Page 91 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
He goes quiet after that. Not sad—just thoughtful, like he’s filing away a new puzzle piece.
We don’t talk about Kalev often. Not directly. I’ve built a mythology around him instead. A quiet strength Clancy can imagine without making it ache too much. He’s a man in bedtime stories, a shape in the stars. Not a corpse. Not a ghost.
Just... gone.
“Mama?” Clancy asks softly.
“Mmhmm?”
“Why don’t we go into town more? Everyone else has, like,people.”
I stiffen. My fingers twitch around the cup.
It’s a fair question. Most of the island's kids run in packs, shrieking and skipping and being generally feral. But I’ve kept Clancy close. Home-schooled. Shielded. Maybe too much. But how do you explain to a six-year-old that the world wouldsee him wrongif they ever realized what he was?
“Because we’re different,” I say gently. “Not bad. Just... harder to explain.”
He frowns. “Because of Papa?”
I nod. “Because of what he was. Whatyouare.”
He doesn’t flinch, just absorbs it with that eerie calm of his.
“Okay,” he says, then grins. “But if I had a team, I’d call them The Banana Ninjas.”
I laugh, and just like that, the tension bleeds out of the room.
I won’t let bitterness raise my son. Won’t let what happened tomepoison the way I lovehim. That’s the line I draw every day, every morning I wake up and decide not to disappear into grief.
I make us lunch—fresh fruit, protein bricks, spice noodles—and Clancy tells me about the sand-skater dance he’s invented. He demonstrates it halfway through the meal and nearly flips a table.
Later, while he’s napping under the fan, arms flung wide like he owns the air, I sit on the porch and watch the sun carve golden streaks across the water.
This life is small.
But it’s mine.
I built it from the wreckage.
I mend nets. I grow things. I trade favors instead of credits and make up new names every time someone gets too curious. But I sleep in peace. Ilovein peace.
And I tell stories about a man who burned so bright, he lit up the spaces inside me I thought were dead.
Kalev never saw this island. Never saw Clancy’s first steps or heard his first word (which was, tragically, “No”). He never helped build the storm cellar or install the irrigation node or patch the porch where Clancy tried to launch a hoverboard.
But I see him everywhere.
In Clancy’s patience.
His fire.
His absolute refusal to give up even when logic says “don’t bother.”
And sometimes, when the night air turns still and the surf quiets, I think I canfeelhim. Just past the treeline. Just beyond the light.
I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking or some leftover trauma symptom. I don’t care.
What matters is this: I survived.
