Theo stares at it. Slides a piece of pancake toward the edge of his plate, then looks at me.
"No," I say.
He looks back at the magpie. Moves the pancake back. The magpie tips its head.
"He's waiting. He wants pancakes." Theo says.
"He's going to keep waiting."
Theo thinks about this. "That's sad."
"He'll find something else."
I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to care about the Magpie at the moment. I just need to eat and let the tension that’s been building up inside me fade to a more manageable level. Relaxing is hard when you have a four-year-old. It’s even harder when you’re a single mom on the run from her ex, but I carry the weight. I can’t let Theo know I’m barely holding it together. I have to be strong for both of us.
After breakfast, we walk around town for a bit. This place puts the small in small town. Theo spots a trail sign behind the hotel and points at it.
"That."
"We just got here."
"That," he says again, still pointing, in case I've forgotten where the trees are.
He's been in a car for two days. The trees are right there. My son needs fresh air and exercise; God knows I need it too. So, I relent.
"Okay," I say. "But we stay on the path."
He's already walking.
The trail is well-marked, a map is posted at the trailhead, and the trees are marked. I take a photo of the map, just in case.
For the first stretch, it's genuinely nice. Theo holds my hand on the rooty parts and drops it everywhere else, and he has opinions about everything — stops to crouch over an ant, picks up a stick and immediately uses it to hit another stick, finds a puddle that he needs to step in specifically four times. I let him. There's no one to tell him not to.
I'm watching him splash and thinking about nothing in particular when he's suddenly on a different path. Smaller, branching left, and he's already several steps down it.
"Theo. That's not the main trail."
He points at something I can't see. "That way."
I stand there for a second. He's four. He weighs thirty-eight pounds. I could just pick him up, but he gets his curious streak from me, and how I want to know what he saw.
I follow him down the path.
We walk longer than I mean to. The trail gets narrow and then just sort of implies itself between the trees, and when I stop and check my phone there's no signal, and when I pull up my photo of the map it tells me nothing useful about where we currently are on it.
The sky goes flat. The temperature drops.
"Okay, bud. Let's turn around."
"Not yet."
"Yeah, now." It’s not time to negotiate anymore.
He stops walking and turns to look at me with his full, serious face. Then he looks up at the sky. Then back at me. "Is it going to rain?"
"Probably."
He holds up his arms.
