Page 51 of Frog

“A man and a woman?” I tested her.

“That’s one of many good combinations,” she told me. “But I like two men, two women, two men and a grandmother, two women and an eccentric uncle, or a mother or father and grandparents just as well. It doesn’t matter to me. And I’m not saying that single parents aren’t astounding—I was one, for goodness sakes—but help, relief of some kind, some form, is needed.”

“Sure. That’s why she’ll get herself a full-time nanny after I leave.”

“Weber, what children all need, across the board, are people who care about them unconditionally and are invested in them. Children need role models, and not just heroes and miracle workers, but simply someone to stop and ask them how their day was, to pack a lunch sometimes, and sing along to the radio in the car.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You need to understand something that you might have missed.”

I waited and noticed, again, how lovely she was. Her little heart-shaped face, almond-shaped black eyes, high cheekbones, and porcelain skin all added to her beauty.

“The day their nanny and their father walked out, you walked in.”

She lost me.

“Close a door; open a window. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

She tipped her head as she smiled at me. “Even if their father returns—which, from the deterioration of the marriage that I witnessed, I find highly doubtful—his children are scarred by his leaving. If he returned, the trust could, in time, be remade. But now, with his absence, the space between them looms wider and wider. So now we’ve taught children to fear being abandoned, and so as adults they either push people away so as not to be hurt, or hold them too tight and suffocate them.”

“That seems much too simple to me.”

“And maybe it is, maybe this won’t affect them at all. What are your thoughts?”

“I have no idea.”

Quick nod of her head. “I think the lesson of leaving will remain. We all carry what we’ve learned with us, our experiences, and for Tristan and Micah, now they won’t be so free with their hearts.”

I looked across at them, three little boys squealing in delight as they played on the tire swing, faces red with both exertion and the chilly December air. The thought was sobering and sad that what their father did was imprinted on them forever.

“Phillip is young. He might not hold on to his father’s disappearance, but the other two are old enough to wonder, now, who else will go?”

I cleared my throat. “It’ll be me. I’m fixin’ to leave in a couple weeks, right after New Year’s.”

“That won’t work.”

“Pardon?”

“Micah is bonded with you, Weber Yates. He might even talk either to you or about you fairly soon. It’s in his eyes, the excitement, the expectation. He so wanted to tell me about you today. He couldn’t draw fast enough. He wanted to express things, and when I was deliberately obtuse, he was very irritated with me. I think he thought I was smarter.”

Her smile was wicked.

“You tricked him.”

She shrugged. “I have a small window to bring him back from this before he closes off completely. Shocking him, putting him in a situation where someone else could be hurt if he didn’t use his voice—that’s all shit, you understand?”

I laughed at her. “I can’t believe you said shit.”

“Well, this is not a movie on the Lifetime Channel. We have to actually deal with this in real time and with real therapy. He had his voice shocked out of him. It won’t be shocked back. It doesn’t work like that. It will come when it’s ready. But if he can deal with the world without it, what’s to make him want it back?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“But you, my dear man, you he wants to talk about and he wants to talk to. You’re the anomaly, the new piece. He was abandoned, and you appeared. Tristan has the same eyes for you, full of want and hope. Whatever you do, don’t kill it because I’ll have to kill you.”

And she was tiny but really scary at the same time.