by Lia Riley
Smiling at the Sun, run by Zoe Renee, homeschooling mother of five who also managed a fourth-generation Vermont sugarhouse when not spinning wool or weaving, was the Death Star of mommy blogs. No one else came close to making motherhood look oh-so-effortlessly joyful. All Zoe’s posts went viral. All Zoe’s five children were daily showcased in hand-knit sweaters, happily feeding ducks, gobbling collard greens, putting on home puppet shows, or whittling chess pieces. Earthwoods also sponsored Zoe and she’d hosted a series of giveaways for the company last week. Annie couldn’t copy that, but a subtle slice-of-life endorsement wouldn’t go amiss.
“Ew, I don’t eat puke.” Atticus clutched his belly, round despite the recent five-year-old growth spurt that left his legs this side of gangly.
“We don’t use that word in this house.” Annie dropped her chin in her hand and stared out the window, suddenly exhausted. Imagine lying out in the grass, watching clouds drift over the range, without a camera for once, reveling in the sheer pleasure of the moment?
Sun shone on the split-rail fence that divided Five Diamonds from Hidden Rock. Sawyer had come this morning on foot. Did that mean he still lived next door? Once, okay, maybe twice, she’d searched for him on Facebook, purely out of idle curiosity, or so she told herself. He never set up an account.
“Vomit, vomit,” Atticus chanted, beating a fist in time. “The soup looks like vomit.”
“Come on, bud.” Annie searched for serenity and came up lacking. Instead, she reached for her favorite handmade pottery mug. “You have twenty more television minutes.” The coffee tasted bitter and black, but she chugged the lukewarm contents anyway.
Unlike Sawyer, Gregor never made her go all brain-mushy with longing, even in the earliest days of their courtship. She’d been more impressed with his age at first, thirty-eight to her twenty-two. He wasn’t another commitment-phobic college guy swilling PBR and playing video games. The fact that he didn’t hang at bars, but invited her back to his place to split a bottle of pinot noir, was intriguing. He traveled widely, wore collared shirts and read the whole paper, not just the sports section. Her own father wasn’t much of a grownup and hindsight suggested maybe her marriage wasn’t ever based in love, but rooted in Freudian daddy issues.
Fabulous.
Her college pals used to tease her for being an old soul. When the pill failed and she got pregnant, a city hall marriage at twenty-three felt fun, like playing at a normalcy she’d never had in her own eccentric youth.
She’d marched from a barefoot hippie childhood to a journalism degree into motherhood, and after founding Musings of a Mighty Mama, her world expanded with a large online community. Her recipes for pureed sweet potato and chick peas, or popular essays pondering water and electricity waste in cloth diapering leant a certain significance to what was otherwise hours of being screamed at while facing down various bodily fluids. Plus, writing was enjoyable, days passed more quickly when she put her brain to use. As college friends drifted away, she connected more to strangers through parenting forums and one-on-one messaging.
She poured another cup of coffee, her third this morning. The caffeine combined with post-Sawyer jitters set her teeth on edge.
No. Don’t think about him.
So what if she focused her attention on writing posts about Atticus’s food bravery (his favorite lunch—baked tofu with nutritional yeast), or making bird houses from reclaimed wood? The blog had made her feel valued when Gregor’s hobby became how many times he could dismiss her at dinner parties.
For the record, she got his jokes.
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A fish.
It was just that they weren’t funny.
The soup bubbled and she turned off the gas before it burned. “Honey,” she called to Atticus, now cannonballing off Great-Grandma Carson’s rocking chair with accompanying war whoops, “if you don’t want to watch a show, can you play with Lego? I’m so close to getting this post finished. Two more minutes.”
“Love you, Mommy.” Atticus snuck from behind and hugged her waist.
Her throat constricted. “I love you, too, little man.” Atticus was all that mattered, being his mom was a privilege, what she did, what she knew, what she was more or less good at—at least around sixty-seven percent of the time.
