“They act like it. They were all over me this weekend.”
“That’s because they care about you.”
“I think it’s because you gave them a long list of all the things I’m not allowed to do.”
“I mean.. . Well. The list wasn’tthatlong.”
“It’s way too long. It’s crazy.” His curls bounced with agitation. “I’ll be eighteen soon.”
“Yes.”
“Have I done anything to make you think I can’t take care of myself? No. I haven’t.”
He made iffy choices in his social life all the time. He hardly ever studied for tests. He’d eat nothing but Cheez-Its if she let him. “When you were in middle school—”
“That was years ago.” His chin set. She could see that he felt passionately about this and yet was making an effort to talk with her about it maturely. “Next year I’m going to go away to school, and then I’ll have total freedom.”
“Right, and between now and then, my job is to ensure you’re ready.”
“I am ready.”
“You’ve made huge strides.”
“But you don’t let me go to parties. You won’t let me take weekend trips with my friends’ families. You’re always tracking the location of my phone and asking me to come straight home after games and practices. All my friends—every single one—has more freedom than I do. It’s like you don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you. It’s just that I’m trying to keep you safe.”
He studied her, mingled obstinacy and sympathy in his face. “I don’t think you do what you do to keep me safe.”
“What do you mean?”
He remained quiet for several moments. Her autumn three-wick candle, which smelled of pumpkin pancake, burned sedately on the coffee table.
“I think you put all these rules on me because you want control,” he said.
“No. I do what I do because I love you.”
“Okay, sure, you love me. But that’s not why you’re so strict.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You got stuck with a kid when you were around my age.”
She blinked at him because, of course, he was correct. Yet the thought of his taking custody of a child at his age wasabhorrent. He was a kid himself, in no way prepared to take charge of a child. Her eighteen-year-old self and Dylan’s seventeen-year-old self had little in common. By that point in her life, she’d lived away from home for four years. She’d come out of the womb a small but old and serious person. Her parents had ensured that she grew up quickly from there.
But Dylan,and thank God for this, had been afforded the chance to be young. After Mom had left him in her care, Leah had done her best to give him an elementary school experience free from worries graver than memorizing multiplication tables. As a middle school kid, he’d spent chunks of his weekends immersed in video games. As a high school kid, he had the luxury of playing football and hiding in his room and regarding the adults in his life as hopelessly uncool.
“I did not get stuck with you,” she said.
“Yeah you did. You were supposed to go and get your PhD, and it makes me feel like dirt when I think about how you had to take care of me and couldn’t go.”
She stepped to him and held his face in her hands. The soft little boy face had turned firm and angular. But this was stillherDylan. “You’re my favorite person. Please believe me when I tell you that having the chance to take care of you has been the greatest joy of my whole life. Would Princeton have been nice?” A rueful chuckle spilled from her. “Yes. But if I had the choice to make all over again, I would choose youevery single time. There’s no contest, Dylan. I got the better bargain.”
He stepped back a few feet, looked toward the TV.
Her hands fell to her sides. “Also, just so we’re really clear on this, you have nothing to feel like dirt about. You weren’t old enough back when Mom left to make a single decision, nor should you have had to. So none of what happened is on you. No one blames you. No one thinks that anything is your fault.”
“Yeah.” He kept his face pointed to the side.
“Really, though. I mean it. . . . Dylan?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “What I was trying to say is that I think a lot of your freedom got taken away. So even though you talk about trusting God, you’re always trying to control me to make up for the stuff you couldn’t control before.” He met her eyes with a knowing look.
