AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes?”
Isaac sits cross-legged, tapping his knees with his hands, and looks at me through his fringe. “Am I seeing Dad this weekend?”
He’s not your dad.I bite my tongue. I can’t say that. It would break every parenting rule ever created. I mean, Isaac knows Elliot—my ex—isn’t his real dad, but I guess in his little world, Elliot is the closest thing he’s ever had.
It’s a shame I can’t get it to work. Try as I have, I just can’t. There is something fundamentally wrong. I can’t get my heart to behave and do what it should.Love the nice man who dotes on you and your son. My heart doesn’t want that.
“Weekend after, baby. We’ve got to get you ready for school.” Isaac’s face clouds with a pre-teen thunderstorm. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t be looking forward to starting a new school in year five. “It’s a nice school, I promise.”
Frowning, he keeps his words to himself and concentrates on doodling his finger along the pattern of the bedlinen.
“And you’ll see your dad next week. Okay?” I tilt his chin up so his eyes meet mine.
“Okay. Can I ask another question?” Isaac tucks his feet up underneath him.
“Sure.”So long as it’s not about sex, boners, or wet dreams.
“Nanny’s pretty sick, isn’t she?”
I pick up Isaac’s hand in mine; it’s nearly as big. My baby isn’t a baby anymore. My heart pangs with an engulfing flood of emotions. Regret, sadness, joy. All of these things at once.
“Yeah, she is.”
“She’s crazy, isn’t she?”
“She has something called dementia.”
“Yesterday, she thought you were young again and talked about a boy.”
“Yeah, she just got confused that’s all. This illness makes her confused a lot of the time.”
Isaac grins. “Yesterday, she thought I was Meals on Wheels.”
“You too? I thought it was just me!”
“She asked that man, too; the one who came while you were in the garden with your friend.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Some man. Nan asked if he was Meals on Wheels, then when he said no, she stared at him a bit closer and then started shouting at him, telling him to go away and leave her daughter alone before he ruined her life.” He shakes his head at the craziness of it all. I can barely get my lungs to work.
Did Freddy come back after I slammed the door in his face?”
“Next time that happens, honey, you have to come and get me. Nanny shouldn’t be opening doors to people; she could let anyone in.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s why I followed her.”
His chest puffs like he’s ten feet tall.
“Well done. That’s very grown up of you, Isaac.” There is nothing a nine-year-old boy likes more than thinking he is a grown up.
“Do we have to stay until she gets better?”
I scrunch my face at this. “She won’t get better. Dementia makes you like this most of the time, though sometimes she might seem a bit better, remember more.”
“Do we have to stay until she dies?”
“Isaac!” I can’t really blame him for thinking it, though. “Why?”
