Page 116 of This Love
In the video, I sat on a blue sofa and held out my arms.
A small boy toddled slowly and carefully toward me. He wore blue overalls, and his feet were bare.
In the video, my eyes lit up. “Come on, Tad! Come on! You’re doing it!”
The words were barely out when Tad abruptly sat on his bottom. His face screwed up in a terrible pout, then he let out a wail.
I scooped him onto my lap. “It’s okay, Tad. You did such a good job. What a good boy. Such a big boy.” As I held him, Tad settled back down, then squirmed to get out of my lap and tried to walk again.
A different version of me, one I’d watched earlier, came back on screen. “You’re all caught up, Ava. Tad is almost two right now. I’ll update this after his second birthday. I’m terribly sorry this has happened again. We grieved hard when a reset made us forget his first birthday. It seems like you and I will be fighting the medicine battle a little longer. I hope we find one that works for us again soon.”
The screen went black, and this time, it stayed that way.
Rosie sat at my feet.
“Can I go this time?” I asked her.
She backed out of my way as I stood and stretched. The notebook I’d found after reading my tattoo lay on the bed.
Man, my mother was a piece of work. I hoped I didn’t run into her anytime soon. At least I knew where she was and what she looked like.
“What now, Rosie?”
The furry red-gold dog bounded to the doorway, then turned to wait for me.
“I’m coming.”
I followed her out of the room into a small hall. On the left was the front door of the house. To the right was the kitchen.
Rosie ran to the back door and used a rope with a ball on the end to open it.
“You want me to go out there?”
Rosie pulled the door open wide. It was a bright, sunshiny afternoon. A sprinkler was going in the yard.
Something flashed past the door in bright yellow.
“Rosie, what was that?”
I stepped forward. Rosie moved ahead of me onto a small concrete porch. She sat down and barked three times.
The bit of yellow appeared again. It was the boy from the video. “Mommy!” He lifted his arms.
Before I could move, he was snatched up by the man from the video. Tucker. My husband.
I took a step back into the doorway.
“Did you get to the end?” he asked.
“I think so. It was Tad’s first steps.”
“Yes. We should add more videos. We’ve been meaning to. He can walk quite well now.” He hefted the boy onto his hip.
“Mommy, Mommy!” The boy attempted to lunge from Tucker’s grasp to get to me.
“Wait a minute, Tad,” Tucker said. “Let me talk to Mommy.” He turned to me. “This is the first reset where he’s old enough to come for you on his own.”
Tad squirmed in Tucker’s arms. “Mommy, Mommy!”
