Page 42 of Knights Like These
“Archer.”
He stirs. His eyes open, find me, and for a second, his whole face goes soft with relief before he catches himself and sits up, clearing his throat.
“Hey.” He rubs his face. “What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“You’re home.”
“I’m home. You can go to bed now.”
It comes out sharper than I mean it to. Or maybe exactly as sharp as I mean it to. I haven’t decided yet.
He blinks. “Syd—”
“Goodnight, Archer.”
I don’t wait for his answer. I pick up my bag, walk upstairs, and I don’t look back. But I he’s sitting on the couch, confused, watching me go, and I don’t care. I don’t care because I just spent an evening trying to want someone else, and I couldn’t, and I’m angry about that. Not at Tanner. Not even at Archer, really.
At myself. For still being here. For still wanting this. For drawing sharks, folding his laundry, sleeping twenty feet from his bedroom, and pretending any of it is enough.
I close the guest room door, sit on the bed, pull off my shoes, and look at my nails—the fresh manicure Lauren told me to get, the one I got for a date that meant nothing with a man I’ll never see again—and I think about Archer asleep on the couch with his phone on his chest, waiting for me to come home safe.
Chapter Fourteen
The Family Drawing
Archer
The twins’ preschool sends things home in a folder. Permission slips, art projects, the occasional note about behavior incidents. I usually go through it after dinner while the twins watch their one allotted cartoon, sorting the papers into piles — sign, recycle, put on the fridge.
Tonight, the folder is already empty when I pick it up. Sydney must have gone through it after pickup because the permission slips are signed on the counter, the flyers are in the recycling, and there’s nothing left except a single piece of construction paper that she apparently decided deserved a place of honor.
It’s on the fridge when I find it, held up by two magnets. I almost walk past it on my way to get water, but something catches my eye and I stop.
It’s a drawing. Crayon on pale construction paper, the proportions wildly off in the way that three-year-old art always is—giant heads, stick legs, hands like starfish. Five figures stand in a row on a green line that I think is meant to be grass.
Each one is labeled in careful teacher handwriting because Luke must have told her what to write.
DADDY is the tallest figure, which is accurate. Brown scribble hair. A big circle body.
LUKE is next to Daddy, smaller, holding what appears to be a book or possibly a brick.
LILY is on Luke’s other side, arms spread wide, yellow scribbles radiating from her head like she’s either wearing a crown or her hair is on fire. Both are plausible.
MOMMY is on the far left, separated from the group by about two inches of construction paper, which at this scale is a meaningful distance. She’s drawn smaller than Daddy and she’s smiling, but she’s alone on her side.
AUNTIE SYD is on the far right, next to Daddy. Close to Daddy. Their stick arms are almost touching on the page, and she’s drawn the same height as Luke, which means my son either thinks Sydney is the same size as a three-year-old or he ran out of room.
I stand in the dark kitchen — the only light is the one over the stove that I always leave on — and I look at this drawing, unable to move. Not because of the five figures or the labels or the teacher’s careful handwriting, but because of the layout. Mommy on one side, Daddy and Syd on the other, the kids in the middle, and the whole thing arranged with the instinctive logic of a child who drew what he sees every day.
Sydney put this on the fridge. She saw it before I did, and she didn’t mention it, didn’t make a thing out of it, didn’t bring it up at dinner. She just put it on the fridge and let me find it, and I don’t know if that’s grace or self-preservation or both.
I get my water and go to bed, but I don’t sleep for a long time.
Practice the next morning is a disaster, and the disaster is me.
I let in three goals in the first twenty minutes of the scrimmage. The first one is a wrister from the point that I should track in my sleep — it comes through traffic and I lose it, and it ticks off my blocker and drops behind me. The second is a breakaway from one of the younger guys, and I go down tooearly and he roofs it over my shoulder. The third is a deflection that changes direction twice, and I’m still moving the wrong way when it hits the back of the net.