Her darling little privilege unleashed a high-pitched noise like a humpback dying a slow death by strangulation.
Time to get out the mental shovel and dig for patience. “What are you doing?”
“Is this what bobcats sound like?” Atticus made the ear-splitting sound again.
“Please, enough, stop.” She winced. “Let’s investigate it later.”
His dramatic sigh came from the toes of his red Converse. “I’m bored.”
“You’re five.”
“So?”
“So, you’re not allowed to use that word yet.”
He marched into the center of the kitchen and crossed his arms in a huff.
“Look, why don’t you run outside, poke around the old garden, go on a ladybug hunt? I can make you a snack.” Maybe they could take a hike to Rainbow Falls this afternoon. Generate material for a future post. She’d written a similar one about connecting kids with nature six months ago and generated lots of traffic and pingbacks. Also, she needed to focus more on writing about the farmhouse. Despite its many—God, so many—problems, it was charming in a way, with the wonky porch step, pressed-tin kitchen ceiling, and root cellar bursting with vintage canning jars.
Just don’t mention the plumbing or the roof.
Or hot neighbors.
“Hey, guess what?” Atticus brightened. “You know where food goes? Poop!”
Annie caught her grimacing reflection in the coffee. There wasn’t enough dark roast in the state this morning.
Atticus flitted to a chair and grabbed the Hello Kitty t-shirt crumpled on the seat.
“Wearing that again?” Annie kept her voice neutral. Another nail in the guilt coffin. The shirt was Margot’s, Atticus’s acutely missed half-sister. Annie had known Margot since she was eleven, the worst loss in the break-up.
Atticus whisked the shirt over his shoulder and banged out the back door. How many times had she requested he close, not slam, the screen during the last twenty-four hours?
Bills spilled from the wicker basket beneath the phone. Joy of joys. Another place Dad likely dropped the ball. Rather than face the wrath of the utility company or finish her post, she sat and clicked through the blogosphere, visiting virtual friends. Everything was coming up roses at Happy Mommy, Three Kids and Counting, and Baby Steps. Looked like Smiling at the Sun’s family had started grinding their own wheat, bully for Zoe.
Everyone appeared in top form: the essays were thoughtfully crafted, bursting with charm, felt toys, finger weaving and homemade chore charts. Everyone projected upbeat domestic bliss that settled on Annie like a weight.
Is Annie Carson real? She recently googled her name and the first hit on the search engine popped up with that question.
Was she?
Yes and no. Some days she lived her best and worst self simultaneously, writing mothering essays that made her want to fist pump, while Atticus crawled between her legs begging for attention and dinner overcooked.
Last Easter, Annie paced the holiday grocery store aisle for fifteen minutes debating whether or not to buy box dye for the boiled eggs. It was right after the divorce papers were signed and her energy levels barely registered. In the end, she trudged to the produce section with a heavy sigh and stayed up through the night, stewing beets, purple cabbage, and kale.
She made the shit out of homemade dye.
“I am divorced,” she chanted, on repeat, over her keyboard at four a.m., writing up the corresponding blog post.
Divorced.
A love failure.
&n
bsp; I suck.
Annie didn’t record how her tears infused the dye. Or share how the next day she’d screamed herself hoarse when Atticus splashed beet juice on the wool rug.
The Easter egg post received over two hundred comments. Every word of praise burned her insides like toxic ooze.
Outside, Atticus made another noise, a breathless grunt that didn’t sound good. Her chair clattered to the linoleum as she tore down the back steps at lightning speed. He hunched in the open barn doorway, face puckered, cradling his wrist.
“What happened?”
“Hurts, Mama,” he wailed. His hand bent at an awkward angle, one that threatened to send her breakfast across her fuzzy slippers.
“Shhhh, shhhhh. You’re okay, you’re okay.” She scooped his light frame against her and bee-lined to the car. Thank God the keys were under the sun visor.
“No! No!” He arched his back against the booster seat.
