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“Please,” he continues. “Please.You can’t tell her.”
His panic seems as irrational as my anger. “Josh, I think she should—
“No!” he insists adamantly. “No, I don’t want her to know. It’ll only make her more sad and she’s already sad enough lately.” That gives me pause. Josh plows onward, clearly worried that he hasn’t convinced me enough. “She’ll only worry about me and I don’t want her to worry.”
“She’s the parent, Josh. You’re the child. You’re not supposed to be the one protecting her.”
His forehead scrunches up. He looks less like a child now. I see the lines of the man he’ll become already sketched in his face. “You don’t get it. You weren’t there.”
“Josh—”
“Everyone always leaves us!” he interrupts. “Mom died and Dad… Dad doesn’t care about any of us. Aunt Emma didn’t have to l-look after us but she did. Dad was supposed to s-send us to school and buy us new shoes and books but Aunt Emma is the one who did that. Dad was supposed to make our dinners and put us to bed and, for a while, he did. But when he stopped, Aunt Emma did that, too. She’s always d-doing things for us. Even though she doesn’t have t-to. Even when she was w-w-working really late, she would figure out ways to do things for us. Like l-leave us little notes in our lunchboxes. Or pick us up from school early and take us to the p-park.”
The stammer is new. No guesses needed for why it’s popping up now. But as I listen to his speech, I can’t help but marvel at how much this eight-year-old has observed. He’s noticed every sacrifice Emma has made along the way. The work that’s supposed to be invisible to children.
She didn’t have to do any of it. She had the option of being the weekend aunt. The one who popped her head in once a week with presents and kind words. She had parents who were more than willing to take on all three children.
But she decided that they weren’t good enough to raise Josh and his sisters. And, based on that phone call alone, she was very fucking right.
“Please, Ruslan?” Josh begs. “Don’t tell Aunt Em.”
I grimace. “Okay. But that means you and I are gonna have to work on a solution together. We can get some night lamps installed in here.”
Josh chews on his bottom lip. “I don’t think that’ll help.”
“What do you think will help then?”
His eyes flicker to mine. “Boxing? We haven’t really done any more lessons since the… the k-k-kidnapping. I think I wanna start again.”
He’s not laying blame at my feet and yet I feel so guilty. I’ve been so distracted by my anger lately that I let his boxing lessons fall to the wayside. It’s just another example of the people in his life leaving him. The fact that Emma is the only constant, the only one who’s stayed through it all, makes me feel deeply ashamed of my own choices since I found out about what she’d done.
“I’m sorry, Josh. I shouldn’t have stopped our lessons. Of course we can continue them, if that’s what you want.”
He nods emphatically. “I want to be able to defend m-m-myself.” His cheeks redden as he fights his new obstacle. “I d-d-don’t want to be s-s-scared all the time.”
I nod, refusing to address it unless Josh does. “We’ll start tomorrow. Early morning.”
“What about Aunt E-Emma?”
“We don’t need to tell Aunt Emma,” I assure him. “This can be our little secret.”
He gives me a small, grateful smile and some of the tension eases out of his jaw. “Thank you.”
That soft little voice catches in my chest. It stays there. “Why don’t you try sleeping now, Josh?”
He lies back down but his eyes are still wide and alert. “Ruslan?”
“Yes.”
“Can you stay with me… until I fall asleep?”
And that’s how I end up curled on the side of Josh’s bed, watching the boy’s eyes flutter shut. It fills me with this vague sense of purpose. But there’s fear, too.
Is this the rest of my life?
No. After the baby is born, Emma and the kids will be moved to their own estate. I won’t be tasked with being the nightmare watchman. I won’t be watching them go to sleep every night.
Soon, they’ll be gone for good.That should give me some relief.
