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He points to a metal ladder, stretched out some twelve feet off the ground. It looks like more of a death trap than the old tree house, but I have to get my baby.
“Will, I’m …” I pause. There are so many things I want to say, but my gaze flicks up to the tree house and the little girl who is cold and scared.
He rests a hand on my cheek, rubbing a small circle with his glove and then tucking hair behind me ear. “It’s okay, Melissa. Go to your daughter. The officers on duty will be here to take a final statement to close out the night and then help you down.”
“You won’t be here when I come down?” My heart drops a little.
Tyler is standing beside me, clearly eavesdropping on the conversation. I couldn’t care less, as my focus is on Will.
“No. My work here is done. You have a family to tend to, and they are the most important thing. Here.” He holds out the thermos. “This is for you.”
I take the thermos from him and frown at the sweet gesture.
Tyler’s hand clutches my shoulder as he moves me toward the ladder. “Come on, Lyss. I’ll hold that while you climb up.”
With one hand in front of the other and one shaky foot after the next, I climb the ladder. The tree house is bright. Will must have given Izzy a flashlight. She’s huddled in the corner of the tree house with a large blanket wrapped around her and a thermos in her hand. Her face is red and tearstained.
“Mommy!” she cries.
I fall to my knees, grabbing her, holding her, kissing her. Tyler comes barreling behind me and takes a place next to Izzy and does the same as me.
Looks like we’re going for option number two—loving on her like the panic-stricken parents we are.
“I can’t believe you ran away like that. Do you know how sick with worry we were?” I state as I hold her and cry and laugh and scowl. “Isabella Landish, don’t you ever do anything like that again. No matter how mad you are at me or Daddy or the world, don’t ever leave home.”
She cries into my chest and then looks up at me and Tyler. He rubs her tears from her cheeks and kisses her head.
“I love you.Welove you, Izzy. We love you so much. Don’t do that to us again,” he pleads.
She speaks through staggered breaths, her lips trembling. “I was so angry.” Her words are hard to hear as she fights through the gasps.
Tyler rubs her head, and I pat her back and shush her to calm.
“I want our family back together. I want to live in our old house and go to my old school.”
“Iz, if this is about the house and school, you know you can live with me.”
“Tyler!” I admonish.
I know Izzy’s going through something, but he can’t blanket a statement like that to her.
“I want to live with Mommy. Why can’t you two be normal?” She grips Tyler’s shirt and looks up at him with a frown that cascades down her face. “I hate you so much for cheating on Mommy with Maisie. You don’t talk about it, but I know what happened. I hate you, Mom, for always pretending everything’s normal. It’s not fucking normal!”
Tyler looks like he’s been punched in the gut. I understand the feeling. I also note Izzy’s appropriate use of the F-word, which, by look on Tyler’s face, neither of us is going to address right now.
He gently removes Izzy from the tight grasp she has around him and moves back so she can see his face. “Iz, this is all my fault. Everything. From breaking up with Mom to giving you false hope that we could be a family again. I love your mom, and I have since I was fifteen years old. We fell out of love with each other, and there’s no going back. If we did, we’d be pretending, and that’s not fair to you.”
“I was happy when you were pretending. When you were separated but living together before the divorce … I was okay with that.”
He gives a sad smile. “I don’t want you to grow up thinking it’s okay for a man to hurt you the way I did your mother, and you take him back to pretend to be happy. You deserve so much more than that. While I’d love to be a family again—because coming home every day to you and Hunter is the thing I miss most in this world—I can’t do that to you.”
She looks over at me for confirmation.
I nod.
“He’s right. Daddy and I had our hard times, yet I wouldn’t change a thing. Our love brought us you. Being your parents is the greatest joy in the world, and there is no pretending with that. As for our family? Well, I just walked through a room full of people who were very scared tonight. Scared because they love you. Hunter, Grandpa, Tara, Jillian, Ainsley, Maisie … even Anna was out with Grandpa.”
“Will was here too,” she adds. “He brought me cocoa.”