“I’m going to make it better.” She clicked the shoulder strap, gasping when his scream fired into her ear canal. Jumping into the driver’s seat, she carefully navigated the gravel driveway, avoiding most, but not all, of the potholes. Each backseat whimper struck her heart like a felling axe. At the main road, she gunned it, barely registering the scenery, the wide river lined with leafy cottonwoods or the snow-capped ridgelines.
“Hurts, Mama,” Atticus moaned over and over. She glanced in the rearview mirror searching for inner calm, bravery, anything, but the sight of his tears, the way his snub nose wrinkled as he held his body rigid, trying to move as little as possible, undid her. She sucked in and held a ragged breath.
If only she could siphon his pain into her own body.
If only she’d paid better attention.
If only wouldn’t fix the bone in her child’s arm or the guilt-laced acid dissolving her stomach.
The local Brightwater hospital wasn’t big, and on a quiet Sunday morning the only other people in the emergency room were a black-eyed ranch hand who looked like he’d spent the night tangoing with an angry bull, and a grizzled man in Carhartt overalls snoring in the corner.
Great, she and Atticus were part of Derelict Hour. The more respectable Brightwater residents sat in church pews, not ushering their weeping only child into the x-ray room. She didn’t miss the frown the wiry-haired nurse gave her son’s Hello Kitty shirt. The woman glanced at the chart, a knowing expression crossing her features. “Carson, hmmm? Any relation to Kooky, er, Roger Carson?”
Didn’t sound like she was a fan of the man with the long salt-and-pepper ponytail, left-wing political sympathies, and endless supply of tie-dyed ensembles that contrasted with the valley’s usual denim and plaid uniform.
“He’s my father.” Annie resisted the urge to fidget. Did hospitals purposely make the seating as hard and uncomfortable as possible?
“Can I have a pink cast?” Atticus stared with a hopeful expression. His skinny legs dangled off the edge of the examination table and made him look so small and helpless. He should be wrapped in tender cotton wool, not sitting here with broken bones.
The nurse pulled a face like a camel sucking a lemon. Claire would call her a twathole, but Annie preferred to kill haters with kindness.
“Hey, no big deal.” She forced a conspiratorial smile. “He likes pink and Ninja Turtles. A well-rounded kid.”
Were clinic staff allowed to roll their eyes?
“How about blue?” the nurse pressed, turning to Atticus. “A big boy like you prefers blue, right?”
“But pink matches Margot’s shirt,” he whimpered, fresh tears coursing his blotchy cheeks.
“He said pink.” Annie spoke through her teeth.
“Well, now I’ve seen everything,” the nurse grumbled, eyeing the closed door as if mentally summoning child protective services.
Annie stood firm and Atticus got his pink cast.
“Maybe I should have chosen blue,” he whispered when it was over.
“Maybe so.” The nurse’s sneer wiggled the thick hair on the mole beside her lip. “Tell Mommy to keep a better eye on you up there.” As if Five Diamonds was seeped in pot smoke and anarchy—a hippie commune not fit for a child.
That wasn’t the case, at least not anymore.
“I think we’re all set here.” Annie rose to her feet. No doubt Brightwater would soon buzz with tales that the kooky Carsons were back in force. She could take it, she always had. But if anyone dared say a word crosswise about her son, they’d be eating a knuckle sandwich.
Annie helped Atticus get back into the car and started home. Broken coops and broken children . . . what if she couldn’t cope? Mount Oh-Be-Joyful rose up out the driver’s side window. The name mocked her, and the vast size made her feel small. Insignificant. Those ancient rocks knew her for what she was, not a pioneer babe or a perfectly orchestrated photograph, nothing but fleeting entertainment, easily deleted. Her tears fell in utter silence as she returned her gaze to the empty road. She knew how to do that, had a PhD in Muted Grief.
A red light flashed in the rear view. A siren blared.
Crap.
