Etching Our Way (Broken Tracks 1)

He shakes his head. “No, the fourth.” I frown at him, not understanding what he’s saying. “I’m reading them in the original publication order, so this is the fourth.” A smirk lifts up the side of my face at his answer. “This one is about Eustace.”

“What happened to the Pevensie children?”

He huffs and puts his bookmark on the page he was reading, closing the book and setting it down. “They grew up,” he says simply.

I nod my head in reply, not really knowing what he means. Clay is a bookworm in all sense of the word. You buy him a book and he’ll read it cover to cover, several times over, soaking in every word as he transports himself out of his own head.

“I think we need to talk, Clay,” I tell him, shuffling uncomfortably. “Nana said you had a bad dream again.”

He looks down at his legs, picking some invisible lint off his pajama bottoms. “I dreamed about Mom again.” His voice cracks and I hear his sniffle ring loud in the small, confined space. “Why did she leave me, Dad?”

My stomach bottoms out at his words and the utter devastation and confusion marring his face.

“I… I…” I stammer, my voice now a croak from the emotion bubbling up inside me. “She just… she’s…” I don’t know what to say or what to do.

How do I explain it to a child in a way that he’ll understand, because I still don’t fully understand what happened, no matter how many times I research it. And I have, I’ve researched it so much, even contacting the best OBGYNs in the country, looking for answers that nobody could give me.

“Come here,” I say, opening my arms and holding him tight when he moves forward. “I love you, Clay. I love you enough for a thousand people. Don’t ever think I won’t be there for you, I am, always.” He nods his head against my chest and I brush the hair off his face, connecting my eyes to his. “Things are going to change from now on, I promise.”

“Really?” he asks, hope filling his voice.

“Really,” I answer him, planting a kiss on the top of his head. “What do you say we go and make a giant tent in my room and have a sleepover?”

“A giant tent?” he asks, chuckling.

“Sure!” I say, shuffling out of his small tent and holding the makeshift door open for him as he grabs his book and follows me out. “We have the ten-man tent in the garage, I’ll go and get it and we can set it up in my room.”

“Can I come camping, too?” a small voice asks from behind me.

I turn around, seeing Izzie standing by his door, a teddy bear hanging from her hand.

“Of course you can!” I say, taking Clay’s hand and walking over to her. “Izzie, you get blankets, Clay, you get pillows, and I’ll get the tent.”

Alex & Sierra—Little do you know

I watch the buildings whizz past as we make our way from the school into the city. Leaning back in my seat, I pull my cell out and click open the searching app, my fingers working on automatic before my brain can catch up.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Harmony since I left her studio on Saturday night, and now, four days later, I still can’t get her off my mind.

One question spins around and around in my head, why was she crying? There has to be a reason, and although she was staring at the painting of the willow tree, something tells me that it wasn’t about that.

The sadness in her eyes coupled with the anger radiating from her said that much. Or I think it does. I can’t be so sure anymore, I used to be able to read her like an open book, but after ten years of not speaking to her, not knowing her, I couldn’t get a read on her properly. I itch to be able to find out what it was about.

I’m typing the name of her studio into the search engine app on my cell before I know what I’m doing, scrolling down the page and clicking on the link to her website.

The homepage is colorful and has one of her paintings as well as the name of her studio “Willow Arts” scrawled across it.

In college, she always talked about opening her own studio, I knew it was her dream. Even though we haven’t had contact for a decade, it doesn’t make me any less proud of her. She achieved what she set out to do.

I continue to scroll through the site, knowing that she must have done this herself, not that she’s done a bad job. It looks good—no—it looks great. The colors are Harmony to a T. She always wore bright colored clothes, either that or her coveralls that were covered in paint.

I close my eyes as I remember how she would always have splatters of paint adorning her hands.

The car jumps as Edward drives over a speedbump in the middle of the road, the movement bringing me out of my daydream.

What am I doing? I shouldn’t be thinking about Harmony and our past. I should be concentrating on Clay and Izzie.

After my talk with Clay on Saturday night, I’ve decided that how things have been over the past few years are going to change, and the only way I can do that is by cutting my hours down at work and being at home more.