“Daddy, no Doctor talk tonight, okay?” Jamie peered at him from under his fringe.
Mal lifted his free hand in surrender, the other held his plate. “Okay, okay….”
I smiled. It had already been the best decision to come here instead of going somewhere else. I needed people around, and here, I could be myself while figuring out who that person was without Luke.
The next day, we did as Mal had suggested. Once Jamie was back home, we had lunch together.
“Now, go play. I’ll make sure you’ll get some good snacks in the afternoon. It’s not too sunny, but if you want to play outside, let me know so I can find the sunscreen and make sure you’re covered.”
“Ooh, snacks,” I gasped and glanced at Jamie who was regressing in front of my eyes.
“Okay, Daddy, thank you, Daddy, we’ll go now, Daddy!” He went to kiss Mal on the cheek really loudly, then came back to me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward where his playroom was on the second floor.
“We gotta be careful when we come downstairs again,” he explained very seriously on our way up. “Daddy really doesn’t like it when I slip and fall down the stairs.”
“Oh.” It made sense, I knew my Daddy—“We’ll go slow and hold onto the banister,” I promised.
“Okay, good.” He grinned as he glanced back at me, still dragging me along. “Do you wanna build Legos?”
I could feel it then, the way my adult self just… left me. “Yes!” Then I frowned, because something was missing.
“Boys?” Uncle Mal called from the stairs. “You forgot something!”
He jogged up onto the landing and showed us Tonya and Mr. Rabbit.
I ran back to him and took Tonya. “Thank youso much,Uncle Mal!” I hugged him tight, then took Mr. Rabbit too and ran back to Jamie.
Jamie had two huge tubs full of Legos. Well, three, but the third ones were those other kinds that were bigger and for smaller kids, and they were downstairs. We felt like we didn’t want to play with them so we didn’t go get them.
We were building an epic castle when Uncle Mal knocked on the doorframe and peered in.
“Boys, snacktime. It’s been almost three hours since lunch.”
Jamie and I glanced at each other with our mouths open like O. Then we burst out laughing because we looked so funny.
“Come on, giggly ones, there’s string cheese, fruit, and tiny sandwiches.”
“Ooh, tiny sandwiches!” Jamie got to his feet and practically bowled over his Daddy.
I walked slower, then yelled, “Jamie, the stairs!”
“You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” Uncle Mal said and squeezed me to his side.
I ducked my head. I guess I was? “We made a pact to not run down the stairs, that’s all,” I murmured.
“Still, that’s good boy behavior.”
I shrugged and we followed Jamie down the stairs.
Because I was working so slowly these days, I only had one or two clients at a time. I’d also made sure they knew my limitations and that some days I was too tired to work at all, so while I’d do my best, sometimes things took longer than expected because of my health.
During my first week at Jamie and Mal’s, I finished the job I was doing for an old client and then didn’t take new ones. I had enough of a nest egg anyway. It wasn’t something I needed to worry about majorly. Sure, my health insurance was a bitch to pay off monthly, but at least I had one and that meant I wasn’t in too much debt after the accident.
Mal and Jamie had refused to let me pay any rent for the room we’d agreed I could occupy as long as I needed. I went home occasionally to check the mail and water the plants, but I didn’t want to live there alone when I felt so welcome at their house. That meant I tried to make dinner whenever I could, or rather whenever I wasn’t being told not to do it. Sometimes one of them wanted to cook or they’d get takeout on their way home.
One evening while Mal was on a night shift and Jamie was about to come home, I was making pizza from scratch. It was a fun way to cook, because it had so many different types of things and parts of the process, but it wasn’t difficult. My little side was more on the surface now, almost all the time, and it seemed like color coordinating the veggie toppings I’d promised Mal we’d put on our pizzas was feeding that side of me as much as the pizza would feed all of me once it was ready.
I giggled at the silly thought. I had my phone playing music for me and I swayed along to some slower song by one of my favorite artists, Clarissa, as I minded my fingers while I chopped more bell peppers.
