“What were you and Nanna arguing about?” Will asked.
“Arguing?” Taylor looked up at the rearview mirror and met his eyes. “We were just talking.”
His hair was tousled, the cowlick even more pronounced. His T-shirt was wrinkled. He looked like he’d just crawled out of bed. But he had his seatbelt buckled and his backpack secured beside him. Already settled in, he was digging out a notebook and pen.
This fall after his growth spurt, Will had put up a fuss about still having to sit in the backseat of vehicles. He didn’t want to be “treated like a baby” anymore. Besides, he told her, Nanna let him sit up front...sometimes.
Now Taylor wondered if that was one of the lies Dora was referring to. Letting him sit upfront didn’t seem like something Dora would allow.
“What were you talking about?”
“Nothing you need to be concerned about,” she told him, when she really wanted to ask how much he’d heard. Then she added. “Just grown-up stuff.” She had used this excuse before, and it usually satisfied him. Today, it seemed to do the same.
His head swiveled to the construction site and the equipment at the end of the block. There were always new homes going up out here. Bigger and grander, with two-story entrances in front and enclosed swimming pools in the back.
Bulldozers had stripped down a fresh line of trees from the forest that backed up to the development. They seemed intent on pushing deeper and deeper into the woods. It was as if they wanted to get farther away from the neighborhood on the other side of the highway. That community, called Woodriver, was much older than this one. It was a well-established working-class neighborhood with small houses interspersed with double-wide trailers. Taylor couldn’t help thinking the contrast couldn’t be starker.
She glanced in the rearview mirror again, and now Will’s eyes and attention were tilted down. He was already drawing. His hand took broad strokes with the pen.
Though he seemed mature about so many things, she had to remind herself he was only seven. After everything she’d put him through, she didn’t want him to worry there might be yet another delay in his coming to live with her full-time. A knot began in her stomach, just imagining his disappointment.
This was all her fault. She couldn’t believe she’d surrendered custody of her son. To be fair, she wasn’t the same person back then. When she returned from Afghanistan, all she longed for was a piece of normal, only to discover she was pregnant. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if she and Mike could have carved out a life together. But his tour of duty hadn’t ended yet. They got married at a courthouse, promising they’d do a real wedding when he returned. Two months later, he was dead.
Mike wasn’t the love of her life. The grief wasn’t what did her in. She wished it was. No, it was the unexpected nightmares that sent her into the night running through the dark streets, pounding the asphalt to take the place of the sound of helicopters bringing more wounded.
In her nightmares, she couldn’t stop their bleeding. She worked all night trying to find the pieces to put them back together again. Back then, she woke to sweaty sheets that she mistook for pools of blood until she turned the lights on.
As a nurse, she recognized PTSD, but she hadn’t come up with a way to treat herself. Instead, she resorted to how they’d handle the daily trauma in Afghanistan. She’d learned to cope like the rest of her team. Vodka.
It wasn’t such a problem that she couldn’t quit, and she did quit while she was pregnant. A beautiful baby boy should have brought enough joy to silence the nightmares. Unfortunately, PTSD didn’t work that way. Will just reminded her of how very broken she was.
Taylor blinked and shook her head. Driving over the I-10 bridge, she took in the sparkling waters of Escambia Bay. That was one thing she loved about this place. She couldn’t go far without seeing water. Large bodies of water. Living on Pensacola Beach had helped maintain her sanity throughout this.
The small apartment above Howard’s marina shop felt more like home than anywhere she had lived in the past ten years. She counted it as good fortune that she had snagged the place. She could run every day on along the Gulf of Mexico, listening to the waves and feeling the spray of salt water. And she felt safe. Howard made sure of that.
No, she wouldn’t let Dora’s snide remark make her second-guess her choice and the decisions she was making for herself and for Will.
A rustling from the backseat made her check the rearview mirror.
“Did you forget something, Buddy?”
Will dug in his backpack, emptying items onto the seat.
“I think I forgot my markers.”
“We can stop and buy some.”
“These aren’t the regular kind. Miss Rosa usually helps me pack my bag.”
He didn’t seem upset. Just frustrated. Already, he was stuffing everything back inside, but doing it haphazardly. She packed for him when it was time to leave her apartment. She didn’t mind. He was seven. But she didn’t realize this was something Dora had left for the housekeeper to do. Now she wondered if Miss Rosa was the one who reminded him to comb his hair and make sure he chose a shirt that wasn’t wrinkled.
“Miss Rosa wasn’t there today to help you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Is she on vacation?”
“I think she’s dead.”
“Will! That’s not funny. And it’s not a nice thing to say.”
“I saw her fall down the stairs last week, and she hasn’t been back since.”
“I’m sure she’s probably taking time off to recover.”
“Her body looked all weird.” He pantomimed, flinging his arms out and twisting his body. “She didn’t get back up. She didn’t even move.”
“Did the ambulance come?”
Will shrugged and went back to drawing. “I don’t know,” he said. “Nanna made me go to my room. It looks out over the backyard, so I couldn’t see.”
“Did you ask Nanna about her?”
“She just said Miss Rosa wouldn’t be coming back.” Another shrug. “Hey, are we gonna see Jason? I did some drawings I want to show him.”
“I don’t know, Will. Maybe. We’ll see.” She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about Jason. She wondered about the housekeeper. Would he make up such a story?
“I’m doing a whole new series with him as the superhero. It’s so cool. His mechanical arm can lift cars and shoot death rays. I wanna show him the first drawings.”
“That’s great, Will. I’m sure he’ll be excited to see the pictures.”
“Not pictures, Mom. They’re drawings, and when I add color, they’ll be illustrations.”
Then it occurred to Taylor. “Did you show them to Nanna?”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t always like my stuff.”
And now Taylor understood the reason Dora might not want Jason around. Could it be that simple? She didn’t want another man replacing her son in her grandson’s life.