appeared not long after Dad came out of the house, looking more than a little harried. She and my dad had shared a long, knowing look when she returned, and it didn’t escape my notice that his eyes never wandered from her for long.
Was I actually getting a new mommy?Please, God above, say yes.
As long as she got rid of her deadbeat husband first.
“Jeanne, do you mind if I take a selfie with Maggie?”
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “As long as you’re not putting it online.”
I raise an eyebrow back. “I would never.”
Dad sat beside her and then handed her a small pastel-green plate with a fresh slice of cake on it with a smile. She thanked him as she took it and then waved her free hand. “Selfie away. Especially if it means I get more time to eat this.”
In fact, I took dozens of shots of me and a dozing Maggie and then surreptitiously turned the camera around and took some of everyone around me as evidence that the feelings I had in this moment had existed.
That I didn’t merely exist right now. I was wanted.
There hadn’t been an opportunity to talk at length with Dad about what exactly was going on here in his backyard today, but he did give me the rushed, hushed CliffsNotes.
Jeanne’s estranged husband—the father of the four kids—was supposed to be in charge of Sully’s party. He’d “forgotten.”
Jeanne had some Easter decorations in storage and had made do with that, Sully being too young to really understand that they weren’t actually birthday decorations.
Even without this information, I was happy to pretend I was attending a kid’s birthday party that I’d been enthusiastically invited to, where Jay—the middle child—looked at me like I was his hero when I did a handstand. Where my dad looked at me with pride after I talked my Sully Buddy down from post-boo-boo hysterics.