That was a stop sign back there. She blew through the quiet crossroads without even tapping her brakes. The same way she’d been living these last days and months. Keep going, keep moving, and get through it.
She had her license and registration out by the time the officer sauntered to the driver’s side window and bent down.
No freaking way. Her mouth gaped, she blinked, but yep, he was still there. Sawyer Kane dressed in a beige and green uniform, his lean hips encased by a black leather holster. A trapdoor opened in her stomach as she met his fixed gaze and prayed for a little mercy.
Chapter Five
SAWYER GAZED THROUGH the driver’s window. Aw, hell.
“It’s you.” Annie removed her oversized sunglasses, her eyes suspiciously shiny. At first glance they were an ordinary blue, but look deeper and they held the same color gradient of a mountain lake, light on the outer ring with indigo encircling the center.
His ex-fiancé favored silk and lace, but Annie’s Lewis and Clark College hoodie and denim cut-offs were a form of temptation all on their own. Conjured an image of lazy weekend mornings, cooking a late breakfast, sleeping in, or better yet, not sleeping at all. The thought lasted only a moment, because a skinny, bespectacled boy regarded him from a booster in the backseat—wearing a pink shirt and color-coordinated cast.
Sawyer hid his start of surprise, just. Where’d the kid come from?
“You’re a cop?” Her gaze ping-ponged back and forth from his badge to his holster. “But . . . earlier when I threatened to call the police on your grandma . . . I didn’t . . . you didn’t—”
“License and registration, please.” Easier to stick to the rulebook while deciding how to play this. Discovering Annie Carson drove the stop sign–running purple hybrid with the bumper stickers “I’m straight, but maybe it’s a phase” and “This is what a feminist looks like” threw him for a loop. Realizing the boy was her dead ringer took him on a disorienting ride around a corkscrew roller coaster. He was her son. Annie was a mother.
Guess she still had a knack for surprising him.
That was an unexpected complication he hadn’t considered. He didn’t know the first thing about kids.
She handed over the documents and as their fingers grazed, nerve endings tingled as his ribs contracted a good inch. She still had a knack for doing that too.
“This is my sister’s car. The registration’s in Claire’s name. She’s letting me borrow it.”
He studied her license photo, refocusing. “Portland.” So that was where she’d run off to. People talked, said she’d gotten a scholarship to a fancy college in the Northwest, but no one was ever sure where. If she’d been back to visit the farm, he’d never seen any evidence. “You liked living in Oregon?”
“I
t’s greener than here. Close to the ocean.” Her gaze darted in any direction that wasn’t his as she drummed her thumbs on the steering wheel.
“Did you ever miss Brightwater?” he asked softly. Me?
She shrugged, clearly not wanting to talk more than necessary. “Should I?”
He tipped back his hat. He didn’t care. He’d missed her. “This is your home.”
“My home?” There was that smile again, the one that didn’t reach her eyes. “This valley is beautiful and it’s probably a wonderful town to settle down in if you’re part of the ‘in’ crowd. But I wouldn’t know, would I?” She shook her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t snap. It’s been one heck of a morning.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Nothing.” She bit her lower lip, but not before it gave a tell-tale wobble.
“Annie—”
“I’m fine.” She did a good job of keeping her sigh internal, but not good enough.
“I fell in a hole,” the boy piped from the backseat.
“In the barn, the floor is rotted . . . ” Annie burst into sudden, helpless tears.
Nothing tore him up more than a crying woman, and for that woman to be Annie?
Shit.
Gritting his teeth against a nearly physical need to provide her comfort, instinct held him back, kept him from murmuring, “Stop. Hush. Everything will be all right.” Instead, she seemed to need a moment to let go, release whatever tore up her insides. He could give her that, despite the fact each hitching sob slugged his guts like a fist.
The kid peered out the window with eyes the size of dinner plates. Sawyer offered a reassuring nod.
The next minute passed as slow as an hour, but finally, her sobs lessened. He squatted down and offered the clean handkerchief from his back pocket.